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Welcome to the president's inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States.

I'm Jim Lindsay, Director's Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is the renewed fighting in Gaza.

With me to discuss the collapse of the temporary ceasefire in Gaza and the future of the conflict between Israel and Amos is Stephen Cook. Stephen is the E&I Enrico Matai Senior

Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council and a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine.

He recently wrote, this war won't solve the Israel-Palestine conflict for foreign policy.

Stephen, thanks for coming back on the president's inbox.

It's a pleasure to be back with you, Jim.

Okay, a lot of breaking news happening in the last several days.

So let's begin with sort of the biggest, which is the collapse of the ceasefire.

And what did the temporary ceasefire actually achieve?

So the pause, I think people are reluctant to use the word ceasefire, which has taken on a

meaning in this conflict that the Israelis want to avoid. The pause led to the release of

hostages that Hamas was holding, mostly women and children, although there was Thai and Filipino male workers as well

...