Gaza, stripped: Palestinians return to ruins

0:02The Economist

0:10Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Bloor. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

0:24When Russian forces withdrew from the city of Kherson more than two years ago, it seemed a triumphant liberation for Ukraine. But the artillery never really stopped, and civilians are now being intentionally attacked, chased even, by a new weapon, drones. And if the finale of the British version of Traitors left you thinking that you'd have done better on the TV show, well, our faithful colleague thinks you'd be as useless as the other contestants. His strategy for winning? Try using game theory.

1:01First up, though.

1:11This morning, thousands of Palestinians walked home to northern Gaza as part of the ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas.

1:25That followed a weekend of emotional reunions. Hamas released four Israeli soldiers in return for 200 Palestinians who'd been held in Israeli jails. But the ceasefire has not been without stumbles. Just a week after the truce, peace remains fragile. There were some remarkable scenes on Monday morning after the ceasefire in Gaza seemed to get back on track following some hiccups over the weekend. Greg Karlstrom is our Middle East correspondent. Israeli troops withdrew from part of the corridor that bisects Gaza and thousands of Palestinians streamed from the south back to the north. Greg, you talked about hiccups there.

2:11We are a week or just over a week into the ceasefire. What's been going on? I think the truce was put to its first major test over the weekend, beginning with Hamas violating part of the agreement. It was meant to release female Israeli civilians. And then after releasing all of those civilians to start releasing female Israeli soldiers who've been held captive in Gaza. What happened on Saturday instead was Hamas released four Israeli soldiers, even though there was still at least one female civilian, Arbel Yehud, being held in captivity. Now, Hamas said that happened because it wasn't actually holding her.

2:51She was being held by Islamic Jihad, another militant group in Gaza, and they weren't able to coordinate her release. But because it broke the terms of the agreement, Israel then delayed its withdrawal from the Natsarim corridor in the center of Gaza, which prevented Palestinians from moving between the north and the south of the territory. That does seem to have been resolved now. Islamic Jihad has said that Arbal Yehud will be freed on Thursday, that she is alive and that she is going to be released. And so once it gave that commitment, Israeli troops then began this delayed withdrawal from that corridor in the middle of Gaza.

3:29And as you say, thousands of people are now streaming back into that area. What are they going to find there? Absolute devastation. Northern Gaza has seen the brunt of the fighting over the past 15 months. It was where Israeli troops began their ground invasion back in October of 2023. And it's where over the past few months, they have been returning over and over to some of the same neighborhoods that they fought in a year prior, places like Jebelia, which was once a very densely populated refugee camp in the north of Gaza. And these communities have been absolutely destroyed. So hundreds of thousands of people are going to go back to the north and find that their homes have been ruined, their businesses have been destroyed.

4:14The infrastructure has been ripped up and all of this is going to take many, many years to rebuild. So people are happy that they are no longer displaced from what was once their home in the north, but it's going to be a long time before these places are actually homes once again. And Greg, this devastation is something that Donald Trump was speaking about yesterday to reporters aboard Air Force One. And he said some rather surprising things. He said he thought Egypt and Jordan should take in the remaining Palestinians. And he said, we just clean out that whole thing, referring to Gaza. What's been the response to that idea?

4:52Less than a week into his presidency, and he's already giving two of America's closest Arab allies heart palpitations. The reaction has not been good, as you would expect from countries across the region. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said that neither the Palestinian people nor the Palestinian government would accept being pushed off their land, would accept their territories being further divided. The foreign ministries of both Egypt and Jordan have said that they will not be complicit in what they call the displacement of Palestinians. Jordan's foreign minister said Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians and we will not accept anyone being pushed here.

5:30You look at these Trump comments and someone in the abstract without thinking about the history could see this as making sense, this idea of Gaza has been destroyed and conditions there are miserable. But of course, the history is important here. The fact that Palestinians remember what they call the Nakba, the mass displacement that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. You had more than 700 ,000 Palestinians displaced from their land who have never been able to go back home. So the idea of people being pushed out of Gaza, even if it's sold as a temporary measure, gets to some very deeply held fears amongst Palestinians.

6:06And it's something that they would reject. It's also something that Jordan would reject. It already has millions of refugees from Palestine, from Syria, from Iraq. It has big concerns about demographics. And it's something that Egypt, mired in economic crisis right now, also has its own reasons to refuse. And Greg, what's been happening with the other ceasefire agreement that's now in place between Israel and Lebanon. That was an earlier ceasefire. I understand that there have been tensions there too this weekend. Right. That one has also been through a test. That ceasefire was meant to last for two months.

6:41It was agreed in late November. And so by this weekend, by this past Sunday, the deal was meant to have ended. Israel was meant to have withdrawn its troops from South Lebanon. Hezbollah was meant to have done the same, pulled them back north of the Latani River in Lebanon, and the Lebanese army was supposed to deploy into the south and take over, securing the area. None of that has happened. There are still Israeli troops scattered across the south of Lebanon. Hezbollah has not pulled out all of its fighters from the region, and the Lebanese army hasn't been able to deploy there, and everyone is blaming everyone else.

7:15The Israelis are saying, we can't withdraw because the Lebanese army isn't fully deployed. The Lebanese army is saying, well, we can't fully deploy because the Israelis are still occupying some bits of territory. And so they've been at this impasse. Israel has asked the United States to extend the ceasefire. They're hoping for a 30-day extension, at least to the agreement. But on Sunday, Hezbollah decided to challenge this. And so it organized convoys of civilians to come back to the south of Lebanon to try to go back to their towns and their villages in the south. They ended up being shot at in a number of places by the Israeli army.

7:53There were at least 22 people killed, dozens more wounded. And this is a big test, a big challenge for not just the ceasefire, but for Joseph Aoun, who is the newly elected Lebanese president, former head of the Lebanese army, who was elected on promise that the army would be deployed to the south and would be able to constrain Hezbollah and enforce the terms of the ceasefire. So with all these tensions rising, what are the next stages of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas? I think for the next few weeks, I'm sure there will be more bumps in the road. But I think there still is a desire on both sides to stick to the terms of the agreement.

8:32So there will be more phased releases of hostages. Again, the next one is meant to happen on Thursday. And then more releases of Palestinian prisoners along with that. Israel will continue this slow withdrawal from Gaza. Everyone has a reason to abide by the agreement so far. But in a week or so, they are meant to start talking about how they get to phase two, how this becomes a permanent ceasefire with a full Israeli withdrawal and a release of all of the hostages. And it's really not clear what's going to happen there. Netanyahu is under a lot of political pressure not to get to phase two. It's not yet clear what Donald Trump wants.

9:10He has talked about wanting the ceasefire to continue. He said that he's worried that he thinks it's quite fragile. but he is of course notorious for changing his mind and who knows where we're going to be in five weeks. Things will remain fragile for now but the really big test still remains about a month or so down the road. Greg, thank you so much for talking to me this morning. Thank you, Rosie.

9:47Ukraine's southern city of Kherson is, so far, the only big city that's been won back from Russian forces. A little over two years ago, after nine months as occupiers, Russian soldiers retreated just over the Dnieper River. The Ukrainian military says it's mostly moved on too. But the Russians continued to shell the city. Then, in August, the regional head of the Ukrainian military says a new threat flew in, drones.

10:19He says there's no sense to it because there are no military targets to hit. It's just being done chaotically, he says. Chaotically, terrifyingly, and blatantly illegally. In the past six months, things have really gotten worse in Kerson. Wendell Stevenson writes about Ukraine for The Economist. In addition to the regular daily artillery, the Russians are now specifically targeting civilians with small drones. And this is terrifying on the ground and proving to be sort of dangerously and frighteningly effective at removing a population from areas they want to depopulate. And what do things look like in Kherson since the Russians retreated?

11:06So life has been really difficult in Kherson since the Russians withdrew. I think that it's been a great dismay to Ukrainians that when they have been able to liberate cities and territories, those areas have often been rendered almost uninhabitable because the Russians continue to shell them. And that's certainly what's happened in Kherson. Before the war, there was maybe 280 ,000 people living there. Now it's certainly under 100 ,000. The neighbourhoods along the riverbank that are exposed to this barrage have been depopulating and people have been moving out because it's just so dangerous there.

11:40But since last summer, for about the last six months, there's been a new and increased danger of small drones with small munitions, typically a grenade or a mortar, sometimes even a canister of nails or a petrol bomb. the psychological effect of drones specifically targeting, hunting and chasing civilians in cars, on bicycles, on foot, is absolutely terrifying. So I talked to one child psychiatrist there who says that children who remain in Herson, and there are many families still there, really are having their childhoods curtailed. They have no possibility to go for a walk. They They have no possibility to go to the cinema, to play with children.

12:26I asked these children what is their biggest dream they have after the war will be finished. And they told that they dream about school. Goodness. It seems like pretty rudimentary stuff for the Russians to be using drones when they have such stockpiles of artillery here. What's the intent? Why target civilians anyway? It's not exactly clear. Certainly it's intimidating, but it seems that they want to have the effect of getting people to leave, particularly these riverside areas that are specifically targeted. So it seems to be aimed at depopulating a part of the city and has been reasonably effective at doing that.

13:11People just can't survive when shops are closed, hospitals, clinics are closed, when it's dangerous to leave, when it's almost impossible to drive. Cars are routinely chased and attacked and people are terrified to go out and leave only very occasionally. You know, it's intense. Life is really becoming unlivable there. And I suppose it's obvious to say so, but this is pretty brazen, right? Aiming at civilians is a war crime. It's a war crime to specifically target civilians. And what's interesting is that usually when civilians are killed in war, it's a result of either indiscriminate or disproportionate military response.

13:52But in this case, you can really see that an individual drone is individually hunting and chasing civilian cars, ambulances, buses, people on bicycles and pedestrians, chasing them, hovering overhead with a camera. The operator can clearly see what they're attacking and hitting and then launching a munition to kill and maim and disrupt and terrify. Is this hinting at how Russia wants to fight the war? Is it simply training ground? Is this a mark of intent for another invasion of Kherson? We don't know what their intent is. There have been noises and rumors and suggestions of an attempt to cross the river again, to reoccupy, to invade the West Bank of the Dnieper.

14:39They have made forward moves and offensives, but they've not yet been successful. I spoke to Roman Mroczko, who's the head of the military authorities in Kherson, and he says that the Russians are using Kherson as a proving ground for this kind of tactic.

15:00Rochko believes that the Russians are using civilians in Kherson to train their drone pilots and indeed we're seeing that civilians are being targeted by drones in other parts of the front too. Wendell, thanks very much for your time. Thanks so much for having me.

15:30Deep in the Scottish Highlands, there's a castle where the faithful reside. Anyone wishing to study economics should tune into The Traitors. But hidden amongst them are three traitors. The bit of economics it should help you with is game theory, the study of strategic interaction. Gavin Jackson is an economics correspondent. So how you behave when you're trying to predict how other people are also behaving. I think you're a traitor, I think you're a traitor. I trusted you. Now the game involves lying and betrayal. And people do all sorts of strange things in this game. Although actually, it's a bit of a spanner in the works because I'm not actually from Wales.

16:15Like putting on a fake Welsh accent because they think it makes them sound more trustworthy. I need an accent that people can trust.

16:25The format was developed in the Netherlands but is now spread across the world. You would be a great trader. Are you for real? I'm not a trader, I just wear a big mouth. In game theory terms, the show is a finite, sequential, incomplete information game. Now that means that it ends, it occurs in stages and the players do not know everything. We need to find the traitor. New Year. A few of them are nominated by the producers as the traitors, liars seeking to get all the gold for themselves, while the remainder are the faithfuls. In this game, the person sitting next to you may smile and smile and be a villain.

17:04I wouldn't pick that outfit, so I don't think I trust your judgement completely. Every night in secret, the traitors pick one of the faithfuls to murder. We've tasted the wood for the first time. The unfortunate person is then removed from the game. So trust no one. The following day, the remaining players, both the Faithfuls and the Traitors, pick a player to banish. The numbers are whittled down night by night until a few remaining survivors split the prize, or if a Traitor has snuck by undiscovered, they get the whole pot. The only problem is, they're all really bad at it. rarely does anyone follow the best method as dictated by game theory.

17:48So Gavin, I feel like your response here typifies the difference between us and game theory was quite far from where I got to. You think you'd be better at this, do you? I don't know if I'd be any better if I actually had to play it. But sitting there at home watching as a viewer, I found it incredibly frustrating the way that they were trying to work out who was and wasn't a traitor. Obviously, this is something that people have been talking about at work, and everyone seems to think that they could do better than the guys who are actually on the TV show. Is that right? So as a viewer, it's very, very tempting to think you could, but you already have all the information.

18:21You know who the traitors are. So it seems obvious when people are lying. But obviously, if you're within that, you have no way of telling. In a very strange environment with people you've never met before, and the idea that you can judge whether a stranger is telling you the truth or not is for the birds, quite frankly. It's not a very good strategy. Gavin, if they're that bad at lying, how should they play the game? I would say, instead think about this in terms of game theory. One thing game theory does is separate communication into two different types, what's called cheap talk and what's called signalling.

18:53So cheap talk is where you don't have to pay any cost for what you say. Any one faithful or traitor can say, I'm 100 % faithful. Signalling is where you have to pay some sort of cost to demonstrate something. And in the traitors, all talk is cheap. There's nothing you can learn from what people say. Someone could stand up and shout, I am a traitor, and they could be lying. Someone could shout, I'm a faithful, and they could be lying. Whatever they want. They can say they're Welsh. They can hide that they're a priest. Anything at all. None of it tells you anything. So where does that leave you?

19:22Is the whole thing just about luck? So you do have some information. The two bits of information are who gets banished and who votes for who. That's all you have to really go on. so given that we can use a solution concept from game theory called perfect bayesian equilibrium you've seen the votes you've seen the banishing and your belief should be rational given the votes and the banishing you've seen now to find a perfect bayesian equilibrium you start at the end and work out what you should believe given that you found yourself at the end so if you're faithful what should you believe you should think that there is still a traitor in the game who has kept you alive because you think they're actually a faithful.

20:01So given you believe that, you should betray them. So what you're saying is that the only way to get through is by being ignorant, and loyalty is a total waste of time. Is that right, Gavin? That's useful information, if so, about a colleague? Well, it's certainly true if you find yourself playing the traitors. It's less good strategy if you find yourself working at The Economist. Reassuring. Now, those who've studied a game called Mafia, which is what the traitors is based on, sometimes it's called Werewolf, will tell you that the perfect Bayesian equilibrium of that game is to vote randomly.

20:35Because if anyone had any idea about who was and wasn't a traitor, then the game would collapse. But you should follow a publicly known rule. You roll a dice, and everyone sees the dice roll, and then they vote based on that. Because if everyone was randomising individually, the traitors could gang up on the faithfuls and say they were randomising, but not actually do that, and banish the innocent. rather than the guilty. So I guess that works if everyone behaves like an economist would want them to. Yes, absolutely. So this is the other reason to watch the traitors, because it shows you the gulf between the theory and the practice of game theory, because no one actually behaves like game theory would suggest.

21:11Fortunately, economists still have something to add. And one of them is a concept that the economist Colin Kammerer invented called the cognitive hierarchy. So think of this is in people operate at different levels. So level zero, you vote for someone just because you think you're a traitor. Level one, you vote for somebody because you want to bluff someone else. And level two, you're double bluffing. So you're acting like you're level zero and you're just doing what you think is the right thing to do. So because people aren't rational, everyone thinks they're following the most sophisticated strategy.

21:42And if you judge your opponent correctly and go one level higher, you can beat them. That's the idea of the cognitive hierarchy. I think that you think that I think that you think and if I can keep that chain going so I've got it to the highest level and not misread you then I can beat you and that's one idea from game theory. Cognitive hierarchy sounds like the very opposite of what I saw on the traitors last night because aren't they all really anti anyone being clever and think that that means a sign that they must be a traitor. Absolutely. So that's, I guess, one of the things with the cognitive hierarchy is it's not about seeming clever.

22:20It's about being clever while seeming dumb is the best strategy. You want to double bluff and act like you're dumb while actually being clever. Some of them are trying that strategy of pretending they're dumb, but thinking they're clever though. So it sounds like that should work. So long as you can get away with it. Absolutely. If people cotton on, I expect that's probably your end of the time at the castle. Well, thank you, Gavin. I found myself gripped and repulsed in equal measure by watching The Traitors, but I may now go back for more just to learn about game theory. Delighted to have given you the excuse to do so.

22:52Lovely to chat with you, Rosie.

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