Peace by piece: a ceasefire in Gaza is close

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

0:25Donald Trump's pick for Tulsi Gabbard to be his director of national intelligence was already controversial. Now, our correspondent has uncovered some new information about her earlier dealings with the Assad regime in Syria. And have you noticed that many people are walking around with lurid green drinks? We look at how matcha became the flavour of choice and why Gen Z might be a little deluded about the health benefits of their favourite brew.

1:02But first...

1:09After 15 months of fighting, a ceasefire has been agreed between Israel and Hamas. Last night, President Biden said a deal had been reached. More than 15 months of conflict began with Hezbollah's brutal massacre on October 7. Fighting in Gaza will stop, and soon the hostages will return home to their families.

1:34As news spread, so did celebrations in Gaza But those cries of joy and relief may have been premature

1:47A ceasefire hasn't come into effect yet And bombing has continued in Gaza The deal also needs approval from the Israeli parliament And this morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who postponed a cabinet meeting to discuss it. Despite those caveats, this is the best news to come out of the region in a long while. Though the war isn't over, peace is starting to look possible. It's hard to believe after a year of false starts, a year of failed diplomacy, but Israel and Hamas have actually agreed to a ceasefire. Greg Karlstrom is our Middle East correspondent. It felt as if the war in Gaza was never going to end.

2:30You had Israeli troops going back to the same neighborhoods over and over, fighting there. You had tens of thousands of dead Palestinians, hostages, languishing in captivity. But at last, it seems as if an end to the Gaza war is in sight. Greg, we've seen this kind of thing before, and we're hearing even this morning that there's some pushback in Tel Aviv. But assuming this goes ahead, exactly what has been agreed? The agreement will take effect on Sunday, and it's meant to proceed in three stages. So in the first phase, which will last for six weeks, Hamas has agreed to release 33 Israeli hostages.

3:09That's out of 98 who are still believed to be held in Gaza. In return for that, Israel is going to release 30 Palestinian prisoners per civilian hostage and 50 per soldier. So we're talking about a thousand roughly Palestinian prisoners in the first phase of the agreement. This will happen in dribs and drabs, a few hostages being freed every few days. And then alongside that, Israel will begin withdrawing troops from Gaza. It's not a complete pullout. They will keep some troops in a buffer zone on the edges of Gaza, but they will largely pull out of populated areas in the territory. And there's meant to be a big increase in the flow of humanitarian aid.

3:48There's talk of 600 trucks a day going into Gaza. And then while all of this is happening, they are meant to start negotiations over how they get to the second phase of the ceasefire, which is when we'll see a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of all of the remaining hostages. So that sounds quite similar to previous ceasefire proposals. Isn't that very much what was proposed last year by the Israeli government? It is almost identical to what was proposed by the Israeli government and what was then adopted by Joe Biden. He announced a very similar plan for a ceasefire in a speech back in May at the White House.

4:28And then the Americans took it to the Security Council. They got Security Council support. The Arab League endorsed it. Everyone was very happy about this plan, except for the people who actually had to sign this plan. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, his government again wrote this proposal, but he disowned it after Biden introduced it because he feared that ending the war might cause his far right allies to leave the coalition and bring down his government. Hamas also had some reservations about the plan. They wanted to renegotiate key points of it. So for the next eight months, this proposal remained on the table, but neither side until this week was willing to accept it.

5:08Trump takes office within a matter of days, and he has actually claimed credit for this agreement. How do you think that Trump as president will affect the implementation of the deal? And what will it mean for Gaza and Hamas? I think he deserves credit for this agreement. The biggest thing that has changed looking at that now compared to three months ago is that Donald Trump is coming back to the White House. And he's made it very clear that he wanted to see a deal done before his inauguration. On Monday, he sent his Middle East envoy, Steve Whitcoff, to shuttle around the region for the past few days.

5:45And in a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu over the weekend, Whitcoff is said to have told him quite bluntly that this deal needs to get done and Israel needs to accept it. And Netanyahu, who has felt comfortable defying Biden for a year, has concerns that he'll be able to defy Donald Trump. So the question going forward is, will Trump continue to exert that kind of pressure over the Israeli government, particularly as we talk about getting from phase one to phase two? There will be some right wing politicians in Israel who don't want to get to phase two, who want to resume the fighting because they've been promised a total victory over Hamas or because they're dreaming about rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza.

6:27I think American pressure, pressure from the Trump administration, is going to be vital to keeping Netanyahu on track with this agreement. And Greg, we've been talking for months, hoping that we're going to get some good news, and we finally got some. If the ceasefire does begin on Sunday, how optimistic are you that it can last? I think there are reasons to be optimistic, and there hasn't been much to be optimistic about when it comes to Gaza over the past year. But I think, you know, I said there will be pressure from the right to end this agreement before phase two. There will also be a lot of pressure from the rest of Israeli society to see this through to its conclusion.

7:06Most Israelis at this point are in favor of ending the war completely if it means that all of the remaining hostages are freed from Gaza. And I think for the next six weeks, as they go through this very emotional time in Israel watching these captives be freed, that's going to put a tremendous amount of pressure on Netanyahu's government to stick to the agreement. I think similarly in Gaza, Hamas looks at this as an opportunity for them to remain in power in Gaza. They're going to emerge from the war with no alternative, with no governing alternative in Gaza. And so they think if they manage to get to a full ceasefire with Israel and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops, they might be able to keep power.

7:49Now, that's, I don't think, a good scenario for the future of Gaza or for the future of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. But in the short term, it does mean Hamas has an incentive to try and abide by this agreement. Having said all that, of course, there are things that can go wrong. There will be spoilers on both sides who will want to blow up this agreement. There will be competing political pressures. And so you can be hopeful, but I think it's premature to say that this agreement is going to lead to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Greg, thank you very much for talking to us. Thank you, Rosie.

8:43In November, Donald Trump nominated former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as his new director of national intelligence. It's a job that entails giving the president and cabinet vetted and impartial intelligence including the top secret president's daily brief Gabbard has served in the armed forces and been deployed with them to Iraq But the ideal candidate for the job would also be a savvy intelligence operator with experience of running big institutions Gabbard's critics say she is not that person Instead, they argue she has a track record of cosying up to foreign adversaries Some say that should disqualify her from the role.

9:23Our senior editor Steve Cole has been examining that record and has discovered new information about one of Gabard's relationships with Syria's former dictator Bashar al-Assad. Steve, this is something of a scoop for you. You've been looking specifically at what Tulsi Gabard knew about an American hostage in Syria. Tell us what you found. The hostage in question is Austin Tice, a freelance American journalist and former U.S. Marine who was abducted outside of Damascus while working there in 2012. Austin Tice was a very well-known hostage because of his background in journalism, but also because his mother was a tireless public campaigner seeking to galvanize the government to win his release.

10:12New information is that in 2017, while Tulsi Gabbard was traveling to Syria, one of the colleagues on her trip was led by the Syrian government into a meeting room where he encountered an American prisoner who he later identified as Austin Tice. And so the bigger question is, what was Tulsi Gabbard's role in all of this? And what does it say about her judgment and her suitability for the biggest intelligence job in Washington? Okay, so before we get into the detail, just give me a bit more background about what we already know and what's in the public domain about Gabbard's relationship with the Assad regime.

10:49Well, she took an interest in American policy towards Syria during the civil war after the Arab Spring, and she became a critic of American policy. She particularly thought that the United States was engaged in Syria in another, what she called, counterproductive regime change war. And so she traveled to Damascus on what she described as this fact-finding mission, in part to try to advance her arguments that the United States should stop supporting rebels who are seeking to overthrow Assad and should, if not ally with the Assad regime, sort of accept it as part of Syria's future. And what new have you discovered about what happened on that trip?

11:30The big discovery involves Austin Tice's condition as an unacknowledged prisoner of the Assad regime. The Assad government has continually denied that they have ever held Austin Tice. Tulsi Gabbard traveled with another former congressman and two Lebanese-Americans who had facilitated her trip. They had contacts in the Assad regime. And one of their meetings was with Western Islamist volunteers who the Assad regime said had come to Syria to fight against the government. While this was going on, according to the sources that we've developed about what happened and what was said about what happened, this colleague of Tulsi Gabbard who was on the trip, this Lebanese-American businessman, was taken to another room where he was introduced to an American prisoner.

12:23And the man was in not very good condition, but they had a brief conversation until the prisoner cut it off. And the colleague of Tulsi Gabbard afterwards Googled the images and adamantly concluded quickly that this was Austin Tice that he had met. And the context was that the new Trump administration was coming in, and the Trump administration was signaling to Assad that it wanted to open talks and potentially to bargain for Austin Tice's release in exchange for perhaps easing of sanctions or humanitarian aid. And so the assumption was that this encounter with Austin Tice had been arranged to allow this trusted American interlocutor to see that the Syrians had something to trade.

13:16And do we know that that man definitely was Tice? We don't know that the man was definitely Tice. There was no time-stamped video or photograph that might have allowed for others to identify the individual. The man did not announce himself as Austin Tice. It was the photo identification that led this colleague of Tulsi Gabbard to tell the Trump administration that he was absolutely convinced that the man he had encountered was in fact Austin Tice. And the Trump administration's lead hostage negotiator found the witness to be credible, but the information was uncertain in just the ways we described.

13:57As to when Tulsi Gabbard heard about it, it was not until January of 2019 that according to our sources, that he was encouraged by the Syrians to now tell Tulsi Gabbard what he had seen. And what's your understanding of how and where this colleague told Tulsi Gabbard what he'd seen. According to our sources, this colleague of Tulsi Gabbard approached her, pulled her aside at a fundraiser in Los Angeles early in 2019 that was being organized by the actor Sean Penn, who was an acquaintance of the colleague and Tulsi Gabbard was attending this fundraiser. Through a spokeswoman, Tulsi Gabbard denied that she received this information.

14:46The spokeswoman, Alexa Henning, said on Tulsi Gabbard's behalf, she didn't get that information. She got no actionable information about Mr. Tice. Otherwise, she would have acted on it. That speaks for itself. It does still leave some questions about what her recollections are, because we do know that two weeks later, the Trump administration, prompted by somebody, contacted this colleague of Gabbard's and said, oh, we understand you've got some interesting information about this missing journalist. And that kicked off a couple of meetings between Robert O 'Brien, who was the lead hostage negotiator for the Trump administration at the time.

15:29Sean Penn was involved in these meetings and the colleague of Tulsi Gabbard recounted all of this information that we've just been discussing. So these are all quite intricate events. there a few years ago. Tell me how all of that affects your view of Tulsi Gabbard's suitability for the role as director of national intelligence. Well, it's a murky story in some respects, and some of the key events are contested. But there's very rarely in the intelligence world, in my experience reporting on it, clean reporting that isn't somehow disputed or perhaps compromised by the source or complicated by a slightly contradictory report.

16:12And so this is a microcosm of the job that she seeks to hold and also of the judgment that is required of any leader of a major institution like the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 of America's intelligence agencies' multibillion dollar budgets and decides, in effect, what the president will see every morning about the complicated, sometimes compromised intelligence that's coming in. The larger debate about her suitability for the role involves three questions. Does she have enough experience? Are her relationships as a congresswoman with controversial leaders, adversaries of the United States disqualifying?

17:03Do they compromise her judgment that the job requires? And thirdly, how does she sort fact from propaganda? Because that probably is the single most important thing that the director of national intelligence does for a living. I think the biggest concern about her is that she has a record of cherry picking facts, passing on basically undocumented implemented propaganda lines. And that, I think, is worrying to a lot of the senators who look at her candidacy as much as anything else. It's not just the president, but it's the Congress and the whole country that depends on having someone in that job who does it well.

17:45So, Steve, where do we go from here? Tulsi Gabbard's going to get this intelligence job, isn't she? Well, just because you're nominated doesn't mean you'll get it. She requires confirmation by a majority of senators. The Senate is controlled by President Trump's Republican Party, so she starts with an advantage. But there's a confirmation hearing ahead. She's one of the more controversial nominees, but she's not the most controversial. And the senators are under pressure from President Trump to give him the cabinet he wants. And if they're going to use their political capital to stop somebody, which would be a big deal, they may be looking at others on the controversial list rather than Gabbard.

18:26which means the free world may end up with a director of national intelligence in Washington soon, who has an outlook on American power in the world that is highly unconventional. Terrifying stuff, Steve. Thank you very much for talking to me. I'm glad to have been with you. Thanks for having me.

19:03So I've just been brought here down the road from the office to Blank Street Coffee and it is a freezing day. I'm here with my colleague Samira Saeed who's in our business affairs department. I'm seeing lots of people come out with iced drinks so what's going on here Samira? Well the The drinks that you're seeing are called ice matcha lattes, which is a mix of ice, milk and a form of green tea, matcha. Okay, but I've just seen something really strange, which seems to be pink at the bottom, white in the middle and green on top. What's going on there? It is eye-catching, isn't it? So it is the blueberry syrup at the bottom, the milk in the middle and then the matcha at the top.

19:46A lot of the appeal about matcha is all about the aesthetics. so it's really one for the social media fiends. It's so popular that even on a freezing cold winter's day people are still willing to queue up. And it has got caffeine in, right? Yes, it does. Okay, I'm sold. Let's try it. Okay, can I have a matcha latte, please? Oh, iced, please. Yes, thank you. An iced matcha latte, please. Can I please have an iced white chocolate matcha with oat milk? Okay, I'm quite excited about this. It's only two colours, green and white, but still not every day I drink a green drink. I have a little stir, right?

20:24Yeah. Can I try? Go for it. Okay, aside from being freezing on a very cold day, that's delicious. I'm so glad you like it.

20:36Okay, so we're back in the office. The thing I was surprised by was just how busy it was out there on the street. There were so many people, it's a cold day, buying these iced matcha drinks. So put some numbers to this trend. How big a thing is it really? So Blank Street, where we've just been, sells matcha drink every four seconds. And this is across Britain and America where they have 80 stores in total. Jenkia, popular rival matcha bar in London only sells matcha drinks. They don't sell any type of coffee, freshly prepared 7 per minute. This is a massive worldwide trend. So the global market for matcha-based products is at 4.24 billion as of 2024.

21:22And this is predicted to go up to 6.48 billion in 2029. So Samira, I feel like you've given me a bit of a clue here by telling me this is all about the aesthetic. I'm assuming that matcha has a pretty big online presence. Is that right? Yeah, certainly. The hashtag matcha on TikTok has over 15 billion views. If I had to start my entire matcha collection from scratch, these are the four things that I would repurchase. First and most important thing you're going to need is a high quality matcha powder. There's millions of people trying out different recipes, like the one that you're hearing from creator Caitlin Jung.

21:59Let's make a banana pudding matcha latte. So there's different dessert combinations and which matcha you should order and which matcha you should make. OK, so this is all very delicious, but tell me what matcha actually is. Matcha is actually the finely ground leaves from the Camellia sinensis tea plant. It's a form of green tea, but you're getting it in its entire nutrients and whatever benefits it comes with, because it's finely ground as opposed to green tea, which is the whole leaf. So green tea was made famous by the Tang Dynasty in China, and this later became part of a Zen Buddhist ritual.

22:40And then a Japanese monk called Mayo and Esai brought green tea seeds from China to Japan in the 12th century. And then it later spread through Japanese society with the Chanoyu, more commonly known as the tea ceremony. Okay, so it's been around a really long time. Why is it suddenly so popular? So matcha has become increasingly popular because it's just seen as a healthy alternative to coffee. It's shown to be helpful with cardiovascular diseases, it can help improve gut issues, it can help with bone health and it can help to speed up your metabolism. It gives a steady boost of energy as opposed to the spike and crush that you can get with coffee.

23:28And on average, a coffee contains 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine, whereas a cup of matcha contains 70. Okay, so as an old fashioned coffee addict here, I'm now worrying that my matcha isn't going to replace my daily coffee. Samira, I'm seeing the combination of a lurid green drink in front of me and all this talk of wellness as a sign that this is a kind of young person's millennial Gen Z drink. Is that right? Yes, the drink is extremely popular with the younger generation. And with social media, they have more information to know what will be better for their bodies. There's kind of an irony here, though, because look at the drinks that people are ordering.

24:11It's filled with sugar, sugary syrups or just sugar in general. But actually, the future may not be so sweet. Tea production in Japan is decreasing, as is land for cultivation. The tea ceremonies are becoming a thing for tourists, and you can really buy bottled matcha drinks, not the fresh ones. But as we've just seen, even if it's outside Japan, matcha is going to be super popular for a while to come. Samira, thank you so much for taking me on an exciting journey. Thank you so much for having me.

25:18Transcription by CastingWords We'll see you back here tomorrow.