CNN FAREED's Global Briefing May 7, 2024 Gaza: A Deal or More War ? and What Xi Wants in Europe—and What Europe Wants From Xi

 

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good   Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here.   May 7, 2024

Gaza: A Deal, or More War? That’s the question, The Economist writes, as Hamas has said it accepted a proposal by mediators for a ceasefire in exchange for the release of some hostages—just as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is taking additional steps toward an advance on the Gazan border city of Rafah.   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signaled the IDF would invade Rafah “with or without a deal.” At Haaretz, Amos Harel surmises Israel’s government was caught off guard by Hamas’ agreement, after talks had appeared to be near the point of collapse. “The big question pertains to the nature of the cease-fire proposal,” Harel writes. “For the past few months, the main obstacle to a deal has been Hamas’ demand that it include a full withdrawal of IDF forces alongside a complete cessation of the fighting.” Israel has said the terms accepted by Hamas are “far from” meeting its demands. The Jerusalem Post outlines what it believes are the  main details: a phased ceasefire as hostages are returned in stages. At Haaretz, Harel writes: “Israeli political sources said last night that Egypt and the United States may have reached an understanding behind Israel's back to update the Egyptian proposal that Israel accepted two weeks ago.”   This “most recent twist in the plot” of the Gaza war “generates hopes among hostage families that their loved ones may soon return home,” writes the Middle East Institute’s Nimrod Goren, while warning that “[e]ndlessly drawn-out negotiations can incentivize escalatory actions.” As a humanitarian crisis continues in Gaza—including what the World Food Programme says is a “full blown famine” in northern Gaza—Der Spiegel’s Thore Schröder speaks with a Palestinian man camped with his family in Rafah. Schröder writes: “The waiting and the uncertainty are the worst, he says. Waiting for the Israeli offensive. And the possibility that they may have to flee again. This time, though, he says, they have no idea where they should go. It is a concern held by most of the more than 1 million people who have fled to Rafah as this war has progressed.”

What Xi Wants in Europe—and What Europe Wants From Xi Chinese leader Xi Jinping is on his first visit to Europe in five years, and Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman notes the particularity of his itinerary: “Who is Xi Jinping’s travel agent? If you are making your first trip to Europe in nearly five years, an itinerary that reads France, Serbia, Hungary seems a little eccentric. But the three stops chosen by China’s leader make perfect sense viewed from Beijing. For strategic and economic reasons, China badly wants to disrupt the unity of both Nato and the EU. Each of the three countries that Xi is visiting is seen as a potential lever to prise open the cracks in the west.” (Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is perpetually at odds with fellow European Union members over liberal-democratic norms and Orbán’s friendly posture toward President Vladimir Putin’s Russia; visiting Serbia, not an EU member, will allow Xi to highlight NATO’s strike on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war in 1999, Rachman writes; French President Emmanuel Macron has sought to steer Europe toward independence from the US and suggested last spring that Europe should not mimic Washington’s line on Taiwan exactly.)   Xi will look to counter claims that China is helping Russia in its war on Ukraine, CNN’s Simone McCarthy and Xiaofei Xu write. That is one sticking point between China and France, Marc Julienne writes for the French international-affairs think tank Institut français des relations internationales. A big economic matter looms, too. “First and foremost, there is the issue of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs),” Julienne writes: “the incoming wave of imports that is about to surge into the European market is of great concern for French automakers.” (Chinese carmakers are expected to seize a quarter of Europe’s EV market share this year.) Beijing views Paris as the “instigator” of a trade investigation into China, Julienne writes, but the EU seems to have proceeded with its “de-risking” policy vis-à-vis China on its own.

Watch Fareed’s Take Should the US confront China as it did the USSR during the Cold War? On Sunday’s GPS, Fareed noted that some on the right say yes, including former top Trump-administration China-policy aide Matt Pottinger, who appeared on GPS recently to make that argument after coauthoring a Foreign Affairs essay with now-former Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher to the same effect.   Fareed argues it would be a mistake. China is not like the USSR, which saw its economic model sputter well before the Soviet Union collapsed. China is a diversified economy with a thriving high-tech sector, and unlike the USSR, it is thickly intertwined with the West through massive volumes of trade. The argument for confrontation reminds Fareed of US calls for regime change in Iraq in 2003—which suggests it’s well worth pausing and reflecting before hurtling down an aggressive path.

Trump vs. Biden: Who’s Ahead? Former President Donald Trump’s salacious Manhattan “hush-money” trial is the biggest story in US politics right now. But when it comes to who will be president in 2025, the Financial Times’ Alex Rogers, Oliver Roeder, and Eva Xiao concisely assess who’s currently winning the race. Various polls have shown Trump even with or ahead of President Joe Biden in critical swing states, they note. The election’s top two issues, the economy and immigration, appear to favor Trump. Some appear to think the US is spending too much to help Ukraine and Israel—views that align with Trump’s “America first” foreign-policy ethos. Trump is seen as more mentally fit, but some aren’t confident he’ll act ethically in office, the FT authors note. A Pew Research Center report from late April supports those assessments. Looking ahead at electoral math, Ronald Brownstein writes for The Atlantic: “[S]igns are developing that Biden could face a last-mile problem in the Electoral College. Even a modest recovery in Biden’s current support could put him in position to win states worth 255 Electoral College votes, strategists in both parties agree. His problem is that every option for capturing the final 15 Electoral College votes he would need to reach a winning majority of 270 looks significantly more difficult.”

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