President Biden's Trip to Israel and the View from Egypt

10/18/23 • 24 min

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Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

President Biden wrapped up a brief visit to Israel on Wednesday. The trip was also intended to include a meeting in Amman, Jordan with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah of Jordan and President Sisi of Egypt. That leg of the trip was abruptly cancelled following the tragedy at the hospital in Gaza. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in Gaza is becoming increasingly dire. According to the latest reports from the United Nations, fuel is running out and water supplies are dangerously low. Some one million people are displaced and several hundreds of thousands have fled to southern Gaza near the Egyptian border in the hopes of finding some modicum of refuge and relief.

My guest Nancy Okail is President of the Center for International Policy, a think tank in Washington, D.C. She is also an Egyptian activist and scholar and in our conversation explains some of the political considerations that are driving Egypt's response to the unfolding crisis over its border. Moments before I caught up with her, President Biden had delivered a speech in Tel Aviv in which he announced an agreement from Israel's War Cabinet for the provision of humanitarian relief into Gaza, from Egypt. We kick off discussing President Biden's speech before having a longer conversation about what the Israel-Hamas war looks like from the perspective of the Egyptian government.

Previous Episode

Tobacco Use Has Sharply Declined Everywhere Around The World Except for China. Why?

Since the early 2000s, Tobacco use has declined steadily and in some cases very sharply nearly everywhere in the world except China. According to the world health organization, Tobacco use for people 15 years or older declined globally from 34% in the year 2000 to 23% last year. But in China, tobacco use has remained relatively stable -- falling just 1%, from 27 to 26 percent in the last two decades.

A new piece of investigative journalism offers one key explanation of why China has been such an outlier to this global trend, namely the political influence of China's national tobacco monopoly.

My guest today, Jason McClure, a correspondent with The Examination, a new non profit investigative news agency focused on global health. He is one of the authors of the report detailing the ways in which the state-run China National Tobacco Corporation successfully undermined Tobacco use reduction efforts in China.

How China Became Addicted to its Tobacco Monopoly"

https://www.theexamination.org/articles/how-china-became-addicted-to-its-tobacco-monopoly

Next Episode

What China's Economic Slowdown Means for the World | FP Live

China’s economy has been exhibiting troubling signs. Property prices are falling, making households less wealthy and curtailing consumer spending. High government debt, a declining population, and America’s policy moves are combining to pose Chinese policymakers a serious challenge.

How is Beijing navigating the country’s economic slowdown? How will China’s struggles impact the global economy?

For answers, watch FP’s Ravi Agrawal in discussion with three experts: Economist Adam Posen; the Wall Street Journal’s chief China correspondent, Lingling Wei; and James Palmer, author of FP’s weekly China Brief newsletter.

This episode is a special cross promotion for FP Live, the flagship podcast from Foreign Policy Magazine, hosted by Foreign Policy Editor in Chief Ravi Agrawal. If you like Global Dispatches, you will certainly want to subscribe to FP Live.