AMY GOODMAN: Yes, this is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.

Across Gaza, Israeli attacks killed at least 41 Palestinians since dawn today, including three people seeking aid in the so-called safe zone of al-Mawasi. This comes as the Israeli army said today it will end a daily tactical pause in Gaza City that it announced last month for humanitarian purposes, saying the city now, quote, “constitutes a dangerous combat zone.”

This is Mohammed Al-Adham, a displaced Palestinian in Gaza City.

MOHAMMED AL-ADHAM: [translated] What should we do? Do we stay here to die, to be broken? My two brothers died. My mother was martyred. My cousins were killed before my eyes. What should we do? We keep moving from one place to another, until God above looks upon us.

AMY GOODMAN: As Israel pushes deeper into Gaza City, the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called its expanded military operation to seize area “a new and dangerous phase.”

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Unbelievably, civilians are facing yet another deadly escalation. Israel’s initial steps to militarily take over Gaza City signals a new and dangerous phase. Expanded military operations in Gaza City will have devastating consequences. Hundreds of thousands of civilians, already exhausted and traumatized, will be forced to flee yet again, plunging families into even deeper peril. This must stop.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: As aid groups warn famine is absolutely ravaging Gaza City, Guterres said Israel is continuing to block U.N.-led humanitarian efforts, and called the famine a, quote, “result of deliberate decisions that defy basic humanity.”

This comes as President Trump met Wednesday to discuss plans for a postwar Gaza with his son-in-law and former Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair stepped down as prime minister in 2007 and went on to serve as U.N. Middle East envoy until 2015. Last month, it was reported that staff members of his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, had joined Israeli business leaders in developing a postwar Gaza plan that included the creation of a “Trump Riviera” and a manufacturing zone named after Elon Musk, using financial models developed by the U.S. firm Boston Consulting Group. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner has previously praised Gaza’s potentially, quote, “very valuable” “waterfront property.” In February, Trump called for a U.S. takeover of Gaza and shared an AI-generated video depicting the territory as a luxury beach resort called “Trump Gaza.”

SONG: Donald’s coming to set you free, bringing the light for all to see. No more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here. Trump Gaza, shining bright, golden future, a brand-new light.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, for more, we’re joined in London by Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of the push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. He’s a former director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years. He’s now a director at A New Policy, the lobbying organization he co-founded with fellow resignee Tariq Habash to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine and Israel. Josh Paul also worked with Tony Blair when Blair was Quartet special envoy for Middle East peace and Paul was an adviser for the U.S. security coordinator.

Josh Paul, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, if you could comment on this meeting that took place earlier this week between Trump, Blair and Jared Kushner, and to what extent, in fact, it echoes what Kushner had said earlier this — last year, and Trump said earlier this year, about converting Gaza into a “Riviera” and essentially expelling all Palestinians from the territory?

JOSH PAUL: Yes. Thank you very much for having me.

Look, at the end of the day, this is a nightmarish example of profits over people. What you have with Kushner and Blair is a combination of the corrupt and the feckless. And I say that having worked with Tony Blair, as you say, when he was Quartet special adviser, and seen how he prioritized pie-in-the-sky economic programs over the real political progress that needs to be made to allow any sort of Palestinian economic development and reconstruction.

Worse than that, they are intimately tied into this Gaza Riviera project, which, you know, is reliant, ultimately, on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And that’s the reason that the Boston Consulting Group, which had played a part in developing it, not only withdrew from the project, but fired some of the consultants who had been involved, precisely because there is no way to advance this project without violating international law.

So, it is a deeply concerning development and, I think, shows the continuing path that Israel and other partners of its — in the Middle East, other corporate partners, and certainly Misters Kushner and Blair, are trying to take Gaza on. It’s a dark path.

AMY GOODMAN: Axios is reporting, Josh, that the White House envoy Steve Witkoff has been collaborating with Kushner and Blair for months. I mean, if you could talk about this vision of a day after? I mean, you also worked with Blair; you have a sense of what they’re doing. I mean, Jared Kushner, we haven’t heard his name in a while, as he works on these global development projects, where he and Ivanka Trump are making enormous sums of money, from Albania to other places, going back to that sort of famous moment when he talked about, you know, Gaza being a valuable piece of real estate, and this whole repeated issue of, you know, Trump’s Riviera.

JOSH PAUL: So, I think, for some people — and I include Mr. Kushner among these — everything is about money. Tony Blair and Jared Kushner have played a continuing role in pursuing the economic lane of the Abraham Accords, the effort to normalize Israel’s relationships with other countries in the Middle East, which, of course, have come at the expense of the Palestinians and greatly led us to where we are now. It was not long after October 2023 that Jared Kushner sprung up and started talking about building seafront apartments in Gaza. Of course, this is at the same time that the Israelis are decimating the Gaza Strip, that the U.N. has declared a famine. We’re talking about a development project in which apartments would essentially be built on the graveyard of Palestinians. That is just an unconscionable approach, but it does fit in with the long-term pattern.

And when it comes to Tony Blair, my own experience was that he pursues policies that are simply disconnected from the realities on the ground. When I worked with him in the West Bank, he sat in his five-star hotel in Jerusalem, in the German Colony, and dictated economic fantasies that went nowhere because there was no political resolution, because Israel would nickel and dime each proposal to death. It was death by a thousand cuts when it came to the implementation. But Blair was fundamentally unwilling to face this reality, tied in, as he is, to the senior leadership in Israel and across the region.

And so, this is, first of all, and most importantly, a distraction from the very real, very urgent humanitarian crisis right now that demands that we do all we can to get Israel to lift its blockade on humanitarian assistance and let the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies do their job, but it is also a very cynical effort to exploit incredible suffering for economic gain.

AMY GOODMAN: Josh Paul, I want to get your response to the news that broke Thursday, former U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan now saying he would support Congress voting to withhold military aid to Israel. This is Jake Sullivan speaking to The Bulwark Podcast.

JAKE SULLIVAN: The situation as it stands today, following the breakdown of the ceasefire in March, means that a vote to withhold weapons from Israel is a totally credible position. That is a position that I would support.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Jake Sullivan. Meanwhile, the State Department spokesperson under former President Biden, Matt Miller, admitted in May he believes Israel committed war crimes in Gaza, a reversal, coming after more than a year as the face of the Biden administration’s foreign policy, repeatedly defending Israel against allegations of war crimes and genocide. This was Miller speaking in April of last year.

MATTHEW MILLER: We have been very clear that we want to see Israel do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. We have made clear that they need to do every — that they need to operate at all times in full compliance with international humanitarian law. At the same time, we are committed to Israel’s right to self-defense.

AMY GOODMAN: But during an interview with Sky News in June, Matt Miller said he believed Israel did commit war crimes in Gaza and that Israeli soldiers are not being held accountable.

MATTHEW MILLER: I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think the — I think it is, without a doubt, true that Israel has committed war crimes.

MARK STONE: You wouldn’t have said that at the podium.

MATTHEW MILLER: Yeah, look, because I — I mean, when you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Josh Paul, you are a veteran State Department official. If you can first respond to these revelations or this reversal of the former U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, under Biden, someone you worked with very closely?

JOSH PAUL: So, what I would say is, first of all, look, it’s never too late for genuine contrition. But that’s not what this is. Mr. Sullivan is reading the tea leaves, seeing the remarkable shift in American public opinion, and particularly in Democratic politics, and he and others are trying to shift in order to continue to secure for themselves the sinecures, the influence and potentially the roles in future administrations that they desire.

But the problem here is that while the situation is worse now than it has been, the facts are not new. Israel’s approach are not new. Fifteen of us resigned during the course of the Biden administration, resigned publicly, because — and precisely because — people like Mr. Sullivan would not listen to those facts and, in fact, did all they could to subvert an honest approach to this crisis.

And so, I think that it is, you know, a reflection of the changing American politics that they are shifting their perspectives, but they remain unmoored in any sort of moral grounding here. And I think there has to be some form of accountability in terms of the future careers of these people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Josh Paul, I’d just like to go back to the meeting that occurred earlier this week. In addition to Blair and Kushner, Axios, the same article that Amy referred to, also reported the presence of an unexpected third, namely high-ranking Israeli official Ron Dermer, whose input Trump reportedly requested. He apparently said that Israel does not want to occupy Gaza for good and does not seek the expulsion of Palestinians. I mean, Dermer is an extremely senior official in Netanyahu’s government. He’s minister of strategic affairs, has been since 2022, and is now the head of negotiations for the release of the hostages. So, if you could talk about the significance of this, whether you think it’s accurate, likely accurate, and to what extent it’s representative of at least some people within Netanyahu’s administration?

JOSH PAUL: So, first of all, let me say, you know, President Biden, I think it was, famously said about Ukraine — or, I think it was Secretary Blinken at the time: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” And yet, here we are discussing the future of Gaza and of the Palestinians without the Palestinians. So, I think, first of all, let’s be clear that this is a discussion that should never have taken place without Palestinian representation.

But second of all, let’s step back and recognize that, yes, there is very clearly an intent here to impose, essentially, a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate — and I might actually be very clear and say Emirati colonialism, as well — in the Gaza Strip that segments the Palestinians into small, manageable groups — I use the term “manageable,” of course, very cynically — and then imposes these forms of governance that are undemocratic, that are autocratic, and that allow for companies to come in and take profits, for countries to come in and gain strategic advantage. It is, again, I think, very troubling.

But let’s also note that we are seeing that plan already being implemented. This isn’t just something that is being discussed for the future. This is the purpose of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, so-called, at which over a thousand Palestinians have been killed at their sites, is precisely to start building towards this plan, first with American mercenaries, and then to transition to other countries.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: I mean, if you could just tell us: Where do you think negotiations stand? I mean, to the extent that Palestinians are involved anywhere, they are involved in those negotiations, and Hamas has reportedly accepted a ceasefire and hostage deal proposal put forward by Qatar and Egypt, but Israel has yet to respond.

JOSH PAUL: So, I think, you know, as has been the case throughout the last couple of years, this ultimately remains a question of Benjamin Netanyahu’s political interest. Indeed, it’s been reported in the last week that even senior IDF officials have turned to Mr. Netanyahu and said, “Stop. There’s no more 'benefit,'” quote-unquote, “to be gained. We are continuing to put at [risk] the [lives] of our own hostages who are in Gaza.” And yet, Mr. Netanyahu refuses to move forward on any sort of lasting ceasefire, and so we remain where we are, until he sees that it is in his own interest to do so. And that is just, first of all, unconscionable at an individual level, but also disastrous, I think, not only for the people of Gaza, but for the country of Israel and for the United States in its complicity in this.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Josh Paul, thanks so much for joining us, veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest against the push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. He’s a former director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, where he worked for 11 years. He’s now a director at A New Policy, the lobbying organization he co-founded with fellow resignee Tariq Habash to press for a change in U.S. policy on Palestine and Israel.

When we come back, today marks 20 years since Hurricane Katrina roared ashore in New Orleans, and state and federal officials left people to fight for survival in the rising floodwaters. Nearly 2,000 people died. We’ll speak with Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Traci A. Curry, director of the new five-part documentary series, Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. Back In 30 seconds.

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NERMEEN SHAIKH: Nola Brass Band, performing in the streets of New Orleans in 2005 in the months after Hurricane Katrina.