bad enough in gaza of course. martin fletcher in israel, thanks so much for being with us this morning. in her recent memoir hillary clinton devoted chapter 20 to the work she did in gaza as secretary of state trying to mediate peace between israel and the palestinians. the last time israel and hamas fought in gaza, israel was threatening a ground invasion, so president obama sent secretary clinton to broker a cease fire. clinton writes if we try to broke ear cease-fire and failed as seemed quite likely it would sap america s prestige and credibility in the region. she did broker a cease-fire but as we learned this week it only held for less than two years. so what does this latest crisis mean for u.s. diplomacy? is this a familiar and recurring problem that anyone can fix? i m joined by the white house reporter for buzz feed.com and the political strategist and professor at columbia university, msnbc contributor josh barrow a domestic correspondent with the new york
presidential powers to the military. and, more than a year later in june of this year, when egypt s military officially recognized mohamed morsi, of the muslim brotherhood, as the winner of nationwide elections, it was then six days later that he was sworn in as egypt s first freely elected president, and finally, just about three months ago in august he traveled to china, marking his first official trip outside of the middle east, as egypt s new president. just days ago, president obama may have seen an ally in egypt s mohamed morsi and, the president helped broker a cease-fire deal between israel and hamas, following 8 days of cross-border fighting in israel and gaza and now the white house has to deal with that egyptian leader, who is expanding his presidential power. and, causing, unrest, once again and molly henneberg live in washington with the news. no coincidence, i m guessing on his timing of the power grab? reporter: that s right,
gaza after a cease-fire agreement with hamas the other day and that ended eight days of cross border fighting which claimed the lives of 166 palestinians and six israeli civilians. as part of a truce brokered by egypt israel agreed to ease more restrictions of gaza border blockade after they first took over in 2007. no doubt the white house is watching the developments in egypt very closely as the timing of this sweeping power grab raises new questions. president morsi s move coming just a day after egypt helped broker a cease-fire between israel and hamas. molly henneberg is live in washington and molly, we heard that the state department put out a statement on this, but omits one thing which is what? his name, president morsi s name. instead the state department says the decisions and declarations in egypt quote,
helped broker a cease-fire deal. joining us now is michael oren who is is really ambassador to the united states it s great to have you with us today. good to be with you too, jenna. jenna: what information you have about the bombing? we don t know who is responsible yet, but we do know that hamas is celebrating. giving out candy to children, you can go on youtube and see that hamas supporters saying that they want more israeli body bags. it is about genocidal groups in gaza trying to kill the maximum number of israelis, while we are trying to defend ourselves and reduce the palestinian civilian casualties to the greatest extent that we can. the terrorists are digging in behind us million population. jenna: how has the cease fire talks been going?
this operation. as for egypt. we hope very much they will continue playing the constructive role that they have v. played in the past in helping us broker a cease-fire so that the terrorist stop rocketing our civilian population. are you concerned though coming across the border? we have these large swaths of open area. have we seen movement, troop movements and are there any concerns that this could escalate on the ground as opposed to the air? well, we are very concerned about the situation. firing on jerusalem, especially before the holiday season and christmas is a very very serious escalation. we haven t had this kind of occurrence in jerusalem in over half a century. so we need to put a stop to it. we will do everything we can can to defend our population, including using ground troops if we need to. at this point we re preparing, we re preparing that option. and we hope very much that the terrorists get the message stop the bombing of israel. and we will deescalate the opera