united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. today on the program, after seven days, the truce between israel and hamas is over and the war is back on. i'll ask a former idf officer whether israel's tactics will change in this phase. will it be more precise, more careful about civilian casualties as the united states has asked? then i will talk to a man who knows those casualties well. a british palestinian surgeon who has worked in gaza's hospitals during the war. finally, the death of america's most famous 20th century statesman hen ry kissinger. i will talk to his biographer, neil ferguson how kissinger changed the world for better or for worse. >> but first, here's my take. henry kissinger, who died this week at 100 years old, may have been the most famous foreign policy practitioner in modern american history, but he practiced foreign policy for just eight those hundred years. he left office as secretary of state nearly half a century ago and yet admired or despised, he managed to hold the world's attention long after his power waned. what explains this remarkable run? he was that rare breed, a doer and a thinker, someone who shaped the world with ideas and action. first, his accomplishments. kissinger presided over a pivotal moment in the cold war when it looked to much of the world like america was losing. the united states was, in fact, losing a hot war in vietnam, the first major defeat in its history on which it had staked its reputation and the soviet union had a nuclear arsenal and gaining allies around the world, by the end of his eight years in office things looked different. the vietnam war was over and the soviet union's momentum had been thwarted by a dip thelomatic co between washington and beijing and that one moved china the world's second most important communist power cleanly out of the soviet camp. simultaneously, relations with the soviet union had major rememberas control agreements. in the middle east moscow's longstanding ally, egypt expelled its russian advisors to the american orbit and a process that culminated years later between an arab country and israel. kissinger was the force behind each of those four achievements. everything kissinger did was surrounded by controversy. the right blasted him foropenino china which was seen as i betrayal to taiwan and it was the only washington recognized. conservatives also hated and many liberals believed that with an obsession with credibility, kissinger dragged on the vietnam negotiations for far too long that was not so different from the one in 1969 which would have spare said of lives of helpeds of thousands of americans and cambodians and laotians. he presided over terrible failures. his support of pecuakistan was abomination and a fail ure. the bombing of cambodia and laos caused human suffering. his disregard for human rights in places like chile and indonesia left a long shadow over america's reputation kissinger hfs the first jewish second and the first immigrant to enter into that office. 13 members of his family died in the nazi death camps. that background shaped his world view though he spoke about it rarely. he grew up in germany as hitler came to power and watched what happens perhaps the most advanced and civilized nation in the world descend into barbarism and mass murder. he developeded a lifelong obsession with order. he was too suspicious of democracy and human rights, but it was because he had seen demagogues like hitler rise to power through elections. he often remarked attributing to gerter that between order and justice he would choose order because once chaos reigns there is no possibility for justice. i met him first three decades ago and over the years got to know him quite well. we had both been graduate students at the same department in the same university and many of his colleague his been my professors. he was a complicated man, warm, witty, proud, thin-skinned, sometimes paranoid, but always deeply curious and intellect ally serious about the world. he was the only global celebrity i ever met who when the lights dimmed retreated to his library to read the latest biography of stalin or re-read spinoza. he once attribute his success in america as seen as a lone cowboy pursuing his mission. the image of kissinger as cowboy might seem odd, but he was right about being a solitary figure on the american strategic landscape. in a country of optimists, henry kissinger was a european pessimist. he began his career worrying about nuclear weapons and he ended it warning about artificial intelligence. over the years in our conversations he would speculate gloomily that japan would become a nuclear power, that europe would fall apart and that islamic extremism would triumph. in our last lunch just a few weeks ago he worried about israel's ability to survive in the long run. from start to finish, over a century, henry kissinger's abiding fear was that disruptive forces once set in motion could easily rip off the thin veneer of civilization and stability, pushing the world into the abyss like the one in which he came of age. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my column this week and let's get started. ♪ ♪ the delicate seven-day truce came to an end friday as israel accused hamas of firing rockets into its territory, the idf then swiftly resumed air strikes on gaza. they released 100 hostages while israel released almost 250 palestinians. now israel isn't just fighting hamas, it is trading fire with hezbollah. the iranian-backed group based in lebanon. cnn's senior international correspondent ivan watson is in southeastern lebanon with the latest on that front. ivan, tell us, is there a kind of escalation? because so far what has been striking is despite many fears both hezbollah and iran seem to have been fairly restrained. so if there is some heating up here, how did -- who's escalating on which side of the border? >> well, since the truce ended in gaza, that truce was applied on to some degree here along the border between lebanon and israel and since the fighting resumed in gaza, this kind of artillery duel between hezbollah and israel on the border has resumed. so just where i am, i've been hearing the thud of incoming israeli artillery over the course of the last couple of hours. there was a blast, some kind of a strike about an hour and a half ago that shooshgk the builg i'm in and frightened some of the remaining residents in the surrounding village e some of whom said they've never felt an israeli strike this close to this area. it has not been of the same intensity of the fighting that you've seen in gaza in part because this area is noter inially nearly densely populated and the villages are evacuated and the civilians do have places to run to, but you're right. you pointsed out we have not seen the war on this border escalate to the levels that we saw in 2006 when israel was bombing targets in beirut and triggering a mass exodus by sea of people from lebanon. at least a hundred people killed on this side of the border. the majority of them hezbollah fighters and also more than a dozen civilians including journalists so this is something to watch closely right now because there are fears, i think on both sides of the border, that this could ramp up and lebanon is not in any position to sustain a war. it is in political crisis. it has not had a president in more than a year. it has an acting prime minister and it is still reeling from a devastating economic crisis which the world bank has described as one of the worst in the world since the 19th century where last year you had 30% unemployment and from 2019 to 2021 gdp per capita shrunk some 36%. so anecdotally while many lebanese have a lot of sympathy for gazan civilians and the tremendous death toll in gaza as a result of israel's offensive there, i think there's very little appetite for a full-fledged war and even this low-level conflict that we're seeing along the border here is having an impact on lebanon's economy. this is a time when tourists normally come in ahead of the christmas holidays and we're not seeing that right now because of the fear. if anything, people are leaving lebanon because they're afraid this could escalate further. fareed? >> fascinating summary, ivan. thank you so much. stay safe. next on "gps" i will talk to a retired idf colonel about israel's main war in gaza. what is its strategy there? we'll find out. french president emanuel macron said yesterday that israeli leaders need to more precisely define their goal because the total destruction of hamas would mean the war will last ten years. vice president kamala harris said israel must do more to protect innocent civilians. as israel resumes its offensive in gaza what is its strategy and will it heed america's call to safeguard civilian life? a retired colonel in the idf and director of the international institute for counter terrorism. welcome. so if you were in response to president macron to define israel's strategy, how would you describe it? >> destroying hamas is very challenging, as he said, but what the israeli strategy is we're focusing on their military terror capabilities. that's actually something you can break down in a very specific way. you're going after 16 years of building positions, accumulating weapons, building the subterranean arena and training these different thousands of thorrists and that's what israel is doing with the military capability. it goes hand in hand with the diplomacy because of the issue of the hostages. you want to try to get to the hostages. i'll remind that that's part of the picture, but it's most definitely focusing on destroying military capabilities and thinking about that next day of what will come instead. >> so if it is focused on destroying those specific military capability, presumably these are tunnels, these are passageways and weapons caches. shouldn't there be a greater emphasis on sending in idf special forces rather than what appears to be a more carpet bombing approach? in other words, i realize that, of course, puts idf forces in harm's way, but isn't that a more precise and tactical way? this is something the u.s. discovered in iraq that you have to send special forces in rather than bombing the entire neighborhood to smithereens. >> you can say in that sense that what we were doing in the three weeks during ground offenses is what you're talking about, but it isn't only special forces. it's a combination of different kind of infantry forces because you need to go in. it's urban area and very densely populated and the first thing they did before we went into the ground operation at all was we were telling civilians, please, move, go to the areas that we defined to save your lives. you are going into urban areas that are still unhappily filleded with civilians and when i say systematically and slowly, you're going in to make sure, you you never target civilians and you do get to the different positions that are built into apartment mldings and into mosques, into schools and kindergartens. so you need the forces on the ground to do that. you need a large portion of forces to be able to detect the shafts that go into the subterranean arena. you have to have forces on the ground and it's a special nature of special forces the engineering corps that can go up and blow up those tunnels and all of this, fareed when we know that there's the k458 efrmg that the hostages themselves most likely held inside the tunnels and you have to do everything systematically and slowly. i know it seems like we're doing it in the air and it's very much on the ground. we were on the ground this week of the pause that was done to get out our hostages as much as possible, but it's taking it systematically and slowly, save the civilian lives. we need to do so not just for us. it's the right thing to do because at the end of the day the civilians in the gaza strip deserve a much better future than one where hamas rules. >> the reason i think many people think it's been a war mainly from the air is by the idf's own numbers. the number of bombs it has dropped in northern gaza far exceeds in 45 or 50, far exceeds what the u.s. dropped in afghanistan over four or five years. so when you look at southern gaza. i'm wondering you've already moved a million people into that area so now it's twice as densely populate as it was. how will you manage this balance? is there a different, more precise, more targeted approach or is it going to be a replay of what we saw over the last 45 days? >>. >> the biggest challenge in that sense is the way the terrorists themselves over 16 years embedded themselves and built themselves all of the different positions within the urban area, so when we look towards the south and you're absolutely right. it's a way larger amount of people as we told the people to go from the north to the south and we have been doing that again now, fareed. we've been telling people in the area of khan yunis where to go to save their lives. it doesn't make it easy. doesn't make it pretty. how does it change in that sense? you do it carefully with as much of the information that you have. the information is not from the air, per se. you need to go in and start it. i don't think in that sense that the biggest challenge for me as an israeli is that i can't, as an israeli, leave the hamas there in any way. what they've been there over 16 years is something that threatens our existence and the fact that if this type of terror organization can do so embedded in the population, this is a threat for the entire middle east. so we will go in. we will try to be as exact as possible, and i say it not just for myself. for my kids who are the ones that need to do that targeting and we're talking about israeli soldiers who have to make these skiings. you never target civilians and it was urban warfare, and that's what there is. slow, systematic, that gives us a much better sense of what is going on. next on "gps," we will bring you a vivid picture of the toll that the war is taking on gaza civilians. i'll thaalk to a surgeon who ju returned from 43 days in the operating rooms in the gaza strip. first time i connected with kim, she told me that her husband had passed. and that he took care of all of the internet connected devices in the home. i told her, “i'm here to take care of you.” connecting with kim... made me reconnect with my mom. it's very important to keep loved ones close. we know that creating memories with loved ones brings so much joy to your life. a family trip to the team usa training facility. i don't know how to thank you. i'm here to thank you. israel has issued new evacuation orders for southern gaza similar to the ones it gave in october before the ground invasion of northern gaza. this has prompted fears that a new, brutal campaign may be imminent in the south. joining me now is a man who has seen for himself the devastating effects of the war in gaza on civilians. dr. carson abdusita is a reconstructive surgeon who returned from 43 days in the gaza strip operating in the al shifa hospitals and he's given evidence to scotland yard of what he alleges are war crimes. welcome. you have treated wounded civilians in the wars in iraq, in yemen, in syria and in the war in gaza. i think everyone since the second intifada. i am wondering how what you're seeing now compares to what you have seen in the past? >> the audio is really low, but if i understand your question about the two experiences, the difference between -- i've never, ever experienced something of this magnitude. the idea that you would be operating for 43 days and 50% of the people you operate on are children, the sheer number, the magnitude and the killing was unlike nothing i've ever seen before. >> what about the facilities? were they getting better? were you having trouble getting medical supplies or are things getting worse? >> every day felt less than the day before. we were running out of -- initially running out of antiseptic solutions and specialist dressings. by the end we'd run out of morphine and ketamine that we use to anesthetize patients that needed dressing changes and i was having to do really painful dressing changes and deep wound cleaning with nothing but ketamine as the ketamine ran out. literally at 5:00 in the morninging that day we finally ran out of the anesthetic medication and were no longer able to treat any of the patients in the o.r. >> do you worry with these operations in gaza that there could be a total collapse of the healthcare of the hospital system itself? >> the thing about southern gaza is it only had between a third and a quarter of all of the beds in the gaza strip and with the doubling of its population, now the sheer number of wounded -- i mean, when i moved to the south in the last two days i felt completely helpless. there was no way of getting in patients to the operating rooms and there was such a pressure the operating rooms and there were so few operating rooms that that's why i decided to leave gaza because i felt as a surgeon i had become irrelevant and the system had collapsed so much any so now it really is just the end of -- of anybody who gets wounded and the wounded are stacking up in the hospital because as things stand that system's incapable of dealing with the injured. >> doctor, i will say that you know that you were in al shifa hospital. you were operating there. you know that the israeli government says that this was a key headquarters for hamas or a control center for hamas. did you see anything there? do you have any comment on that israeli allegation? >> first of all, that does not -- so the whole narrative about al shifa, that -- discounts from the fact that the whole system was attacked and dismantled. before they got to shifa, they dismantled four feepediatric hospitals. [ indiscernible ] so saying that the health system was being dismantled. when i was at al shifa i hadn't come across any armed presence. i moved freely as i tried to find the kind of equipment and the dressings and would go along the hospital from other departments and uprooted and if i saw an area that looked out of bounds and i've been down to the radiology department to get radiologists to comment on some ct scans of my patients. still, i could not see anything. actually at some stage i came to the realization that we weren't getting any -- i came to the realization that most likely there was a parallel military medical system because even in the wounded that we were getting were all civilian and we weren't getting any -- [ indiscernible ] >> so it became obvious to me that there was a parallel system that existed, but in shifa hospital even the policemen who were trying to maintain crowd control in front of the emergency department so that the relatives would not completely overrun the emergency department -- [ indiscernible ] >> thank you so much, doctor. obviously, a pleasure to hear from you even though it was a very grim message. next on "gps," how do israelis and palestinians feel about each other? their own governments, about hamas and about prospects for we have some fascinating answers from important surveys when we come back. ack. so how do the palestinians feel about hamas, about israel, about the prospects for peace? my next guest has the answers to some of the biggest questions about the war. amani jamal is dean of the princeton school of public and international affairs and she's the founder and principal investigator of the arab barometer, a polling organization. her most recent survey of gas anns completed on the eve of the hamas attacks provideses a surprising snapshot of a people deeply disillusioned with their leaders. dean jamal is here to unpack that survey and public opinion across the middle east. >> amani jamal, thank you for coming on. >> a pleasure for having me. >> let me ask you a question i often get asked. what does it mean that the palestinian elected hamas. how much weight should you put on that statement? >> well, that's a really good question, fareed. when you think about today, what's going on today, how much weight should we put on the elections in 2006, first of all, i want to call the attention of everyone to 50% of the public ever gaza who weren't even born in 2006. >> so they weren't even born. >> when you dice seekssect 2006 election, it was never that they had this landslide victory and we also know from 2006 a lot of that vote was based on combatting corruption in the rate of the palestinian authority. hamas succeeded because it had a platform of holding the palestinian authority accountable for their corruption, levels of corruption and their excesses in term of the way they were governing. >> so when we look at it today, what do we know from polling data about the level of support palestinians had for hamas before the attacks? >> what we know is in the three to four weeks before october 7th, two-thirds of palestinians had no trust or little trust in the hamas governing regime of gaza. on the west bank, those low levels of trusts are even lower. >> for the palestinians on the west bank. across the west bank and gaza, was there very little support, if you may or very little trust in the hamas-led govern am. only about a third of gazans said they trusted that government. more importantly, 72% of palestinians in gaza said they felt that there was widespread corruption in the ranks of the hamas-led government. >> so what do we know -- i mean, i'm asking you to speculate now, about the sort of rally around the flag effect. now that gaza has faced this massive bombardment from israel, is it possible that they are rallying around the hamas flag? >> so when we look historically at our data, what we know, fareed, is when you have these cycles of violence it plays brilliantly in the hands of hamas. hamas ends up benefitting with more people supporting its government because it's seen as trying to, quote, unquote, protect the palestinian people, resist the israeli sort of assaults on to gaza and what not. so this has traditionally benefited hamas. having said that, this time wooe seeing heavy deaf station we haven't seen in other cycles. how they might bode well or not with hamas, but if we take a more dynamic and multi-faceted prospective on what's going on, i think support for hamas is also going to be linked to what happens with support to the palestinian authority on the west bank. so if the palestinian authority continues to be seen as delegitimate or lacking credibility and seen as a governing authority that is also corruption and lacks popularity and has been unable to move the peace process forward, then this might mean that citizens will still sort of rally around hamas because there isn't an obvious governing authority to rally around. >> you do polling in the whole region. another question that i think a lot of people might have is the abraham accords where israel makes peace with some of the gulf arabs and morocco, was premised on the idea that the arab street says it cares about the palestinian issue, but they really don't, and these governments could make a deal with israel without worrying too much that they would be offending their street and their population. what does your polling tell you? >> so our polling tells us that this has never been substantiated across time. consistently throughout our polling the issue of palestine resonates well. it's an extremely important high-priority issue across the arab world. i do believe among the leaderships and among the governments there was a desire to move on beyond palestinian issues and some believing that the palestinian was holing them up and as you know, regional dean amicks have shifted and israel along with arab countries view iran as a threat and people would have alliances with israel to sort of protect against the iranian access and those leaders moving past the palestinian issue to form those alliances. >> it's a state issue. it's not the perspective of society. >> no, this is a state issue, fareed and not the prospective of society. >> in a post -- after this war, whenever that is, what do you think we will see in terms of palestinian public opinion in gaza, particularly? >> i really do believe, fareed, it will depend on what happens now. violence breeds violence. if violence were going to solve this conflict it would have been solved by now. so my worry is that this violence is going to set a whole new generation in the future to sort of believe in violence as a discourse. if we are able to emerge from this crisis where -- where -- where there's some sort of agreement that, let's say emerges weekend or agree to demilitarized and status quo and his to play a meaningful and impactful role, and if the discourse is we've this destruction with gaza, and hamas might remain governable to govern the citizens gaza with no hope for peace, statehood or economic future i think we will see the same, fareed. >> pleasure to have you on. >> pleasure is mine. thank you so much. next on "gps," we'll unpack the legacy of henry kissinger with the statesman's official biographer. few public figures in the united states have been so lauded and so loathed as henry kissinger. joining me to discuss his complex legacy is the renowned historian niall ferguson. he's a senior fellow at he's a senior fellow at stanford university. he spent two decades researching the stateman's life and his biography spanned a thousand pages an that is just volume one. welcome, niall. let me ask you, you've seen social media and some of the articles, and there is an enormous amount of animosity and hostility surrounding kissinger. and often very personal, personally calling him a war criminal. i wanted to ask you, what is your reaction to that kind of charge? >> well, my reaction to much of it is revulsion, frankly. bonham is a good rule but it hasn't held back the haters. henry kissinger never expected to win a popularity contest on twitter. indeed, from his earliest times he understood to pursue a successful foreign policy, a statesman was almost bound to be unpopular. so i don't think it would surprise him. to me as an historian, it's frustrating because it misses some fundamental and important points about the nature of foreign policy, for example, that most choices are between evils and you just have to try to choose the lesser evil >> so give me, let's talk specifics. take the bombing of cambodia. a secret bombing and tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands killed and the critics were charged all of this terrible tragedy for nothing because it was sort of meant to frighten the north vietnamese into concessions which they never really made. >> well, a couple points about the cambodia controversy. the first is, the most influential book on that sub scombrekt is william shorecross' "sideshow." he concedes it exaggerates significantly the death toll to cambodian civilians. that's a little bit of a problem for the twitter team. but the second point is to remember what the objective was, not just of bombing cambodia, but later sending u.s. troops into cambodia, which in fact caused even more controversy. the north vietnamese were the ones that violated the neutrality of cambodia, and they were using it to funnel troops and weapons into their war against south vietnam. so there were strong military arguments for attacking the north vietnamese bases in certain parts of cambodia that were crucial to their war effort. this didn't really particularly emanate from kissinger, it came from the department of defense and it came from the u.s. military in vietnam. and richard nixon was president, not henry kissinger, when these decisions were taken. so the second point i would make, is most of the critics don't have the faintest understanding of the conflict in indo china and in particular of the malignant role that north vietnam played in violating neutrality of cambodia and also of laos. >> what about bangladesh? this is the one i have the most problem with. kissinger wholeheartedly backed pakistan and hundreds of thousands were killed. and again, unsuccessful, because east pakistan becomes bangladesh. the attempt by west pakistan to continue to control it didn't work. and yet, you know, you have this moral abomination on your hands. what do you make of this? >> well, gary bass has an excellent book on this which is highly critical, channeling the arguments of state department personnel who felt strongly engaged in the issue. but kissinger's points all along there is a hierarchy of priorities. what were the strategic priorities of the nixon administration? the first was to get out of vietnam. the second was to improve relations with the soviet union to avoid a kind of third world war, which had come close in 1962. and thirdly, to open to china and that opening to china is generally regarded as henry kissinger's most brilliant strategic move. well, there was no easy way of getting communications to beijing, particularly at the height of the cultural revolution. and it turns out that the key channel that the chinese were prepared to trust -- they tried many -- but that was the one that the chinese trusted was pakistan. there is another dimension to which -- i don't think that was crucial in kissinger's mind. you had to sacrifice lesser pieces on the board in pursuit of ultimate victory in the chess game. and that is how he thought about diplomacy, as an elaborate game of chess. there were really two big players, the united states and soviet union, and a country like bangladesh was a relatively small pawn. this is very hard for the critics to accept, because most of them are never sat in the situation room, the most difficult decision most critics of henry kissinger has taken is a tenure decision at a history department. when you are making decisions at the highest level of foreign policy, there has to be a hierarchy of priority. that is just as true today as it was back in the 1970s. the odd thing is that there is a double standard, for some reason, one could guess about why. henry kissinger has been subjected for 50 years to a much tougher standard of moral judgment than other national security advisers and secretaries of state, and this is a puzzling phenomenon because it is not as if he's the only secretary of state or national security adviser who ever had to turn a blind eye. >> niall, we're flat out of time. we will have you on again, as we always do. thank you for that. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. first time i connected with kim, she told me that her husband had passed. and that he took care of all of the internet connected devices in the home. i told her, “i'm here to take care of you.” connecting with kim... made me reconnect with my mom. it's very important to keep loved ones close. we know that creating memories with loved ones brings so much joy to your life. a family trip to the team usa training facility. i don't know how to thank you. i'm here to thank you.