 Hello and welcome to NewsClicks International Roundup. Today we'll be discussing the state of the global leadership while facing the COVID-19 pandemic as well as political developments in Israel. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Prakash. Prabir, thank you for joining us. So first of all, let's talk about the global leadership above and COVID-19. So on Thursday, the G20 leaders met by virtually, of course, and there was a lot of speculation regarding whether there would be a concerted action plan. Almost all the G20 countries are severely affected by the pandemic. But at the end, the statement was what is called anodine very regular. There was no serious, there was no specific initiative and even the announcement of $5 trillion seems more a reflection of domestic spending rather than any concerted international effort. So has the G20 once again failed to sort of step up to the occasion? The G20 today lacks a coherent leadership and a coherent vision. In any case, how to act on international issues. We have seen the division of the world earlier in terms of the global where you had, you know, the socialist bloc and you had a bloc around NATO, which was basically declaring that that the two systems cannot cohabit, cohabit co-exist. Except for the period when they decided, okay, we could still work together. Okay, so you had disarmament, you had some moves from that direction. Post 90s, it was a global hegemony of one superpower and they declared victory and decided they could now remove the bloc in their image or whatever image they wanted. But that had been passed its prime. We haven't seen a coherent global order emerge. We have a now a breakdown of the trade regime. The financial system has been at loggerheads because the United States does not want to relinquish. All the Western, other Western powers do not want to relinquish the control, the overriding control they have with the global financial system, including China and the World Bank. So all of this is the precursor of why you see a dysfunctional response when the G20 and the United States having effectively sabotaged the United Nations as well, as well as the UN Security Council, which they said that they don't accept its legal authority while they want others to accept it. So we have a strange situation where we have a superpower which thinks it has global hegemony, but it really does not. And I think the pandemic has put this crisis much more sharply that the U.S. called the understanding of the world order in which to dictate to various countries that at least the virus doesn't seem to accept that. So we have the need for a global response but we have no mechanism for a global response and the G20 hasn't done therefore anything either. Partly because if you want any of these things to work, you have to have a pre-prepared action plan which the leaders can then endorse. No such work has happened. And the only thing that has happened is endorsement of WHO in some sense, but as you know, WHO also does not have the financial base today. They are in fact dependent a lot on private lodges of organizations like Bill and Melinda Gates and that also is not here for public health but more towards addressing what I call the ill health regime. The people who are sick, how do you handle that? But that's not really public health and that came out largely in a very sharp way in the pandemic when you saw that the vaccine program needed external help. It could not be done by WHO. It could not be done by nations, countries depending on private sector. Then you have this global health initiative which came essentially from pooling money from various organizations and some governments into vaccine initiatives and I think the pandemic has shown that the major thrust now should be on global efforts to bring out quickly a pro-plastic, something which can be used, not vaccine, vaccine of course is done than pro-plastic, some medicine which will work in the short run, what has been called repurposing drugs, the existing drugs and then of course the vaccine. This is the global health system but it also needs to be backed up by ventilators, by basically life-saving equipment and how do you have a global supply chain doing that? What has been called personal protective gear? If you don't protect your hospital staff, how do you face the first wave, the second wave of the infections which are likely to come? Because that's your frontline of defense and those are the kind of things at least they could have taken a far more integrated approach but I don't see anything really that spells any of it out so it's still what I would call beggar-dye-dame policy. Each country is looking for itself without any global solidarity or global effort. In fact, President Xi of China had suggested that the G20 health ministers meet and have some sort of a joint strategy to address this issue but nothing seems to have come and the US seems to, even now, despite having the highest number of cases in the world, be focused on calling it a Chinese virus and proceeding in that direction. Even its allies are hesitant to endorse because the previous day we saw the G7 foreign ministers, the allies of the US refused to endorse a statement which said it's a Wuhan virus. So despite the fact that China is probably in a position to really help, it doesn't look like especially the US wants to actually promote that sort of cooperation. I think that's the challenge that the US now faces. It does not have the global legendary. On the question of the COVID-19, it's not only not in a position to help but it requires other people to give it equipment, fly swaps from policies, Italy and so on. Now given that China is in a position to help, while the US is not, they are on a difficult wicket, how to prevent that from happening and that's possibly one of the reasons to flag continuously the Chinese virus and Wuhan virus, continue the vilification campaign without addressing today that if you want kits, you want ventilators, you want masks, but China is at least in a position to do it and let's not forget a huge amount of what I call APIs, the bunked drugs as we used to call them, they come from China today and every country in the world is going to need it. So supply chains, how do you build global supply chains is the key issue. And as you know, the United States is not only not accepting any of that, that if you work it out globally, but it believes that it has the financial and other cloud to get things for itself. But as you can see, even different states in the US don't have to deal with President Trump on that. So the US willingness to work internationally comes from its basic understanding that private sector will solve all the problems and markets will, but the biggest failures come when you have a public policy which demands really public interventions and not just masks. And I think the epidemics and pandemics are really that. And moving on to the other, another major development or even maybe as the Israelis would like to call it the fall, another fallout of COVID-19, we see that the political system there is completely changed over the past few days. Benny Gantz in Benjamin Netanyahu over the past couple of years have been portrayed as these arch rivals, you know, who are two poles of the polity, so to speak. And after three rounds of elections, we see that suddenly Gantz is dismantled, his blue and white alliance and now joined hands with Netanyahu, who was being portrayed as his arch rival to now. And this basically means that Netanyahu is back in power for at least two, three years. And even two weeks ago, there was a speculation that he was going to be out. Gantz would be the prime minister supported by the Arab list. So how do you see this? Is it as sudden a U-turn as people are portraying it or was it inevitable? Well, the point that is there is that Gantz was hoping that after three rounds, the pressure of having the Arab list supported government would force the Likud to really rethink its leadership and change its leadership. And therefore that was what the last three rounds really was about. That Gantz's pressure that if Likud doesn't go with Netanyahu, then there could be an alliance, but not with Netanyahu. I think Netanyahu really forced all that by getting what people is calling a COVID in school, that he effectively sees power under emergency measures. They call it that this COVID-19 requires emergency and therefore now everything is stopped, everything is closed and I have the power. He cannot afford to be even five days without being the prime minister because if he is, then the constitutional protection that he cannot be taken to court or indicted, then that falls apart. So I think his interest was how does he prevent that? And he has sent the COVID-19 emergency coup as a sledgehammer against Gantz. Gantz has really submitted, but let me clear, both sections do not want the Arab list to be supporting the prime minister. So these are all maneuvers which Gantz was going to put pressure on Likud and Netanyahu. As I said, Likud's interest in Netanyahu's interest is not identical in this case because Netanyahu needs to be the prime minister. Likud can have other prime ministers too, but I think in this particular context Netanyahu has seen that he then remains at the helm so he cannot be indicted. So he's got time for himself another two to three years and as you know in three years a lot can change. Anyway, Gantz's coalition is disintegrating and he will not be regarded credible in the future. The underlying problem is the Arab list, basically what we call the citizens of the of historical Palestine would never be allowed into the government is basically the consensus among the Zionist population. And let's face it, the Zionist population and I'm not calling it the Jewish population. The Zionist population who wants essentially a state in which the Palestinians should, the original Palestinian inhabitants should not have any rights. This is the one which still is the majority, unfortunately, among the Jewish population and that is increasingly going to make it very difficult to have or reverse the process of this kind of state formation, which is essentially a Zionist state which excludes the Palestinian inhabitants from the political structure. Thank you so much for being with us.