 The Israel-Amas war draws few in Middle East affecting the world at lag and countdown to emo Kogi and Bayersa Gubai elections. I am Bola Oba and this is plus politics. On October 7 militants from Gaza, known as the Amas group invaded Israel, thousands of rockets towards the towns killing more than 1,400 people including civilians and soldiers and also taking 199 hostages. In response to the attack, Israel has declared war and launched operation sort of iron, striking what it says are Amas and Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza. It has also blocked supply lines of basic necessities. So the Gaza population including fuel and water. On October 17, hundreds of people were fed dead. After an explosion at the hospital in the Gaza Strip, were people sort of huge. The Gaza Earth Ministry, which is run by Amas, put the toll at forest of one people killed and hundreds more injured. Amas, Palestinian officials and several Arab leaders have accused Israel of eating the hospital and Israel on the other hand as the night days saying the preliminary evidence pointed to a local militant group. However, several world leaders have pledged their support to Israel and are pushing to get aid flowing into the Gaza Strip. Joining me to discuss this and how the world at large is being affected by the war is Ambrose Igbukwe Chairman Guild of Public Affairs Analyst of Nigeria and Auguste Branch. Ambrose, good to have you, guesting on plus politics virtually. Thank you for having me on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, to be honest with you, Ambrose, the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East is somewhat disturbing. Disturbing enough that a lingering problem, almost 75 years in the making now, locally is, as it does occasionally, spreading far beyond the borders of Israel to the Middle East. And indeed, one may reasonably say that apart from the incoherence, the seeming incoherence of the monetary and fiscal authorities in Nigeria, it may be one of the factors also leading now to four queues on the streets of Lagos. How would you want to respond to that? It's something that I think the global community, including the United Nations, has a position about for basically 75 years now. When the state of Israel was created in 1948 after the fallout of the Second World War, one would have expected that whatever hitting problems that it had then would have been over after 75 years. But no, we had war around that area with the Arab neighbors in Israel, that immediately after that of the Israeli state, we had a very major war in 1967 where the Golan heart was captured by Israel. We had a second major war called the Yom Kippu War in 1973 and after that there were the pockets of fetishies between 1973 and now in 60 years. But the war kept mounting it. We keep talking about it in conferences. United Nations keep talking about it as a greater council meeting. The war kept on going around. It may go rather about the matter. But there have been no, you know, stop hitting. We had a cabbe that caught. We had the impact of two-step solution. We have had all kinds of prescriptions to the effect of the Middle War crisis yet it persisted. So that comes to say something clearly that the war does not want to solve the problem in the Middle East. Let me tell you what happened. Between the 1990s, between the time of Lenin, Stalin and the Red War got communism. We had the USSR. If the world was able to witness the collapse of the Soviet Union and each of the states that persisted the Soviet Union actually disintegrated with the marketed boundary line and sovereignty and territorial sovereignty established, I don't know why just 26 Israel-Appalachian boundaries are not defined as two-step solution provided. Shaykh of Obakia divided into 13 countries. And so many of them, you know, someone is there, a Soviet project. So I want to mention that the war in the Middle East between Israel-Appalachian, if the world is using it as a mountain is, there's no serious issues. Would you not think that it is actually the recurrence of the two parties, of the two local parties that may be the problem far more than the enthusiasm of the world to help them solve it? Because if we really look at it from 1948 when the United Nations initially came up with the idea of two-step solution and the Arabs rejected it until a rehash of the two-step solution came into being about one and a half to two decades ago that the Israelis are now putting on it, look at the situation thus far in the last 10 years of the prime ministers in and out rule, you have always made sure that everything that would enhance the materialization of the manifestation of the two-step solution you had always played against it in fact using it to enhance the relevance of a mass at the expense of the PA, Palestinian Authority. So I would want to think that is more of the more of the stubbornness, the stubbornness and the recursion of the two parties, Israelis and Palestinians that has brought us to this no win or gain situation, how would you respond to that? Well you know what I can say is this, there are instances where the world did not wait for two parties to agree before the step in, remember we have had territorial wars over the last 75 years, we have had even bigger issues of apartheid in South Africa, we have had boundary issues, remember in 2001 every fair and Ethiopia were at each one of us too and there was a bad international if it came and agreed on a two-step solution, every fair when they are away, you remember also that just recently Sudan was making Turkey internationally promoting, look at the intensity at which the West are looking at the issues of Ukraine and Russia, why is Russia being belified? Because Russia is based in another country with international boundaries, at this stage we are, the world as United Nations should not wait for Palestine and Israel. First of all we have a, Hamas is a non-state terrorist organization, are you telling me that the world does not have what it takes to root out Hamas the way I see it and I tell you that was root out so something was deficient somewhere why Hamas does not support a non-state terrorist organization is allowed to run a big swath of the country Hamas, that is a perfect place to actually interject, you will agree, you will agree with me that if the two parties were to be honest initially it was the Palestinians that were ejecting the two-state solution because under President Clinton there were fantastic opportunities for the PLO to work with the arrangement of the two-state solution but Arafat was reluctant to engage with it, now in the last ten to about 14 years especially since Benjamin Netanyahu has become the prime minister in and out of Israel, he has deliberately played to a strategy that has made apart from the corruption of the PLO and apart from the inadequacies, the seeming senility of the middle of the PLO he has actually played a hand that enhances the relevance of Hamas because of a strategy to make PLO irrelevant until this attack that kind of poo-poo is a strategy of playing divide and rule between Hamas and the PLO so I am sitting there now thinking if there is going to be a solution in the Middle East especially in Israel between Israel and the Palestinians the two parties and the extremes of the two parties Hamas being the extreme of the Palestinians and Benjamin Netanyahu and his ultra-rightist coalition partners must be sober enough to know that this situation cannot last most of the world may need to press on them but if so much as Hamas can be rightly referred to as a criminal terrorist organization we must also accept the fact that even in Israel some politicians in Israel play to the ultra-rightist wing fundamentalist wing of Judaism and Zionism that will accord the situation there to be peacefully solved I wouldn't respond to that we know the power play we know that if there is peace in the Middle East today we know that if there is peace between the Palestinians and Israel today some people will have to be fix Hamas will have to be fix so Hamas and his backers like Iran will always want to be escalation of crisis between Israel and the Palestinians now the price of my position has always been this when will the world start to tolerate the criminality because criminality as a force even in international waters pirates have been destimated there was a time the pirates were in it disturbing the movement of Israel in some certain fields there was a collaboration of international community and most of those pirates were destimated when many never happened United States and the world did not wait for the terrorists to agree to have a solution they went in a destimated death now the Middle East crisis keeping this cost as it is now done by terrorist organizations my question now why has the world got joint Israel is promoting Hamas that is causing a problem do you know how many people this crisis have killed Ambrose the Palestinian government ruled by Abbas said they don't have a hand in this so it's not the Palestinian people that is fighting this war it's a terrorist organization called Hamas why has the world not taken Hamas Ambrose and that is the double standard I see here which I will talk about this war Ambrose I think it may be imperative at this juncture to let you also come to the realization that Hamas came into relevance as a result of a democratic choice of the Gazans because Hamas may be an extremist organization so much so as you have extremist organizations within the Israeli polity but Hamas came into control of Gaza as a result of the democratic choice of Gazans in an election am I right about that so we must be very careful when we are referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization I've got no problem with it to be honest with you with some of the things they've done especially the 7th of October attack on Israel but having said that they are equally parties political parties within the Israeli polity that is almost as worse in some of the machinations against the solutions that the world is trying to provide that direction as Hamas so but we need to quickly look at the implications of this in the world my brother the price of truth has gone up because like I said earlier because of the cementing coherence of monetary and fiscal policy in Nigeria the Naira is depreciating and because the price of petroleum products PMS, AGO and all the oaths are now deregulated inevitably prices will go up and because the government is still living in some form of delusion pretending that it's not paying subsidy a lot of potential importers as a result of the conflicting realities of the depreciating Naira and the fact that the international price of food is going up and not bringing in crude and now we are having queues again in Lagos, in Abuja I wouldn't know what is happening in Enugu where you are I would you respond to this as a backlash or one of the global disruptions that the unfortunate situation in Israel is causing there was a video I saw two years ago that was showing the first country in Nigeria I think in 1973 long queues now Nigeria worked hard to come out of that by building refineries three gigantic refineries one in Wari and one in Kagina to service the country and we are having sufficient oil for like 20 years also we refine our crude for local consumption we would export the refineries to neighboring African countries all of the sudden we invite the structure adjustment program and all our industries started collapsing even our refining capacity collapsed and all of a sudden we started exporting crude oil and importing refineries that is the most much or let me use the language man the language in your national TV that is the matter it is not any modern language it is also a downstream language it is the matter of economics because it is good economics to export your own crude oil that you produce go to another country import foreign currency and then use foreign currency again to import it you pay to export you pay foreign currency to refine you pay foreign currency again to import and because the government of the day found out that the magnitude of supply they do and there was inflation in the cost of consuming such refined products in Nigeria they introduced subsidies that government recognized that it has failed in its possibility to refine crude oil in Nigeria we pay for the difference that is how subsidy came now what happened to the subsidy whether it was a scam or it was not a scam the government was supposed to work hard to sanitize the subsidy system since there was no refinery working in the country but they didn't do it the government knows those who are involved in the subsidy because it is their threat or their threat to go outside the cabaret they now transfer the soft print to the Nigerian market because how do you explain that the government came in without no clear economic roadmap no strategy to remove fresh subsidy the best way to remove fresh subsidy is to find out what is happening to the petrol and industry why are people not setting up whether or not it is finally there must be a problem the government was supposed to remove that problem and allow modular refineries to run in the country this is like an 18-months gestation period of 3 years so that we can have the performance of modular refineries and then our products are refined locally that will automatically bring down the cost that will save us forex of exporting crude or refining of crude in the foreign land and of bringing it back it is so huge forex and the government did not do that government just announced subsidy is done now why we are talking about the extent of hardship of that the people who used to import the refineries the procession of the exchange rate they get from the CBN to cancel it and then everybody should go to the manor to get to the manor rate Ambrose I really enjoyed this but we must go now the tyranny of time is really eating out I would have loved to engage you further some very important and very interesting points you were making but we really have to go Ambrose I really want to thank you for guesting on the show thank you this is where we go for a short break and the next segment it's going to be about the off-cycle entrepreneurial elections in Emo, Bayelsa and Kogi it's going to be interesting thank you