WSJ What’s News - Breakthrough in Gaza Talks Looks Far Off, U.S. Officials Admit

Episode Date: September 20, 2024

A.M. Edition for Sept. 20. Behind closed doors, senior U.S. officials acknowledge they don’t expect Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement before the end of President Biden’s term. The WSJ’s Anat Peled says after months of talks, the mood among negotiating parties is gloomy. Plus, Nike’s CEO ends a five-year tenure marked by a series of missteps. And, the WSJ’s Laurence Norman explains how European countries are trying to balance a tougher approach on immigration with a need for workers to power their economies. Azhar Sukri hosts.  Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ecolab Water for Climate. Less water, more growth. Results will vary. Learn more at ecolab.com slash ewc. Ecolab Water for Climate. Transforming the way the world thinks about water. US officials privately acknowledged that an Israel Hamas ceasefire deal looks out of reach for Biden. Plus Nike's CEO is ending a rocky tenure and European countries scramble to address an anti-immigration backlash. There is a debate about what kind of immigration is helpful economically and what kind of immigration might be making Europe's economic problems worse.

It's Friday, September 20th. I'm Azhar Sukri for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. Here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. Last night, Journal reporter Michael Gordon was telling our colleagues on the PM edition of What's News that the Israeli military seems to be operating on the assumption that the Gaza ceasefire talks are a bust. Today we can exclusively report that behind closed doors, senior US officials are acknowledging they don't expect Hamas and Israel to reach an agreement during what remains of the Biden administration.

They say the two-day attack on Hezbollah with explosive pages and walkie-talkies, followed by intensifying Israeli airstrikes, has made the possibility of all-out war much more likely. That in turn could make diplomacy with Hamas more complicated. For more on this I'm joined by journal reporter Anat Pellad in Tel Aviv. Anat, we're nearly a year into this war between Hamas and Israel and it now looks like it's spreading. Many hostages remain under Hamas control and the death toll in Gaza continues to climb. What is the mood like where you are amongst officials in the Middle East? So the sentiment here is pessimistic from all sides. I have to say that the US was always the

one party in the negotiations that was saying publicly, we're close, it's going to happen, while others remained a bit less optimistic, Israeli officials, Arab mediators. It's important that they're admitting that hopes are dimming. But it's also important to note that efforts are continuing. It's just there's a lot of pessimism. A lot of obstacles remain in the talks. We have two hardline leaders, Sinwar and Netanyahu, at the helm. They're both putting up challenges. Sinwar wants a permanent ceasefire, something that the Israelis are not willing to accept.

And Netanyahu has put up new red lines that have frustrated his negotiating team and his security establishment, like keeping forces on the Philadelphia corridor, which is a corridor between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu also has a very right-wing coalition, including far-right. We have National Security Minister Itamar Benkver and Finance Minister Smotrich, who oppose a ceasefire. And they do not want what they call a bad deal. So tell us a little bit about that public pressure from within Israel on the Netanyahu

government. What is the mood like on the street where you are? This is really important. So we've never had a hostage crisis like this in Israeli history. About a hundred remain in Gaza, many of them dead. The families have become some of the main opposition to Netanyahu and they are very worried

that a deal is not coming through, that their loved ones don't have time. And all of what's happening now with Hezbollah in northern Israel is worrying them. They feel that their relatives are being abandoned and that they're opening a new front. Journal reporter Anat Pallad in Tel Aviv, thank you very much for your time. Thanks for having me. Nike CEO John Donahoe will retire next month, ending a nearly five-year tenure that's been marked by a series of missed steps. Donahoe took over in early 2020, as the pandemic was

shifting people's shopping habits. Wanting to change how the company sold shoes, he cut ties with long-time retail partners like Footlocker and Macy's in favour of selling direct to consumers. But that strategy backfired when many shoppers returned to physical stores. That's left Nike struggling to keep its market share as consumers buy more shoes from competitors like Adidas and New Balance. Elliot Hill, who retired as Nike's President of Consumer and Marketplace in 2020, will take over as CEO in mid-October. Nike shares jumped in off-hours trading. In other markets news today, FedEx shares are sliding in off-hours trading.

The company posted lower quarterly profit and revenue after the bell yesterday, owing to weaker-than-expected demand and cut its outlook for the year. The Bank of Japan has left interest rates unchanged after raising them in July. The decision was widely expected, however analysts and investors anticipate more rate increases in the coming months once markets become more stable. And China has kept its benchmark lending rates steady, shrugging off expectations for a cut

after the Fed's half-point rate reduction this week and signs that the world's second-largest economy is flirting with deflation. Economists still expect the People's Bank of China to cut rates this year. Coming up, European governments struggle to reconcile the need for workers to revive their sluggish economies with growing anti-immigration sentiment. That's after the break. I'm not going back to university to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students.

It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats. I'm there for zero dollar delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to five percent off smoothies and five percent Uber cash back on rides. Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students, a membership to save on Uber and Uber Eats. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Immigration is back at the top of Europe's political agenda, with near-record level inflows fuelling a surge in support for the far right. In response, governments are clamping down.

Those moves include deterrence to render countries less attractive, deals with non-EU countries, and efforts to speed the return of failed asylum seekers. But as journal editor Lawrence Norman reports, addressing migration concerns hasn't been easy or straightforward, and he joins me now to talk about this. Loris, immigration, it's been an ongoing political hot potato in Europe for many years now. So just explain to us what governments in this part of the world are doing about it and why now. After the coronavirus pandemic, the number of people seeking asylum in Europe has climbed

very, very sharply. The national governments across Europe have faced insurgents, often right-wing, sometimes left-wing, but anti-migrant parties that are doing very well in polls. In some cases, for example, the Netherlands, these parties have actually won power, and it's causing panic in mainstream parties. What we've seen in the last year or so is a number of national governments taking their own measures. And they have done all kinds of things from reducing benefits for asylum seekers to trying to find arrangements with non-European countries to hold asylum

seekers who tried to come and now most recently this week the German government has introduced border checks across all of its eight borders in one of the most dramatic move yet. Lawrence, these governments are trying to be tougher on migration, but yet at the same time, Europe is an ageing continent and it needs more workers to power its economies. So how are they balancing all of these priorities? Well, the short answer is it's pretty chaotic. So you have, for example, Italy, which is, which has taken a really strict approach to asylum seekers in recent years and has come up with an agreement with Albania which they hope will lead to asylum seekers that arrive in Italy going to Albania to have their claims processed. But at the same time, the Maloney government there has

welcomed hundreds of thousands of legal migrants to help boost the economy. Britain, which left the European Union, partly because of concerns about migration, has seen huge net migration figures, a record in 2022 since it left the EU because it needs cheap workers to carry out jobs in the National Health Service, other areas, the construction industry. So there is quite a lot of chaos and incoherence in the approach that governments are taking. Now there's also some disagreement about the economic merits of immigration in your report. Tell us more about that. There is a debate about whether low skilled migrants and asylum seekers, whether the effects that they can have on economic growth

is undercut by the fact that they often end up with higher jobless rates, which means that they themselves are weighing on the welfare state rather than helping to reduce the burden. So there is a debate about what kind of immigration is helpful economically and what kind of immigration might be making Europe's economic problems worse. So how are all these policies working out so far for European mainstream parties? It doesn't

look like they've managed to blunt the appeal of anti-immigrant parties so far from your reporting. Mainstream parties have had to show or are trying to show that they care about the problem and they're getting to grips with the problem. Doing so, however, is very difficult and you can take a whole host of short-term measures, even dramatic ones like introducing border checks on every single one of your EU borders. But many of these measures are not going to be successful over time. To give an example, Austria has had border checks in place since the migration crisis in the mid 2010s. It is currently the country with the highest per capita rate of asylum claims. So the political motive is there for national governments to do everything they can. The problem is resolving this issue and assuaging public concerns is very difficult.

And that was the Wall Street Journal's Lawrence Norman. Thank you very much indeed for your time. My pleasure. And finally, with the Fed kicking off rate cutting, the era of earning easy five percent returns on cash is slowly coming to an end. And as journal personal finance reporter Joe Pinsker reports, financial advisors say it's time to rethink where you stash your cash. The reality of investing is that the returns on cash are never really going to be the thing that's going to make you wealthy. So you really just want to make sure you just have as much cash

as you need. And the way that financial advisors typically think about that is having enough in case of an emergency to cover several months' expenses. And then also just any other expenses you know you have coming up in the next two or so years, like putting a down payment on the house or something. And for those, you might want to look at assets like bonds or CDs, because they're less risky than stocks, but they still generate higher returns than money that's sitting in a savings account, even a high yield one. For more on that conversation, check out the Your Money Briefing podcast. And that's sitting in a savings account, even a high yield one. For more on that conversation, check out the Your Money Briefing podcast.

And that's it for What's News for Friday morning. Today's show is produced by Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rourke. I'm Azhar Sukri for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, have a great weekend, and thanks for listening.