Last month marked the one year anniversary of the Hamas attacks that killed civilians in Israel and saw more people taken hostage.

The ensuing conflict has widened across the region, with the Palestinian death toll continuing to climb past 40,000 with no evi of an immediate ceasefire.

Here with us now, Nathan Stock, nonresident s at the Middle East Institute.

He's an expert on the Middle Eas lived in both the Gaza Strip and Welcome back to the show.

Why hasnt World War III erupted in the region?

What's what's holding it back?

Well, it's good that we haven't seen World War I but we are seeing an expanding regional conflict.

We have seen Israel invade Leban in the last few weeks after a year of cross-border shelling between Israel and Leba We've also now seen repeated occ of direct strikes between Israel which was a line that hadn't bee you know, in decades until very and is quite concerning.

So I wouldn't, I wouldn't understate the seriousness of the regional escalation.

I do think that Iran has an interest in containi I don't think they want a wider war with Israel.

I don't think they can afford it The U.S. also certainly has an i in trying to contain this, but it's already escalated well beyo the Biden administration wanted.

I'm wondering here, let's talk about the terrible, terrible dea Can you put it into some context in modern history at all?

The civilian death toll in Gaza unlike anything we've seen essen in 21st century warfare.

Right?

I mean, at a minimum, in a year of fighting in this tiny territo there are 16,000 confirmed dead women and children.

That's not all of the civilians, just women and children.

For context, in 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, the and our allies killed approximat 12,400 civilians in 20 years.

In one year, 16,000 women and children, which is a small portion of the total of civilian deaths.

Here's what I want to know.

Something I found out this week, apparently, November 13th is a b That's when Israel is supposed to tell the U.S. that it's stepping up its humanitarian efforts in Gaza at the risk of losing U.S. military aid and weaponry.

That's going to come during a tr the White House, that seems fraught with issues.

Well, we'll see.

I mean, it's it's impossible not to be critical of the way President Biden has handled all On the one hand, we have this ho humanitarian crisis and increasingly, a regional war And in the midst of all this, wh President Biden has pursued ceasefire talks, the U.S. is engaged in that diplomatic ef There seems to have been no mean effort to use what leverage the has over Israel as its predominant supplier of a I mean, according to a Brown University study, in this past y we gave $18 billion worth of military assistance to Israel.

Now, I think, you know, assistan to help Israel defend itself is But when Israel continues to use weapons in ways that are clearly civilians, that's a huge problem The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the State Department is investigating 500 different i where they have evidence that our weapons harmed civilian And yet we haven't stopped the flow of those weapon Do you depending on who is in the White once this election is all said a we have some track record of wha President Trump did in the Middl What about it?

Well, what about him if he wins?

But what about Kamala Harris if she wins?

I would be more concerned for the trajectory of this confl if President Trump comes back to the White House.

You know, he was recently descri in this Ezra Klein piece that got a lot of notoriety as being uninhibited.

Fair enough.

Donald Trump is an unconstrained kind of guy.

You could see that in the way he this conflict when he was in off The Abraham Accords?

That's not what I'm talking abou - Okay.

He gave in to Israel's most extreme demands at that tim President Trump recognize Israel and unilateral annexation of Jer and he recognized their annexati of Syrian territory in the Golan I want to make sure everybody un what that means, right?

The UN charter says you can't in other countries and take their s U.S. presidents from Lyndon John until Donald Trump, Democrat and Republican, we all said we don't recognize t You can't do that.

You can't invade territory and t Donald Trump legitimized that.

He gave in to their maximalist d at that time.

The maximalist demands of the cu government are far more radical.

This government is talking about reestablishing settlements in the Gaza Strip that it dismantled 20 years ago.

How about a quick prediction on how Kamala Harris might handl She won't do that.

I mean, she's much more likely to at least put some guardrails And if President Trump's there, you will see more suffering on b Wish we had more time, but we do Appreciate you coming over.

- Thank you so much, professor.

Great to be here.