Line for the crisis. It is essential to deescalate the situation in gaza. The rocket attacks from terrorist organizations inside gaza on israeli cities and towns must end and a broader calm restored. Eliot the secretary also said any shortterm solution should lead to something more lasting. The goal must be a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of israelis and palestinians alike. Eliot but with Israeli Forces still amassing on the border netanyahu said they were ready to escalate the conflict if peace talks fail. If there is a possibility of achieving a longterm solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that. But if not im sure you understand that israel will have to take whatever action is necessary to defend its people. Eliot as always, israeli selfdefense has severe critics including a onetime regional party, turkey. Turkish Prime Minister morsi represents an islamist Political Party has condemned them saying israel is committing terrorist attacks. For more, im joined by p. J. Crowley, former assistant secretary of state for Public Affairs for president obama. Former special assistant for National Security affairs to president president clinton and a professor at George Washington university. Thank you for joining us, professor. Pleasure, eliot always. Eliot it seems so tantalizingly closer. A ceasefire was about to be announced. Youve been through the process before. Can you infer or suggest or understand what would be a Sticking Point at this late moment . Part of this is probably one or both of the parties havent got man they need out of current crisis. I strongly suspect it is probably on the hamas side where theyre looking for assurances that if there is a ceasefire, there will be some relaxation of the israeli blockade and obviously israel is in no position to grant such a wish as long as there are rockets that are continuing to rain down on the israeli population. That seems like such a fundamental issue. Do you think israel will agree there should be a ceasefire if it in any way relaxes the blockade. The blockade has been central to its approach to hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization internationally recognized as such. It would seem to me israel would be hesitant to reward hamas sending so many missiles with the relaxation because thats the old moral hazard from the financial crisis. You dont want to reward bad behavior. Do you think that will be the outcome . You can flip that around. It is what weve seen over the past week is the blockade has not worked. Probably a key piece of that is clearly that only has hamas been able to build some kind of indigenous rocket capability but also i strongly suspect in the mayhem following the arab spring, theres been a relaxation of egyptian willingness to interdict materials that are coming into gaza from a variety of sources perhaps iran perhaps libya. But so i think this is part of the challenge here. One is Hillary Clintons gotta figure out how to get the parties to a ceasefire. Reinforce the diplomacy thats already going on. Secondly both on the israeli side and the egyptian side, how to prevent this from reoccurring. We dont want to have to be facing the same kind of confrontation three months from now or six months from now. Eliot so many critical points you just made. One is the natural and seemingly organic recurrence of this. Almost as though this is the third. You raise a fascinating point. Do you think that egypt having after morsi took over, relaxed the borders with gaza is now perhaps regretting having done so because im not sure egypt gains and if morsi thought he could cut off the missiles to gaza wouldnt he want to do that because this is its hard to see how he wins out of this process. He doesnt potentially win out of this process. Obviously there is an affinity that morsi you know and the freedom of Justice Party you know, with an affiliation to Muslim Brotherhood and to hamas while they have sympathy for the palestinian plight in gaza, obviously a conflict at its border with israel. Ultimately it is bad for egypt and potentially threatens the International Assistance including the assistance from the United States that egypt will require to help its economy recover. Eliot that is the balancing act that Prime Minister morsi is trying to effect wait here. In essence for his economy to come back, he knows he needs the United States. He needs peace. A war would be devastating to what longterm he has to care about. Is that, in fact, the leverage that secretary of state clinton has with morsi in saying to him you have got to lean on hamas to stop this and somehow we will navigate through this in the coming months but it seems to me that morsi has made himself a central figure in this process. Well, sure. I suppose the difficulty for president morsi is hamas is the key actor in this equation but obviously there are other groups resident in gaza that perhaps even hamas does not completely control. So when you get to that aspect of assurances, Prime Minister netanyahu wants a period of calm before he signs a truce. Obviously gave that point it is very challenging. Eliot, the other aspect as your opening clip of Hillary Clinton underlined is the third element of this is bringing president the Palestinian Authority out of the shadows. Hes been invisible during this conflict. And he stands to be potentially the greatest loser in this political dynamic that we see inherent in this conflict. Eliot youre making such a critical point that i think has been lost in the general public because abbas has been invisible, nobody has thought about the impact of his stature and the stature of the Palestinian Authority and really they are the party that israel would prefer to negotiate with. And yet hamas, because of the violence has elevated itself and made itself the primary voice visually at least for palestinians and abbas as you say, is lurking in the shadows. How does he become and israel would i would think would want this. Can israel turn abbas once again into the legitimate negotiator for the Palestinian People . If i have a criticism of israel over the past four years it has not done enough to strengthen abbas politically and make him the key figure and enable him to negotiate these difficult issues that remain outstanding. So coming out of this, as weve seen, theres a shortterm requirement, get to a ceasefire. There is a midterm requirement how do you prevent this from happening again. Then the longterm requirement of figuring out how to get this back to an actual substantive and sustained negotiation something that the Obama Administration tried mightily in 2010 and failed then. Eliot i think youre exactly right. The secret story line may be this is a proxy battle between hamas and abbas over who leads the palestinian movement. It is not easy to see whos doing what to whom. P. J. Crowley professor at George Washington university. Former secretary for president obama. For more on israels options lets go to former u. S. Ambassador to morocco marc ginsberg. Thank you for joining us. Pleasure to be with you eliot. Eliot not a happy moment in the middle east. You have been a critic of u. S. Policies thinking weve been too passive. Is what were seeing now an outgrowth of our being passive for too long a time and feuding forces explode in a moment when we dont want this to happen . The usual metaphor in the middle east if you dont stay on the bicycle and keep pedaling you fall off thats precisely what the problem has been with the active americans consistent and strategic diplomacy to try to break this logjam that exists that is in effect and powered hamas to take what essentially is now the primary role as p. J. Crowley said away from the more secular Palestinian Authority which is high tailing it to the United Nations to circumvent israel and not negotiate directly in order to get its own victory at the United Nations at the expense of israel. Eliot lets play this out. Didnt we have the leverage with abbas and the Palestinian Authority to force them to go back to the table or frankly to get Prime Minister netanyahu to go back to the table with abbas to move that process forward which would have cut hamas out of the equation perhaps eliminating this current explosion of violence. Eliot i have no illusions that under the circumstances that have existed and never never have any american diplomat or any American Administration been able to force their will on the parties where the parties themselves are not prepared to negotiate in good faith to settle the final status issues that need to be settled. And so weve seen this ever since the Obama Administration came in and focused its attention on settlement construction in the west bank. It strategically lost the capacity to influence events because it lost the support of the Palestinian Authority for failing to deliver on settlement freeze on settlements and the Israeli Government basically had what essentially was a meltdown in its relationship with the Obama Administration. Eliot youre right. This is where we lost control. How do you critique the role of Prime Minister morsi who is now rhetorically being supportive of hamas but seems to have begun the diplomatic process convening the conversations in cairo that have gotten us closer to a ceasefire and everybody seems to believe will get over the line in the next 24 to 48 hours. Is he playing one Public Diplomacy role for his base but saying secretary clinton i desperately need your financial support. Im maintaining the treaty with israel. Help me navigate through the diplomatic nightmare. If only mr. Morsi was sophisticated as we hope you from your comments make him out to be. Lets remember here, eliot. Hes the accidental candidate that became president who essentially is taking orders from the Guardian Council of the Muslim Brotherhood which is far more, far more antiisrael far more emphatic in its attitude toward supporting hamas. So its very hard to say how this all plays out. Lets not impute too much so sophistication to a man who is engaged in what essentially is a delicate balancing act between his bosses in the Muslim Brotherhood leadership on the one hand and on the on the other hand the necessity of not alienating the multilateral donors who are who have to provide the funding that will give the Muslim Brotherhood for all intents and purposes, the capacity to deliver on the economic challenges that it faces domestically. All of the brouhaha aside, the fact of the matter is that i suspect that hamas decided to try to force mr. Morsi and the Egyptian Government to essentially come to its rescue as a way of empowering it more over the israelis and will side more with hamas than with the Palestinian Authority. Eliot there is an irony in that there has not been tremendous military costs to the state of israel. There have been lives lost but numerically, many more palestinian lives lost. The iron dome protective shield that has been erected at least if were to believe the current reports have been 90 effective. The israeli population is attributing mythical powers to it. Israel is not feeling great physical pain. Pain, yes but not as ein our month mouse as the palestinians and yet theyre winning the Public Relations war in much of the world. How does israel push back on the more Public Diplomacy side. I think theyve done all they can. I cant possibly give them anymore credit for what theyve done because the circumstances are hard as it is. Theyre destined to always lose the propaganda war when al jazeera and other arab televisions and reporters from around the world show the humanitarian victims the civilian victims that hamas served up by firing these missiles and then expecting and almost desiring this very type of retaliation that provides this type of optics that puts israel in such a disadvantage. Eliot very perverse way hamas wants the victims because it makes the argument it wants to be made gee arent we victims when theyre not. Syria which you have been writing about with increasing accuracy, saying we must do something. Have we forgotten about syria as the battle between israel and hamas has grown . You hit the nail on the head, eliot. In the final analysis, thats exactly what iran wants. Iran hopes to benefit from this crisis and thats exactly what it wants. Attention taken off of syria. And having the arab world come to the rescue of its proxy puppet hamas. Eliot ambassador marc ginsburg, thanks for coming on the show, sharing your insights even if it is a mess. Sure. Eliot the election means a new day and a new deal on the fiscal cliff. Robert reich joins us coming up ahead. The first 1,000 days of human life can cause irreparable harm to our brains and our bodies. Thats why current has partnered with 1,000 days to help spread the word combat a problem that ultimately effects all of us. To see how you can help go to current dot com. Brought to you by the all new dodge dart. Dodge new rules. Eliot how does hp make a mistake this big and i mean big our number of the day 8. 8 billion thats how much hp says it overpaid for British Software company. Last year, hp bought autonomy for 11. 1 billion. Today hp announced that oops,oomi is autonomy is worth a fraction of that. Autonomy misrepresented its finances. But if hp got hoodwinked, how . How could they miss something they claim is that big. Autonomy was audited by deloitte and it was audited by kpmg, two of the big four Accounting Firms. They didnt notice anything . Really . This sale involved a list of banks and law firms on both sides of the deal that are supposed to be in the best in the business including Goldman Sachs, citigroup and barclays. Plus it is not as if there were no warning signs before the acquisition. Oracle had considered buying autonomy for 6 billion and decided that even that was overpriced. Whether autonomy did anything wrong will take time to decide but hps mistake is simply incomprehensible. This is like buying a rollsroyce and then driving it around for a year before you figure out it is a yugo. Mix. Now its your turn at the only online forum with a direct line to eliot spitzer. Join the debate now. Eliot welcome back. Im joined by professor reich of u. C. Berkeley, former labor secretary under president clinton and author of beyond outrage. Were going to talk fiscal cliff in a minute. Before we get there this hp thing has me going nuts it is wall street at its worst. They paid 11 billion then realized it is only worth a bit over 2 billion. You have every major law firm, accounting firm, Investment Bank involved. Are they that blind and dumb still . Can you make sense out of this . Eliot not only can i not make sense of it but one thing does stand out. Youve got Goldman Sachs youve got citigroup kpmg, deloitte, every major law firm, what are they getting paid for . And theyre not getting paid a small amount of money. Theyre getting paid a large amount of money to check out this autonomy. This particular company that is supposed to be it is the second largest Software Firm in europe. The largest Software Firm in britain. If there is fraud here, if there is some major accounting error why in the world did these firms that are supposed to be doing Due Diligence on behalf of hp, not find it. And if they didnt find it, what are they getting paid so much money for . I dont get it. I dont understand the culture of wall street. I think a lot of these things are simply badges of Good Housekeeping that people and Companies Pay a lot of money for but that actually have no significance at all. Eliot professor, youre exactly right. I was at the firms. Ive done these deals. These pieces of paper the Due Diligence documents that are generated are worthless. Theyre a sham. They are a fraud. These big Accounting Firms and law firms are given huge paychecks to bless deals that are usually not worth doing but they make money on the fees and the underlying merits of the deal. Are never seriously critiqued. The accounting itself is a sham. This is as bad as it gets. It should be an embarrassment for every firm that came close to this and it makes you wonder if nothing was learned through the series of crises weve lived through. Fiscal cliff. Professor, seems to me theres been a sea change. Were discussing how much we should raise in revenue rather than shouldnt revenue be raised. Isnt this a good indicator of politics working for this nation . Were moving in the right direction because the democrats are holding most of the trump cards. If nothing is done, remember we go back to the clinton tax rates of the 1990s which were not all that bad. In fact, the economy did quite well under those tax rates. If nothing is done, basically the republicans lose. And if the republicans try t