With Israel’s plan to go deeper into Gaza, the scenario looks intractable. Israel itself is increasingly isolated on the world stage. So what tools might be available to the United Nations to “force” a ceasefire and end the siege of Gaza? And if the United Nations Security Council should decide to deploy peacekeepers in the occupied territories, even Gaza itself, what could that look like? 

• GUEST: EUGENE CHEN is a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and wrote a piece about the hypothetical UN involvement in the Gaza conflict.

In our near neighbour, Malaysia, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim is facing increasing pressure from the Islamist opposition to take an even stronger stand against Israel and the United States over the ongoing Gaza war. Anwar himself comes from an Islamist background, but he presides over a coalition that many in this Muslim nation fear is too liberal. And Donald Trump’s nomination of an Australian-born activist as the next US ambassador has also ignited fireworks. 

• GUEST: Professor SYAZA SHUKRI of International Islamic University of Malaysia joined a recent forum at the Lowy Institute, and spoke with us afterwards.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers convenes his productivity summit next week, trying to balance competing proposals to lower or raise taxes. The St Vincent de Paul Society is one of Australia’s biggest faith-based welfare agencies and, in its submission to the summit, it asks the treasurer to make ending poverty his top priority. 

• GUEST: MARK GAETANI is St Vincent De Paul's national president.