we thank you both for talking to us tonight, shibley telhami, dennis ross.hank you. >> woodruff: in afghanistan, election officials today announced interim results in the recent presidential elections, but they also said no winner can be declared yet because millions of ballots were being audited for fraud. jeffrey brown has the story. >> brown: the preliminary results came nearly a month after afghan voters went to the polls in the presidential run- off. the national election commission announced former finance minister ashraf ghani won 56% of the vote. former foreign minister abdullah abdullah trailed with 43%, a reversal of the double-digit lead he'd held after the first round. >> ( translated ): i want to emphasize that the preliminary result announcement is not the announcement of the winner of the election. there is the possibility of changing the results after auditing the votes and reviewing the complaints and objections. >> brown: indeed, the commission acknowledged there had been fraud, and announced it will audit ballots from nearly 7,000 of 23,00

shibley telhami is a professor who is an expert on the middle east. he's a nonresident senior fellow at the center for middle east studies in waushgsshington, pror in maryland, and author of an important book, the world through arab eyes. is there an end game here? what can we anticipate in the days to come? >> we, i still think, wolf, that neither side really wanted to see this situation escalate. but that's how they find themselves, in a situation where it's escalating out of their own control. in part, once it gets to this, and you have all kinds of pain on the palestinian side, the devastation on the israeli side, people have not lost lives but people are, you know, in bunkers. and when you look at that, right now, everybody's trying to make a statement about they can sustain this a little bit longer or they can hurt the other more or less. everyone -- you hear hamas saying, we can do this for a long time, don't think you're going to defeat us by going in today, tomorrow, the next day, the next day. we have the capacity to fight for the long haul.

have hussein ibish, a senior fellow at the wilson center, a close friend of the wilson center, shibley telhami is professor at university of maryland, and rob danin is the former secretary of state on near east affairs. our moderator is aaron miller. the show begins right now. >> thank you very much, and for your leadership in the wilson center. i want to acknowledge three people who are not here. they may be watching. a wonderful person, who is having cataract surgery today. i know you are watching, and thanks for everything. when i drafted the invitation for this event, it read something like syria-iraq may be dominating the headlines, but the israeli-palestinian issue remains. none of us who have watched this issue and followed this seriously include my colleagues would reject the idea that violence and terror has been a handmaiden of this process for over a century. what we are witnessing may or may not be new, but it is a reminder of the costs and implications of no resolution of the conflict. since 1967, i would argue you had a different iteration, a sort of perverse dance with its own p