Who knows if it will really happen, but here’s the latest from the AP:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says ceasefire deal with Hamas has still not been reached and that the final details were still being sorted out. That comes after multiple mediators had said Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza and the release dozens of hostages after more than 15 months of war.
What to know:When would the deal take effect? Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that it hopes the details would be worked out Wednesday night. The plan still needs approval from Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet and then his full Cabinet, which are likely to approve any proposal he presents.
What happens to the hostages? Nearly 100 people are still captive inside Gaza, and Israel’s military believes at least a third are dead. The three-phased agreement would begin with the release of 33 women, children, older adults and wounded civilians in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel. Soldiers and other male captives would be released in the second phase.
What does the deal mean for the war? The agreement would bring relief to the hard-hit Gaza Strip, where Israel’s offensive has reduced large areas to rubble and displaced around 90% of the population of 2.3 million, many at risk of famine.
john b
Has Trump taken credit for it yet?
Old School
@john b:
Yes.
Also…
West of the Rockies
@Old School:
I’m surprised that THANK YOU isn’t YOU’RE WELCOME.
Baud
I wouldn’t be surprised. Netanyahu won and doesn’t want to continue the war into the Trump administration when he can get more out of Trump by flattering him.
Captain C
@Old School: He’s full of shit, as usual.
ExPatExDem
I guess Genocide Joe finally got his fill of dead Palestinian children.
Kay
I love the afterthought “hundreds of women and children imprisoned by Israel”
That’s to let you know how little they matter. They’re just an undifferentiated mass of maybe…people or something.
Chris
@Kay:
If nothing else, you’ve got to appreciate the shamelessness of “33 Israelis = hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians.” I mean, we all know whose lives matter more, but it’s rarer to see it spelled out as literally and mathematically as that.
scav
The number of people using all these bodies, both living and dead, to push their self-congratulatory preening is indeed stunning.
Shalimar
@ExPatExDem: Are you borrowing nicknames from Trump? I don’t think that one will catch on.
Citizen Alan
@ExPatExDem: Go to hell.
Kay
@Chris:
All US coverage is like that. It’s so deeply engrained I bet they couldn’t catch it themselves.
Meanwhile, in loonyland:
Stephen Zunes @szunes.bsky.social
2m
I don’t think Americans who listen only to our pols and read only our media are aware of how widespread the war crimes consensus is. The US government is going to have to sanction every single war crimes expert and scholar over the next year.
I don’t actually think they can bury it. It’s a bridge too far of unreality even for this basket case of a country. They have a truckload of evidence, including lots and lots contributed by IDF soldiers and recorded by them and that’s before outside media and humanitarian orgs get in.
Chief Oshkosh
@Shalimar: Apparently he’s a former US citizen and a former Democrat, which I guess makes him…not our problem anymore.
ExPatExDem
@Shalimar: It’s funny that you think Trump gave him that name, rather than everyone with functioning eyeballs and moral compasses.
Anyway, a song in honor of the soon to be Ex-POTUS, Ex-Secretary of State, Ex-Vice President and Netanyahu.
TBone
They buried Jack Smith (former ICC Prosecutor, for those in the back), and they’ll also bury any other ICC stuff they don’t like. Jack’s report is already gone …
And that was just yesterday’s news.
Tom Levenson
As I just said on Bluesky: Seems very likely to me that Netanyahu and Trump updated the Reagan playbook, drawing out the Gaza misery for months past when this deal could have been reached to ensure Biden wouldn’t get a pre-election win. So much blood on their hands. More Netanyahu than Trump, I’d guess, but both monsters.
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Levenson: Nixon-Reagan
TBone
vatnik do they pay you in rubles?
Geminid
Times of Israel journalist Jacob Magid’s reporting on a meeting Saturday between Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Israeli PM Netanyahu got a lot of attention. Magid’s full article is available on the TOI news site, but he posted the high points on Twitter:
Some background: Witkoff had just flown in from Qatar, where Prime Minister al-Thani briefed him on the state of negotiations he, CIA Director Burns and Egypt’s intelligence chief have been mediating since February. Al-Thani likely gave Witkoff an earful about Netanyahu’s mendacity and obstruction.
There will be a lot more reporting on this meeting and others; my takeaway from Magid’s report was that Netanyahu had been holding out in the belief that Trump would support his maximalist goals in Gaza, but then Witkoff threw some very cold water on that assumption.
Warblewarble
After the public relations “CEASEFIRE’ Gaza will continue to be the world’s biggest prison, as it was long before 7th October 2023.
Shalimar
@ExPatExDem: I think it’s the type of thing Trump does. And I think it’s really stupid that you think Biden is genocidal towards Palestinians considering what is coming over the next 4 years.
Tom Levenson
@Matt McIrvin: Yup.
John S.
@Tom Levenson:
Predictably, my orthodox relatives are delighted. Trump of course gets all the credit because his election alone scared Hamas into making a deal. Or something.
TBone
@Geminid: funny, Pam Bondi’s history with Qatar was outed again today in her confirmation hearing.
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/01/trump-ag-nominee-pam-bondi-i-am-very-proud-of-lobbying-work-for-qatar/
Baud
@Geminid:
Or it could be a show for the public and the media. It’s hard to tell with right wingers.
Baud
@John S.:
They would also give Trump credit for strongly backing Israel if the war continued. It’s a no-lose proposition.
Tom Levenson
@John S.: The reporting I just read is that this deal has basically been on the table since LAST February. But Netanyahu needed the war to survive politically and believed Trump would let him max out on Gaza destruction. So the credit that Trump can take is that his guy apparently told Netanyahu that wasn’t so…but this after benefitting from Netanyahu’s intransigence all of last year.
As I said: Netanyahu is clearly the leading villain here. Trump, as he does, villainously took advantage of the opportunity his Israeli co-conspirator created for him.
Or at least, that’s how it looks from the cheap seats.
Leto
@Tom Levenson: Raegan or Nixon playbook? Wait, it’s one and the same! See, when Republicans do it… it’s legal…
Geminid
@Chris: The Israelis would have been be very willing to trade hostages for prisoners one-for-one. The ten-to-one exchange ratio reflects Hamas’s bargaining power, not the value Israel places on Palestinians.
Glory b
@Tom Levenson: Absolutely.
The Gaza /Israel Co flict was tailor made to shred the fragile coalition that is the Democratic party.
No matter what Biden did, without a quick resolution, we were destined to lose.
I recall a premature announcement of a resolution early on, after which some young lefties said they STILL wouldn’t vote for Biden because their student loans weren’t forgiven.
When the resolution fell through, they went back to Gaza protests, doing them in ways that guaranteed maximum anger & annoyance, like blocking ambulances from getting to hospitals. I realized they were determined that Democrats lose.
And they got exactly what they wanted.
tam1MI
More like a death camp. After the “ceasefire” Israel can shut down food deliveries to the West Bank on the grounds that they will not be needed anymore. Also I don’t see anywhere in the ceasefire where Israel is obligated to help Gaza rebuild their shattered infrastructure, bombed out hospitals, burned out schools, etc.
Chris
@Tom Levenson:
Bibi, as I’ve been saying for a year, wanted Biden to lose and knew that prolonging the war and keeping it in the headlines would make that likelier. Color me completely unsurprised that we’ve ended up here.
Matt McIrvin
@Tom Levenson: and let’s watch what he does AFTER Trump is in and there are no US political constraints on him at all.
Glory b
@Kay: Americans are famously unconcerned with foreign affairs. Even college students here didn’t actually care much, and general polling showed “…a surprising level of support for Israel.”
John S.
@Baud:
It’s always “heads I win, tails you lose” with these people. They manage to find the most tortured rationalizations to explain why their guy is always right about everything.
tam1MI
In the USA at least, the truth generally comes out long after it has ceased to matter and will do not one bit of good for anyone.
I can guaran-fucking-tee you that Netanyahu will die peacefully in his bed, surrounded by loved ones, while his hand-picked successor carries on his policies.
But the view from the Trump Gaza Hotel will be lovely.
Another Scott
AlJazeera.com:
No chicken counting! But an end to the fighting would be very good. After that, a huge job begins…
Peace and comfort to the innocents.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Captain C
@tam1MI:
So, alone.
sab
Ceasefire is not going to happen because Bibi still needs a war to stay out of jail.
karen gail
There is a “good” reason why the US isn’t part of ICC; if it was people would have to admit that the US regularly commits war crimes and produces war criminals. The US still has GITMO running; not sure which idiot will be in charge with the new “loyal to trump” administration.
This is the fifth (official) war in/on Gaza; the US can take part of the credit for the unrest since US was one of countries responsible in 1948 for deciding that Palestine had to give up part of land so Jewish people could have a country rather than allowing them into US, Canada as they fled Nazi death camps. To this day when you read reports and articles you know that the Palestinian people aren’t really considered human; many considered Isreal a “white nation” and Palestine nonwhite.
I have also read the comments of “Christians” who believe that the land was given to Isreal by their god and therefore Isreal has the “right” to take by force (as was done according to biblical writings) and destroy every person who called Palestine their home.
Jay
@tam1MI:
There won’t be Trump Towers Gaza,
karen gail
@tam1MI: I agree it will be a death camp; one thing humans are so good at is the slow death of another group of people. It repeats time after time in history. The US keeps doing it and keeps justifying it; which is one reason I won’t be surprised to find that Trumps minions already have plans drawn up for the building of camps.
Kay
@tam1MI:
Gazans have a 97% literacy rate. It”s 79% in the US. They’ll open “schools” (although all the schools are gone) with or without US aid. They’ve been doing just that for decades.
Kay
@Glory b:
I don’t understand why “Americans are unconcerned with foreign policy” has anything to do with US media who cover foreign policy treating Gazans as subhuman and their lives as an after thought.
Surely whomever they are hiring to report on foreign policy is at least somewhat interested in foreign policy? This isn’t really a matter of level of “interest” – theyre plenty interested in the story. They’re just not interested in one group of people in the story.
Glory b
@Kay: I meant that, for good or ill, for all the media coverage, we just don’t pay attention,not unless there are our boots on the ground
And lots of times, not even then.
tam1MI
Oh, lookie, a ready made excuse for Netanyahu to pull out of the peace deal and resume the war!
TBone
Maybe Netanyahoo could be exiled to this little known JAO area
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Autonomous_Oblast
At least it was little known to me until recently when North Koreans started showing up in Ukraine and the nutjobs said “those are North Korean Russians.”
Glory b
@tam1MI: Yep, it’s why I’m inclined to believe the folks who say Bibi & Hamas actually work together.
Jay
@tam1MI:
Under the conditions that Israel has imposed on Gaza, South Lebanon, the West Bank, (and is planning for Syria), Israel cannot win a war, they can only degrade their opponents to the point where there is a pause in the fighting. Israel is the best recruiter for radical militant organizations.
p.a.
If the Palestinian Christian population was still 10%, (1950s), I wonder if it would have made a difference in US policy for the god-botherers. It’s now down to 1%, from emigration & lower birth rate.
Kay
@Geminid:
They’re civilian women and children. What possible justification could Israel have to continue to hold them after the hostages were released?
Israel had to release all of them. If they hadn’t then they would be holding hostages. Children can’t be “prisoners of war”. They would be hostages.
Geminid
@Baud: I believe the meeting was what Magid reported it to be, and that Netanyahu really was taken aback by Witkoff’s pressure. The PM’s allies are certainly howling about Trump’s intervention.
But like I said, there will be more repot3ing on this and other meetings, and what exactly were the compromises Israel’s negotiations team made subsequent to Witkoff’s meeting with Netanyahu.
As of yet, the agreement has not been published. When it is, someone will highlight the changes made.
It may end up very close to the one reported in a Lebanese newspaper around May 1st. I wrote down that version and it seemed consistent with other accounts I’ve read. The first 42-day phase was fairly detailed, the second and third not so much.
JWR
Did anyone hear the last shouted question as Biden was turning away? It was something like “who gets the credit for this deal, you or Donald Trump?”, and Biden turned around and asked, “is that a joke?” Good one, Joe! ;)
Kathleen
@Glory b: Agree with everything you said and biting my keyboard. I really have no business coming here.
JML
@Glory b: Yep, Hamas was useful to Netanyahu right up until they weren’t. He used them as the boogeyman, while also mostly ignoring their actual activities in Gaza, right up until Hamas struck. he didn’t even believe the warnings that an attack was coming, because he thought he’d penned up the bear and they wouldn’t dare do something like this. because Netanyahu never wanted peace, he wanted a threat. If he lost that threat and more Israelis stopped being frightened of Palestinians, then he would have lost power long ago. And the only thing Bibi cares about is power. (and staying out of prison)
he’s corrupt and evil.
but netanyahu being scum and leading a apartheid-style government that treated palestinians as sub-human doesn’t mean that Hamas isn’t also horrific. They’re murdering terrorists who would happily kill every Jew they could reach. It’s part of why many people called out the issue with the “from the river to the sea…” slogans, because while many in the US might have seen it as a call purely for freedom, hamas treats it as an ethnic & religious cleansing mission statement.
TBone
@TBone: interesting, from the Witkoff link in that blurb (it’s all a big real estate
SNAFUdeal according to some). Witkoff is a realtor.Kathleen
@Chris: Bibi wasn’t the only one who wanted Biden to lose. He and Democratic Party had an array of enemies from the left, the right, the media and foreign countries who did everything they could to beat Democrats. “But Dem messaging bad.” Right.
John S.
@Kay:
Made me look.
Source: National Literacy Institute
That explains a lot about this country, the media, the election… pretty much everything that we see around us.
TBone
@John S.: my mother (Masters degree in teaching reading to less abled and disadvantaged children, who practiced all the tricks she was learning on me starting at 3 y.o.) is rolling over in her grave. She fought bravely for decades.
rikyrah
@Tom Levenson:
Uh huh
uh huh
Blood everywhere
Geminid
@sab: Netanyahu’s trial was suspended the first few months after the attack October 7, 2023. It resumed a year ago and has proceeded since, albeit at a snail’s pace like it has since April of 2021.
Last July, prosecutors presented the last of over 250 witnesses on the three corruption counts. After considering and rejecting a raft of dilatory defense motions, the three judge panel ordered the defense to begin presenting its witnesses in November. There ought to be be a verdict by this summer, and then the appeals will begin.
But Netanyahu still hopes to fix his corruption cases by means of “judicial reform, and his coalition is advancing legislation to that end. They also want to fire the Attorney General, but they may have to give up both projects after this ceasefire agreement.
It’s effects on Netanyahu’s domestic political position are as yet unkown, but there seems to me to be more downside than upside. I guess we’ll know more next week; that is, if this ceasefire actually comes off.
gene108
@JWR:
If Biden doesn’t take credit publicly, he forfeits his right to credit and all the credit goes to Trump.
It’s a stupid answer.
John S.
@TBone:
My wife is a teacher. It feels like she’s fighting a losing battle with numbers that terrible.
AxelFoley
@ExPatExDem:
Ah, that New Troll Smell
Trollhattan
@JML:
Among “stuff that never gets investigated” the government and IDF not responding to intelligence and eyewitness warnings prior to the October attack will surely remain in that category.
If only somebody had been minding the store and yes, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US” certainly comes to mind. Asses were covered.
Trollhattan
@AxelFoley: I admit “somebody’s gonna write a song” is a fresh angle for us. :-/
TBone
@John S.: we really need her, best hopes for her perseverance and success! Every. Step. Counts!
Kay
@John S.:
I knew it when I worked for the postal service. I remember the day I realized they were asking me questions answered by the placards right in front on of them because a lot of them couldn’t read. Rural Ohio. In 1996 or so. I had sympathy for them- I suspect there’s a lot of shame attached. I cannot imagine how scary the world must be for them. You get very good at a kind of playacting, where they “can’t find their glasses” or you say the instructions were confusingly worded.
AxelFoley
@gene108:
LOL you really believe this? It doesn’t matter what President Biden said–Trump would still take credit (he already has) and the media will give it to him.
The Thin Black Duke
@AxelFoley: Exactly. As Hannah Arendt pointed out, one of the troubling signs of a civilization plunging into barbarism is when the people can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Worse, they don’t care.
Chris
@John S.:
One of my friends in grad school was a TA who spent a lot of time grading freshmen’s papers.
One day she just handed me a few of them to read. The writing level is not great, plenty of really basic mistakes. That doesn’t really faze me, because it’s Miami: clearly these are kids who don’t have English as a first language, and viewed in that light, it’s not so bad, is it?
So she hands the papers back to me and tells me to this time check the kids’ names. And I do, and the names are, like… Davis, Johnson, Williams, Brown, etc. I’m like, oh, shit. I thought these were people just a few years off the boat! This is how the Anglo kids write? We’re in more trouble than I thought.
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: that’s the point of the propaganda firehose flooding the zone. It was fascism, not merely barbarism, that Hannah Arendt wrote about. The people were unable to tell what the truth was even if they knew the truth; hence, they stopped caring.
Geminid
@Kay: I think the prisoners to be released are primarily men, including some doing life sentences after murder convictions. But it sounds like you have sources that say differently.
This question is worth following up. The Qatari government says the hostage/ prisoner exchange will commence Sunday, with as many as 30 prisoners released for every civilian hostage returned, and 50 for each captive soldier. You will be able to find out who the released prisoners actually are, and whether your sources were correct.
Geminid
All quiet on the Yemen front? From Ankara-based Clash Report:
Miss Bianca
@Chris: When I was a TA at Northwestern University, I couldn’t believe how terrible most of my freshmen seminar students’ writing levels were. As in, “seriously?? Didn’t you have to write an essay to get admitted to this here competitive Big Ten school?” And that was 30 years ago!
Geminid
@TBone: A Qatari businessman was one source of the bribes that were the basis for Senator Bob Menendez’s criminal conviction. I’ve wondered if the Qataris tipped the Turks off and they in turn tipped off the FBI. Qatar and Turkiye are close allies, and Menendez was a real thorn in Turkiye’s side.
There were a lot of news stories a couple years ago about the Qatari government bribing EU Parliament Members; an exercise of Qatari “soft power.”
oldgold
Just on this question and answer, I would vote no on Bondi’s nomination.
Q: “Have you heard the recording of President Trump when he urged the Secretary of State of Georgia ‘to find 11,780 votes’?”
A: AG nominee Bondi: “I have not heard it.”
That is a damn lie. There is no way she has not heard that phone conversation. Just outrageous.
Geminid
@Geminid: Saudi-based Al Arabiya has an article summarizing the terms for the 42-day first phase. One is that 600 trucks of aid will enter daily, and Egypt will reopen the Rafah Crossing on Thursday.
Regarding hostage/prisoner swaps:
The terms for the second 42-day phase are not entirely finalized:
I remember from reporting on a previous draft that if, during the negotiations starting on Day 16, Israel and Hamas could not agree upon a particular clause the three mediators– Qatar, the US and Egypt– would decide it. I’m guessing that is the case with this agreement.
Regarding the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt:
Phase 3 is more open-ended, and basically says Gaza will be rebuilt It basically Gaza. This raises an important question: who will be the civil authority in Gaza going forward? I’m not sure that’s decided yet. It certainly won’t be Israel, not under this agreement. It might not be Hamas either.
This matter bears watching. The most important thing right now is that these two 42-day phases come off and neither side sabotages the agreement. But the question of who governs Gaza going forward will be very consequential.
Manyakitty
@Glory b: the clueless fucks. And now we all suffer.
chopper
@Geminid:
right. the idea that one israeli prisoner must be exchanged for twenty palestinian ones isn’t an israeli demand
Geminid
@Geminid: Statement by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, from Ankara-based Clash Report: