The Israel-Hamas Agreement in the First Two Years of the War: Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and the Israeli Defense of the Gazan Government
Netanyahu’s decision to fire his domestic security chief, which led to street protests, was caused by the new offensive in Gaza, and also by the fact that he wanted to fire the Shin Bet agency.
Returning to war paved the way for Netanyahu to bring his far-right ally Itamar Ben Gvir back inside the coalition and beef up his governing majority. Ben Gvir had quit because of the January ceasefire with Hamas, and returned Tuesday with the resumption of the war.
It was the same proposal as before the war and only had to remove Israeli troops from the border area.
Netanyahu has a deadline: his government must pass a national budget in two weeks, or face the prospect of his government collapsing, triggering new elections.
Israel says it will return to war if Hamas does not agree to the new ceasefire terms presented by the Mid East envoy for the Trump administration.
According to the Israel-Hamas agreement, on the 16th day of the ceasefire, the sides were supposed to enter talks regarding the permanent end of the war. Israel refused to hold those talks, as agreed, so long as Hamas remained in control in Gaza.
The exact terms of the deal were not published. The agreement was sealed under the supervision of the Biden administration, despite the fact that the deal was signed with involvement from the incoming Trump administration. Israel saw itself as having leeway to try to extract new terms under President Trump.
Phase one of the deal — exchanging a group of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners — was over. There had been no progress on phase two, a full troop withdrawal from the Gaza border with Egypt.
Hamas continued to recover. Israel had allowed in a surge of aid supplies. Hamas government leaders in Gaza began emerging from tunnels and hideouts, deploying officials and displaying their control of the territory.
In a social media post that was later removed, the Hamas-controlled Gaza City municipality said it wanted to collect taxes on Gaza residents that had been hit by war.
The leader of Israel’s leading national security think tank, the Israel Institute for National Security Studies, has said that Hamas is trying to repair the unexploded Israeli weaponry during the war.
“Hamas haven’t read the picture. They thought that they have a lot of power over the hostages. They thought they would get a ceasefire and not pay anything, says the former Israeli military intelligence chief. “This was the target of the attack…to tell Hamas, you are going to pay (a) high price for not accepting Witkoff proposals.”
Israel began a supplies blockade on Gaza this month to pressure Hamas to accept its terms. The original deal requires Hamas to remove Israeli troops from the Gaza- Egypt border and start talks on the end of the war.
The return to war was a shock to Israelis. Fourteen out of 25 Israelis that were freed in the last few months have been told the deal endangers their lives because 24 other captives are thought to be alive.
What followed was one of the deadliest days of the Gaza war, with more than 400 people killed in nighttime airstrikes on homes, according to Gaza health officials, including five Hamas officials and women and children. Israel said it was targeting Hamas mid-level leaders, and officials in Gaza who tally the death tolls do not distinguish between Hamas-affiliated combatants and civilians.
After weeks of planning, the Israeli military launched about ten minutes of strikes from naval ships and dozens of warplanes after 2 a.m. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss what was happening behind the scenes.
A senior Hamas official said that a truce was being held at the time of the Israeli strikes.
Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen disrupted international shipping routes and fired missiles at Israel throughout the first 15 months of the Gaza war. Israel says it shot down a missile that came from Yemen after it began the war in Gaza.
The Ups and Downs of the Middle: What Israel Can Say About Israel and the Middle East (and What Can It Tell Us About Israel)
“Netanyahu’s true objective appears increasingly clear: a gradual slide toward an authoritarian-style regime, whose survival he will try to secure through perpetual war on multiple fronts,” wrote Harel.
“The gates of hell have opened? For me the gates of hell have opened today,” Ruhama Buhbut told Israeli Channel 12. Ruhbut’s son, Elkana, is still held hostage in Gaza.
The strikes could last for at least another two weeks until Israel passes its national budget, allowing Netanyahu to resume a ceasefire and give him more power, analysts say.
The U.S. struck targets in Yemen last weekend. If the attacks on the Houthis continue, the President warned Iran of dire consequences.
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Musk, DOGE violated Constitution, judge says. And, when egg prices might drop, when Ukrainians hope to follow the same path
Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency may have violated the Constitution by effectively shutting down the Agency for International Development, a federal judge has ruled. The decision will be appealed by President Trump.
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a limited ceasefire in Ukraine yesterday, where the Kremlin agreed to stop targeting Ukraine’s energy facilities for 30 days. Russia and Ukraine launched attacks on each other’s infrastructure.
Eggs are a pain in the ass for Americans. However, relief might finally be on the way. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that the national average wholesale price of eggs has been declining since late February. It is positive to know that the price for eggs at the grocery stores may fall in a few weeks. The decline in the wholesale price is due to the absence of major bird flu outbreaks so far in March, which has allowed the egg supply to recover.
Deportation of a student protester over his support of the Israel-Gaza war: The case of “Irreverent”, a white man
He was charismatic, calm and extroverted. He was a different person than her, a self-proclaimed “irreverent” who gets anxious. She said she would marry him one day, and maybe that’s why she knew.
She felt a sense of loss on Saturday, March 8th. She watched as plainclothes immigration agents handcuffed her husband and took him away from their apartment building. She told me she was fighting to get her husband back since she wasn’t ready for the birth of their first child.
The Columbia graduate student and legal permanent resident is at a Louisiana detention center over his involvement in student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. The government wants to deport him despite his legal status and his case is at the center of a of a fierce debate over what kind of speech is protected under the First Amendment. If he is deported, advocates say he would be punished for protected political speech because he supported the Israel-Gaza war. The government has charged him with no crime and they say they don’t have to under a rarely used immigration provision.
“Exercising your First Amendment rights is not illegal. “That’s always been the case,” the man told me. You can get someone kidnapped from their home to go to a protest, that’s terrifying.