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Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami, hostages held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, are released by Hamas militants as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel on Feb. 8, 2025.
Hostage release sparks outrage, Israel withdraws from more of Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly shocked by their condition and vowed to bring the remaining hostages home. “Due to the harsh condition of the three hostages and the repeated violations of the Hamas terror groups,” his office said in a statement, “the prime minister has ordered that Israel will not gloss over this and will take action as needed.” Hamas, meanwhile, says it won’t release more hostages until Israel withdraws completely from Gaza.
What’s next? Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel withdrew from Gaza’s Netzarim corridor on Sunday, allowing thousands of displaced Palestinians to return north. But military operations continue: Israeli forces on Sunday killed three Palestinians in Gaza and two women in the West Bank, one of whom was pregnant, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
And as nations continue to reject US President Donald Trump’s controversial proposal to relocate Gaza’s inhabitants to other parts of the Middle East, Netanyahu suggested that a Palestinian state could be established in Saudi Arabia. While the Israeli PM reportedly appeared to be joking, Riyadh immediately repudiated the comments. Qatar, which is set to mediate the next round of the ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel this week, also condemned the remarks.
A view shows Israeli tanks near the border with Gaza, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, January 21, 2025.
Gaza ceasefire already in doubt
Will the Israel-Hamas ceasefire get to phase two? After the initial exchange of hostages and prisoners this past weekend, there is growing skepticism, including from the White House, that the deal will hold.
“I’m not confident. It’s not our war, it’s their war,” President Donald Trumpsaid Monday.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to resign if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not break the ceasefire once the first 42-day phase is over and continue Israel’s efforts to eradicate Hamas. This comes on the heels of far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir and a couple of his colleagues quitting the cabinet over the “reckless” deal, leaving Netanyahu’s government dependent on the support of opposition leader Yair Lapid for its survival – for now.
While both Israel and the US say continued Hamas control of Gaza is a nonstarter, the reality is that despite 15 months of Israeli military operations, Hamas remainsfirmly in control of the territory. At Sunday’s exchange of three female hostages, dozens of Hamas fighters surrounded the Red Cross vehicles carrying the Israelis in a show of force. Despite the killing of leader Yahya Sinwar, the group’s exiled leadership reportedly remains functional, and Sinwar’s brother Mohammed has a greater role in the organization.
A second front? While hostilities have ceased in Gaza, on Tuesday Israel launched a “counterterrorism” operation in the occupied West Bank, killing nine and injuring dozens, according to Palestinian officials. Hamas leaders condemned the violence and called on Palestinians in the territory to increase their attacks on Israelis – something that could further jeopardize the fragile peace.
Released Doron Steinbrecher embraces loved ones at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel, after being held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, on Jan. 19, 2025.
Gaza ceasefire goes into effect, and three hostages are set free
Following last-minute disagreements over Israeli troop withdrawals and the identities of the hostages to be released, the Gaza ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect on Sunday.
So far, three Israeli hostages — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher — have been reunited with their families, ending 471 days in captivity following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. They were the first of the 33 hostages set to be released under the deal — and Israel has agreed to release 1,900 Palestinians from Israeli jails. As of early Monday local time, 90 Palestinian prisoners had already been freed.
Domestic political costs: On Sunday, Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvirresigned from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet to protest the ceasefire. He was joined by two other ministers from the far-right Jewish Power party. This leaves Netanyahu with only a slim governing majority in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Further defection could lead to the government's collapse.
Will the deal hold up? For the first phase, lasting 42 days, the incentives seem well enough aligned to keep either side from breaching the peace. Hamas needs time to reorganize and rearm, which it can achieve by releasing the 33 hostages it has promised throughout the first phase. Netanyahu, for his part, wants to deliver those hostages for voters — but after that phase is over, prospects dim.
Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a beachfront cafe amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza Strip, on January 14, 2025.
Gaza ceasefire seems tantalizingly close — how long could it last?
After months of negotiations mediated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, Hamas on Tuesday accepted a draft ceasefire agreement that could bring an end to the fighting in Gaza – at least temporarily – if Israel’s cabinet approves it. Negotiators believe an agreement could be reached before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
What’s in the deal? Hamas would release 33 of the roughly 94 remaining Israeli hostages — mostly women, children, and elderly or injured people — over six weeks in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian women and children imprisoned in Israel.
During this first phase, Israeli forces would pull out of urban areas and allow some 600 truckloads of aid to enter Gaza each day. The IDF would not pull out of Gaza entirely, however, and people attempting to return to their homes will find them largely demolished.
Then it gets tricky. The details of the second and third phases would need to be negotiated while the first phase is in progress — and Eurasia Group regional expert Greg Brew isn’t confident that the right incentives exist to find success.
“Hamas really has two sources of leverage,” he says. “The first is the hostages, and when they lose the hostages they lose any ability to influence Israeli action. The second is their continued ability to fight, and it is likely going to continue a low-level insurgency against Israel and any potential new government formed to govern Gaza.”
So why a deal? For Hamas, a respite from combat allows reorganization and rearmament. The outgoing Biden administration, meanwhile, is eager for a win before it leaves office — and it’s one Trump will surely claim even if it comes before his inauguration. Brew says the timing offers the incoming administration a fig leaf. “When the deal collapses, he can say, ‘Oh, there were flaws in place. This was a bad deal. It happened under Biden's watch.’”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly gets to have his cake and eat it too by delivering the hostage releases voters have demanded without fully committing to end the war, which would infuriate his far-right coalition partners.
“Netanyahu gets everything,” says Brew. “He gets a deal that makes Trump happy, that delivers a win to the Israeli people, that quiets the opposition, and that strengthens his position.”
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington after Israel and Lebanon accepted a ceasefire deal on Nov. 26, 2024.
Israel agrees to Lebanon ceasefire, Biden confirms
The Israeli Security Cabinet has approved a ceasefire for Lebanon, President Joe Bidenannounced on Tuesday, welcoming the opportunity to start reestablishing peace in the Middle East. “Under the deal reached today, effective at 4 a.m. tomorrow local time, the fighting across the Lebanese-Israeli border will end,” Biden said.
While earlier reports suggested the US-brokered agreement would involve a 60-day transition period to pave the way toward a more lasting peace, Biden emphasized that the truce is meant to be permanent. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had urged approval of the deal, and it was passed “with a majority of 10 ministers in favor and one opposed,” his office said just before Biden announced the news.
The Israeli leader said it was the right time for a ceasefire because it would isolate Hamas, give Israel’s military space to regroup and resupply, and allow the Jewish state to focus more on the threat from Iran.
In the hours leading up to Netanyahu’s announcement on Tuesday, Israel continued to pound Lebanon with airstrikes. But 13 months of fighting ended early Wednesday as the ceasefire took hold, and thousands of displaced Lebanese civilians have begun returning to their homes in the South.
The US pushed hard for the agreement and while the Biden administration is taking credit, the deal could provide a boost for Donald Trump as he enters the White House in January. Trump — who has a close relationship with Bibi — has promised to bring peace to the region, and his administration will soon be on deck with efforts for a more permanent peace between Israel and Hezbollah, and perhaps a resolution for Gaza and the remaining hostages.
In the meantime, we’ll be watching to see if the truce holds as the region remains on edge with the war in Gaza raging on amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran.
Why Ukraine invaded Russia
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. I wanted to talk a little bit about Russia/Ukraine before news in the United States and the Middle East take it off the headlines again.
The surprise, of course, is that the Ukrainians have invaded Russia. This was a substantial, you'd say more than an incursion, a significant amount of territory presently being held. The Russians have had to, as a consequence, announce a "counter-terrorism operation regime" in Kursk, in Bryansk, and Belgorod, not martial law, but still, that has reduced some of the forces that they can deploy in fighting the front lines in Southeast Ukraine. And it's also certainly embarrassed Putin, embarrassed his senior military leadership. This is supposed to be all about defeating the Ukrainians, and now the Russians have lots of citizens that are facing a war on Russian territory. Now, to be clear, the Ukrainians have no territorial claim on any part of Russia, but there is a feeling of turnabout is fair play.
What's going on here? I think there are a few things. First of all, the fact that the Ukrainians can put the Russians under some pressure domestically in a run-up to what everyone expects will eventually be negotiations helps to improve Ukraine's position. And no matter who you talk to, the Europeans, the Democrats in the US, the Republicans in the US, the feeling increasingly is that it is going to be harder for the Ukrainians to continue to fight and defend their territory the way they have for the last two and a half years. And so that means you need to have negotiations in the coming year. Part of that is because the Ukrainians aren't going to have the troops. Part of it is because it's getting harder to raise the money. And that's not just the United States, though there was a fight about that, and certainly it'll get harder next year, especially if Trump/Vance win, but also if Harris/Walz do, but also the Germans just cut back 50% of their expected support for the Ukrainian military in 2025, because they're under fiscal constraints, this is the largest European economy. So either way, there is a clear understanding from all sides that you want to move towards freezing the conflict at a minimum and negotiations and maybe a ceasefire and a longer-term settlement, more ambitiously. Much better from the Ukrainian perspective to do that if they have leverage over Russia too, and they have shown leverage. They can blow up the Black Sea fleet, which was important to Russia's national security, and they can put some areas of Russia, both in terms of missiles and alts and drones, but also in terms of Ukrainian troops at risk.
Now, can the Ukrainians hold Kursk from the Russians? Hard to imagine that. I expect that within the coming weeks they'll be forced out of that territory by the Russians. But clearly, they had the element of surprise. The Russians weren't ready to immediately defend or immediately counterattack against that incursion. So I suspect this is more about the broader negotiations between Russian Ukraine than the idea that there's going to be a territory swap. I don't think you'll get there. I also think there is a little bit of desperation. If you're the Ukrainians, remember, you're running out of troops. So sending more troops into Kursk makes you more vulnerable and weaker on the home front, especially when it's been harder and harder to mobilize those troops. And there's been political opposition to doing that. And I think that's because the Ukrainians understand that they need to make Russia feel insecure sooner rather than later, because it's going to be hard to keep this fighting up for another one, two years or more, irrespective of how the American election goes, but certainly, if it goes against the Ukrainians, that's going to be a problem for them. So this isn't all about that.
Also, we're learning more about Russian response. Let's keep in mind that we've heard from Russian leaders, including former President Medvedev and occasionally even Putin himself, that nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear weapons are on the table, and don't you dare, sort of, allow the Ukrainians to use weapons that could strike into Russia. Don't you dare hit Crimea. Don't you dare hit Russian territory. And every time those ostensible red lines have been broken, the Russian response has been dramatically more restrained than one might have expected from listening to Putin and the Kremlin at face value. That's useful because they've also said similar things about Ukraine in NATO and the West defending Ukraine. And if you're going to get to a negotiated settlement that is acceptable for the Ukrainians, which means that they're going to lose territory, they will be partitioned. They need to have the ability to defend their territory for the long-term in a credible way. And the best way to ensure that is get them into NATO. The best way to ensure that is to get them troops on the ground in territory that the Russians don't occupy.
Now, you can have an alliance, have security guarantees that don't include the entire territory. Japan, for example, has an alliance with the United States. It doesn't include the Northern territories, contested and presently occupied, some of them by Russia. So there's plenty of precedent here. But the point is that few in NATO believe today that Ukraine in NATO, especially the piece of Ukraine that isn't occupied by Russia in NATO, is an existential risk for World War III the way that many of them would've believed that when Russian retaliation and escalation was less known, was less experienced a year ago, certainly two years ago. So, that's interesting.
Final point I want to raise here is that whether Harris or Trump win the election in November, I think we are moving towards a similar outcome. In other words, both of these leaders would like to see an end to the fighting. Both of them would like to see a ceasefire. Both of them would like to see the west move on because they recognize the reality of the fighting on the ground, and in the case of Trump in particular, because he wants to say, "New wars started under Biden/Harris, I end them." The big difference between the two is that Trump is much more likely to make those decisions unilaterally. In other words, tell the Ukrainians and the Russians, "This is the deal, accept it or else," and not necessarily coordinate with NATO allies in advance. Where a Harris administration would be working closely in multilateral fashion with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians to try to get to a similar outcome. In other words, more risk acceptant towards that outcome on the Trump side, more risk averse and more coordinated with allies, harder to get done in some ways, under a Harris administration, but lower likelihood that it really blows up in your face. So how lucky do you feel is the open question, but not as dramatically different as the media would have led you to expect over the course of the past months talking about a potential Trump administration.
So that's a little bit from me on where we are, a very different position in some ways, in the Russia/Ukraine war today, and maybe even, I don't want to call it optimistic, but maybe seeing more of a pathway towards how this fighting can be frozen, if not ended. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour says give peace a chance
On the season premiere of the GZERO World Podcast, Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour joins Ian Bremmer to talk about how the war in Gaza might end and what would come next for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, is peace a possibility? Around 40,000 Palestinians and over a thousand Israelis have died, according to the Israeli army and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (as always, exact numbers are impossible to verify given limited access to the Gaza strip). According to the UN, sixty percent of Gazan homes—and over eighty percent of commercial buildings and schools—have been destroyed or damaged. The UN also warns that over a million Gazans could face the highest levels of starvation by mid-July if the fighting doesn’t end.
Joining the podcast with the Palestinian perspective is Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations. He’s a Palestinian-American himself (the son of an Ohio steelworker) and says that this moment in the Middle East is the most significant period of transformation in his decades of representing the Palestinian people on the global stage. "There is something in the air. People want justice for the Palestinians. People want this war and this conflict to end. People want the occupation to end because it's good for Israel and it's good for the Palestinians."
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Israel hostage rescue and the worsening human toll
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Lots of things going on right now, but perhaps, the issue that's gotten most of the news around the Middle East conflict and the issue of the hostages being rescued. Four hostages, some eight months now, being held. Over 100 still that we know of by Hamas in Gaza.
But four of them were rescued by an Israeli Defense Forces operation over the weekend. Not released, as some including, in a chyron, an interview I was in over the weekend, were saying released. No, rescued. Hamas has not released anyone, and there is no agreement going forward, and unlikely in the near term, despite lots of efforts from everyone around the world to get an agreement.
Neither the Israelis or Hamas are coming to one. Now, news beyond that, is that in order to get those hostages out, there were between about 100 and 300 Palestinians killed. Depending on who you talk to, the numbers are completely unclear. How many of those people were civilians? How many of them were Hamas operatives? How many were women and children? That's still unclear. But obviously, the numbers were really, really high. And lots of things to say about this and you should say all of them. First is that Hamas is keeping these people in civilian homes and among a densely populated civilian area specifically to make it harder for Israelis to rescue them without having large numbers of Palestinian civilians killed.
That is indeed the strategy, and both the fact that Hamas continues to hold these hostages, civilian hostages illegally, and the fact that they are using Palestinian civilians as a part of their strategy is that these are war crimes; these are acts of terrorism. And they need to be held accountable for that.
At the same time, Israel has been way too indifferent to civilian casualties. And we've seen that broadly in terms of the war in Gaza, and we've seen it specifically in terms of the events of this weekend. And the fact that the Israeli prime minister celebrated, and understandably so, the rescue of the hostages but didn't mention, didn't even mention the minimum scores of Palestinians that were killed and quite plausibly far more than that, implies that that's not worth mentioning. On the Israeli side, those people don't matter. They don't count. Beyond saying that Hamas is responsible for all of their deaths, which is an extreme statement. The Israelis also bear accountability. But if you don't mention it, it's not even worth a mention is the point. And I think we've gotten to a point in the war of dehumanization where if you are supporting either the Palestinian side or the Israeli side, that the humanity of the people on the other side is no longer a thing for you.
And that is likely to persist for a generation, given the atrocities that we are seeing and have seen on October 7th and in the war since. Let's also focus on the asymmetry. These two actors, Hamas and Israel, do not play by the same rules, right? They also can’t play by the same rules.
I mean, in the sense that if Hamas played by Israel rules, they would have been destroyed by now. I mean, if they weren't trying to intentionally target Israeli civilians and if they weren't intentionally putting Palestinian civilians constantly at risk, there would be no more Hamas because the Israelis are overwhelmingly more powerful militarily, their offensive capabilities, their defensive capabilities, and of course, their intelligence capabilities, which forces a level of greater inhumanity and asymmetry in fighting strategy on Hamas than if they had greater military capabilities. Now, of course, on the other side, if Israel didn't have the incredible military capabilities that they had, they wouldn't have a state, they wouldn't be able to defend it against those that believe that they don't have a right to exist, as a state.
So, I mean, none of these things answer the question of what do we do? And none of these justify, in any way, the behaviors that we've been seeing on the ground from the Israeli Defense Forces in fighting this war from Hamas, in taking these hostages and holding them and putting their own civilians at risk. But it is, I think, incumbent on us as we see this continue to play out that what we're missing and what we need is humanity.
Right now, there are no angels that are fighting. There is only suffering, and there's only dehumanization. We also can't talk about all of this without having an effective deal on the table, and there isn't a deal on the table. And everyone is sort of responsible for that, right? The Israelis have refused a deal with all of the hostages in return for an eventual permanent cease-fire because the Israeli position is, “until we destroy Hamas, their leadership, their military capacity, there can be no end to the fighting.”
And indeed, Benny Gantz, leaving the Unity war cabinet and now leading the War Cabinet to look basically just like the Israeli government, which means Bibi, the PM, and the far right, which puts you farther from any plausible breakthrough agreement than you were even over the past weeks. Hamas has also refused a cease-fire agreement that is on the table.
They've had an agreement on the table for a six-week cease-fire in return for a significant number of hostages being released and also more Palestinians being detained by Israel being released. And then there would be further discussion and negotiations. Hamas has refused that deal. When you're reading about this in the media, you will see people talking about Israel refusing the deal.
You'll see people talk about Hamas refusing the deal. Very rarely will you see people talking about both Israel and Hamas refusing the deal, because they have both set red lines that are mutually incompatible. And that is by design because they don't want a breakthrough that leads the other to be intact and in any way fulfilled. Look in any negotiation, if both sides are dissatisfied, it's probably not effective negotiation. We are not at the point where both sides are prepared to accept that. We're not close.
In fact, I think what we've seen over the weekend, with the hostages rescued, with lots of Palestinians killed, and with Gantz leaving the war cabinet is, we are farther today from a diplomatic agreement, even with Secretary of State Tony Blinken yet again in the region, we're farther from an agreement than we were a week ago, a month ago, two months ago. And we're farther from containing the war, as the potential of this war expanding into the north with Hezbollah and also continuing, of course, on the ground in Rafah and more broadly in Gaza. I think that that is your baseline expectation for the coming weeks and months.
So not great news. And, you know, out of the Middle East these days, it really is. But that is where we are. I hope people find this worthwhile. And I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Israel rescues hostages, Gantz resigns ›
- Does Hamas have the Israeli hostages? ›
- Israel’s geopolitical missteps in Gaza ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Biden's second foreign policy crisis ›
- Ian Bremmer: Understanding the Israel-Hamas war ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Who is responsible for Gaza's enormous civilian death toll? ›
- ICC war crimes charge strengthens Netanyahu's position in Israel ›