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Israel
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.
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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem December 27, 2015.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed on Friday that a Gaza ceasefire deal has been finalized following a “last-minute crisis," and the security cabinet is meeting now to ratify the agreement. Israeli warplanes, meanwhile, carried out dozens of missions in the Gaza Strip on Thursday that left at least 86 dead and dampened the jubilation many Palestinians felt when the ceasefire agreement was first announced.
What was the holdup? Two disagreements with Hamas supposedly caused the delay: One over the precise locations from which Israeli troops would withdraw and another over the identities of hostages due to be exchanged.
Hardliners in the cabinet, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, are expected to vote against the ceasefire but look unlikely to be able to stop it. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday he still expects the fighting to stop as scheduled on Sunday. On Friday, the names of the 33 hostages to be released in the first phase were published, with the prime ministers office saying that they could begin being freed as early as Sunday, once the deal is ratified.
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.
The putative second and third phases of the ceasefire deal will need to be hashed out while the first is in progress, and the Israeli far right is eager to return to fighting. Ben-Gvir has threatened to resign if the deal goes through, and Smotrich has said he will withdraw if the ceasefire continues beyond the first phase. If they both leave, this could risk the collapse of Netanyahu's government.
“At the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, Netanyahu could face a dilemma in which he is forced to choose between holding his coalition together or maintaining the ceasefire to get more hostages released,” says Farzan Sabet, a Middle East consultant at Eurasia Group. Meanwhile, the Israeli leader would be “under pressure from much of the rest of the Israeli opposition and the public as well as incoming US President Donald Trump.”
How is the wider world reacting? Russia and China’s foreign ministries expressed hope that the ceasefire deal would lead to long-term peace, while British PM Keir Starmer described the deal as “very welcome.” Japan and South Korea both urged a swift implementation of the deal as well, while France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz specifically urged Hamas to release hostages.
Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam gestures at the presidential palace on the day he meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in Baabda, Lebanon January 14, 2025.
Lebanon’s lawmakers are on a roll these days. Just a week after picking a president for the first time in two years, parliament this week approved a new prime minister, tapping well-respected reformist technocrat Nawaf Salam for the job.
Who is he? Born to a prominent Sunni family in Beirut, and educated at the Sorbonne and Harvard Law School, the 71-year-old Salam served for a decade as Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations. In 2018, he joined the International Court of Justice, which appointed him president last year. His first high-profile case in that role was South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.
Salam’s appointment is another blow to Hezbollah. The Shia militant-political group was unable to secure another mandate for its preferred candidate, outgoing PM Najib Mikati.
“Salam represents the reformist, cross-sectarian opposition movement to Hezbollah,” says Firas Maksad, a resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C.
Still, if Salam and newly elected President Joseph Aoun hope to form a stable government that can deliver positive changes for Lebanon ahead of the 2026 general elections, Maksad says, “they will have to reach some kind of accommodation with the Shia parties.”
Salam has no easy task ahead of him. Lebanon is suffering the worst economic and financial crisis in its history. Outside donors, chiefly in the US, Europe, and Saudi Arabia, demand to see significant reforms in order to lend a hand. Meanwhile, even a diminished Hezbollah has formidable firepower – and the group’s delicate ceasefire with Israel expires in less than two weeks.Palestinians react to news on a ceasefire deal with Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, January 15, 2025.
Israel and Hamas on Wednesday agreed to a phased ceasefire and hostage release agreement, offering the prospect of a halt to the 15-month war, which has visited immense destruction on Gaza, and roiled politics throughout the region and the wider world. By Thursday, there were already signs of trouble.
The terms of the ceasefire – brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and US officials from the Biden Administration and the incoming Trump team – were announced by Qatari officials at a press conference late Wednesday.
Israel’s cabinet still needs to ratify the agreement and was expected to do so on Thursday. But the ministers have not yet met, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office is accusing Hamas of reneging on parts of the deal, which Hamas denies.
What we know: Should Israel formally approve the deal, the first phase, which is to last six weeks, will see Hamas release 33 of the hostages taken during its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. In exchange, Israel will free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, though the precise list is not yet known.
In addition, Israel will pull its troops back to the edges of Gaza, though withdrawal from several strategic points, such as the Netzarim Corridor that bisects the enclave, or the Egypt-Gaza border, remains a matter of separate talks.
Palestinian civilians in Gaza will be allowed to return to their homes, or what remains of them after 15 months of war, and a surge of humanitarian aid will pour into the strip.
A second phase would entail further prisoner exchanges, while a third phase would envision a more permanent settlement of Gaza’s status and governance. Both of those phases are to be negotiated during the first phase.
The ceasefire pauses a brutal conflict that erupted after Hamas’ rampage into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel’s response, which aimed to destroy Hamas, leveled much of the Gaza Strip, killed more than 40,000 people, according to local sources, and pitched the enclave into a severe humanitarian crisis. Israel has severely weakened Hamas, killing its military leader last fall, but has struggled to keep the organization from regrouping and recruiting. Of the roughly 250 hostages taken by Hamas and its allies on Oct. 7, 98 are still being held in Gaza. It is not known exactly how many of them are still alive.
Trump impact. The breakthrough was announced just days before Donald Trump was set to take office in the US. Trump had earlier threatened that “all Hell will break out” if a deal was not struck by the date of his inauguration, Jan. 20. His Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly played a strong role in pushingNetanyahu to accept ceasefire terms that he had earlier rejected in several rounds of diplomacy led by the Biden administration.
“As it demonstrated through this deal, the incoming Trump administration is the sole actor with sufficient leverage to press Israel to make necessary compromises,” said Hugh Lovatt, at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
But he warned that without a durable plan for demobilizing Hamas, setting up local governance in the Gaza Strip, and bringing in international peacekeeping support, the benefits of the ceasefire could fade quickly.
“A ceasefire without meaningful political progress towards ending Israel’s occupation,” he said, “will ultimately prove unsustainable.”
Joe Biden’s view. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, the outgoing president said he believed the deal would put a “permanent” end to the war and claimed credit for the achievement. “We’ve reached this point because of the pressure that Israel built on Hamas, backed by the United States,” Biden said. He also stated that Iran was left weakened by the conflict.
“The United States helped to shape and change the equation, and the terror network that once protected and sustained Hamas is far weaker … Iran is weaker than it has been in decades.”
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.
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.”
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
A Gaza ceasefire has gained momentum. What is the likelihood a deal will be reached soon?
We've heard this news before. At least five times over the last year that we've heard we were almost at a Gaza ceasefire. This time around though it looks much more likely. Why is that? Because Trump is about to be president, because Trump's envoys and Biden's envoys have been working together on these issues, and also because that means pressing the Israeli government in a way that feels much more serious if you are the prime minister. And also because Trump has been pressing Hamas. And so, I think the unilateralism is there. The fact the deal was already very close, and now this means Biden gets to say he got the deal and Trump gets to say he's ended a war, at least for the time being, and a lot more hostages get freed. So yeah, this time around it looks pretty likely.
What do I make of a potential sale of TikTok to Elon Musk?
Well, it's just been announced that the Chinese are considering it. I always thought that it was more likely than not that if the Supreme Court were to uphold a ban that the Chinese would probably allow a sale to go through. Though they were going to say they were never going to until the last moment because why give up leverage when you don't necessarily have to? So their historic unwillingness doesn't mean to me that they're actually unwilling. To the extent that there is a deal and it goes to Elon, he becomes more powerful, and he also is seen by the Chinese as owing them one. So would he facilitate an improved, a more stable relationship between the US and China? It's an early indication that he could play a role. He hasn't said anything on the China front yet, but certainly you would expect that he would meet with the high-level envoy that's going to the inauguration that Xi Jinping was invited to on the 20th. That's what we should watch in the next week. Okay, that's it for that one.
What does Lebanon's new president mean for Hezbollah?
Weaker Hezbollah, but so much is going to be determined on what Israel decides to do on the ground in the south of Lebanon. Are they staying there for a longer period of time? We've heard news of late that they intend to maintain that occupation in a longer than just couple of weeks, couple of months environment, which makes it harder to keep Hezbollah from starting fighting again. On balance, I think this ceasefire is looking a little shakier right now, even with the new Lebanese president than it had a few weeks ago. We'll see. But if it does break down, the level of fighting won't be what it was a few months ago because Hezbollah doesn't have that capacity and the Iranians can't restock their weapons because Assad has fallen in Syria.
Buildings lie in ruin in North Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from Israel, January 13, 2025.
It’s been three months since Israeli forces killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a Gaza raid. Since then, his younger brother Mohammed has taken the reins.
What is known about him? He is believed to be about 50 and to have been a member of Hamas since his youth. According to reports, he isn’t nearly as familiar to the Israelis as Yahya, who spent decades in Israeli prisons before his 2011 release as part of a hostage swap deal with Hamas. Israeli security officials refer to Mohammed as “the Shadow.”
Why it matters: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to destroy Hamas as a prerequisite for ending the military campaign and allowing the formation of a new Gaza government. Hamas, for obvious reasons, rejects these conditions.
But after 15 months of war – which has reduced Gaza to rubble, displaced some 2 million people, and killed tens of thousands – that goal is elusive. A crippled Hamas remains active, especially in Northern Gaza, which Israel claimed earlier to have rid of the group.
Ceasefire, you say? The waning days of the Biden administration have seen a whirlwind of diplomacy to secure a deal that releases the remaining hostages held by Hamas, but key differences remain over the phasing of a ceasefire and conditions for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Incoming president Donald Trumphas warned that unless a deal is reached ahead of his inauguration, “all hell will break loose.”