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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.

REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
Hamas released three Israeli hostages on Saturday in exchange for 200 Palestinian prisoners. But the return of Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami, and Or Levy sparked outrage in Israel due to their severely malnourished state.
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Demonstrators attend a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, in front of the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, February 6, 2025.

REUTERS/Umit Bektas

President Donald Trump is doubling down on his proposal to remove Palestinians from Gaza for resettlement. He insisted early Thursday that Israel will give the territory to the US, with no military intervention required (The UN and other international bodies would argue that Gaza is an occupied territory and isn’t Israel’s to hand over).

Trump then signed an order on Thursday imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court, accusing it of “illegitimate and baseless actions” for having issued an arrest warrant last year against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The court’s president, Judge Tomoko Akane, has said such sanctions undermine the ICC’s work and put “the very existence of the court at stake.”

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Silhouettes of soldiers stand in front of a computer screen displaying an image of President Donald Trump, alongside a Palestinian flag, on Feb. 05, 2025.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Reuters

Unsurprisingly, much of the world reacted with horror to US President Donald Trump’s call on Monday, at a press conference with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, for the deportation of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million people and a US takeover of the enclave.

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- YouTube

Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

What does Putin mean when he says Europe "will stand at the feet of the master"?

It means that he loves to troll his adversaries. Don't you remember when he said that he actually thought Biden would be a better president from Russia's perspective than Trump? He trolls. It's all misinformation. It's propaganda. It's all served to undermine and show that he's powerful, and he can say whatever he wants. And of course, he would love to see a fight between the Americans and their allies, whether it's the Nordics on Greenland or it's Canada on 51st state, or it's Panama on the canal, or it's Europe on tariffs. And he wants to undermine the countries that gets a divide and conquer kind of response from Putin. And that is what he is doing when he trolls the Europeans.

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Syria's newly appointed President for a transitional phase Ahmed al-Sharaa meets with Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, February 4, 2025.

Murat Cetinmuhurdar/PPO/Handout

In early December, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria – a longstanding ally of Iran – left a power vacuum at the heart of the region.

Now, someone is moving into it. On Tuesday, Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss a security pact that would reportedly involve Turkey setting up air bases in Syria and training a new Syrian military.

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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump after signing the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in Washington DC, in 2020. This week Netanyahu arrives for fresh talks with Trump.

REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Donald Trump on Tuesday as part of a weeklong visit to the US that includes talks with lawmakers and military officials, making him the first foreign leader to meet with the US president in person since the start of his second term.

What’s on the agenda?

Gaza: Phase one of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and prisoner exchange has largely held, but a second phase – envisioning further exchanges and mapping out Gaza’s post war governance – is in limbo. Netanyahu has signalled he wants to return to fighting soon as Hamas regroups in the devastated Gaza strip, but Trump has pledged to broker an end to the war.

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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, right, and President Donald Trump's envoy Richard Grenell shake hands at the Miraflores Palace, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 31, 2025.

Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERS

6: On Friday, Venezuela released six detained Americans, sending them home with Richard Grenell, the US envoy for special missions, following his talks with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. President Donald Trump said Saturday that Venezuela had agreed to take back the Venezuelan migrants facing deportation from the US and to “supply the transportation.”

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