Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
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.”
FILE PHOTO: Children eat bread on a street near a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, after the ousting of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, December 24, 2024.
Syria seeks sanction relief
Diplomats and foreign ministers from17 Arab and EU states convened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday to discuss the lifting of economic sanctions on Syria, originally imposed during the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad. Removing the sanctionsis key to reconstruction efforts for Damascus but will hinge on the new government’s ability to guarantee human rights in the country.
After the meeting, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbockadvocated maintaining sanctions against Assad’s allies but alleviating restrictions that affect the general population. Baerbock alsopledged an additional $51.2 million in aid for essential services. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also announceda meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Jan. 27 to discuss further relief measures.
As for the US, while it has not lifted sanctions, last week it issueda six-month exemption for certain transactions with Syrian governing institutions to expedite humanitarian assistance.
We’re watching whether those measures will be extended under the new administration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who in December said that Syria’s change of regime is “not our fight.” Trump also remarked that“Turkey is going to hold the key to Syria” – something thatSaudi Arabia may take issue with as it positions itself as a key regional player in Syria’s rebuilding.
A house burns as powerful winds fueling devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area force people to evacuate, in Altadena, California, on Jan. 8, 2025.
Wildfires are raging in Los Angeles. So is their politicization.
As wildfires scorched Los Angeles for a second day on Wednesday, hurricane-strength winds and limited water supplies complicated efforts to contain the flames. The three main fires – in the Pacific Palisades, the Pasadena area, and the rural San Fernando Valley – have burned thousands of acres, decimated hundreds of buildings, killed two people, and placed tens of thousands of people under evacuation orders.
Overnight, all the fire hydrants in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood went dry, and officials are raising alarm bells that the city’s water system is outdated and ill-equipped to keep up with climate change, which is not only making fires more frequent in LA but also spreading them faster.
President Joe Biden is sending money to the region, thanks to the $100 billion in disaster aid passed by Congress before Christmas, $29 billion of which went to FEMA. Incoming President Donald Trump, meanwhile, accused Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday of blocking water to the region “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water.” Trump appears to be referring to rules adjusting water allocations for cities and farms to protect areas where populations in Northern California where fish populations are depleting. But most of LA’s water is not imported from that region; it comes from groundwater and the aqueduct that runs east of the Sierra Nevada.
In the past, Trump has hesitated to give aid to Democratic-leaning states, and he has been critical of FEMA – falsely accusing the agency of misusing funds for illegal immigrants after Hurricane Helene. While he has not yet announced his pick to run the agency, its fate, and the fate of disaster-prone blue-states, could be fraught for the next four years.
A man rushes past members of security forces during clashes between gangs and security forces, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti November 11, 2024.
UN will resume aid flights to Haiti as gangs gain ground
The UN Humanitarian Air Service is scheduled to restart flights to Haiti on Wednesday, a week after several planes attempting to land at Port-au-Prince airport came under small arms fire. The attacks wounded a flight attendant and resulted in the US Federal Aviation Administration banning all commercial flights to the island nation for a month.
Despite the arrival this summer of a Kenyan-led international force to help Haitian National Police push back against growing gang violence, the gangs have continued to sow chaos. The UN estimates that 20,000 people fled Port-au-Prince over the course of four days of fighting last week, and on Monday, an attack on the affluent suburb of Petion-Ville — as safe a place as you’ll find in the capital — resulted in at least 28 deaths. Women and girls are being victimized through the systemic use of sexual violence by the gangs, and medical providers have reported a “worrying increase” of such attacks this year, with some areas seeing 40 rape victims seeking treatment daily, just a fraction of the total.
Police are far from blameless: Doctors Without Borders says cops attacked one of their ambulances on Nov. 11, tear gassed the paramedics, held them captive, and summarily executed at least two patients, who the police said were gang members. There is chaos in the corridors of power, as GZERO reported last week, with erstwhile Prime Minister Garry Conille forced out of office and accusations of corruption flying in the transitional presidential council.
Is there hope? Not much. The resumption of aid flights may help some Haitians avoid acute hunger but will do little to end the violence. We’re watching for another 600 Kenyan troops to be deployed this month as promised, and to see whether other countries that have pledged forces follow through. We’re also following US efforts to transform the Kenyan-led mission into a proper UN peacekeeping operation before the Trump administration takes power in late January.
New buildings skyline in Changjon area, Pyongan Province, Pyongyang, North Korea
Putin to visit North Korea and Vietnam
Russian state media reported Monday that President Vladimir Putin will travel to North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks as Moscow tries to build influence among middle powers in Asia.
This will be Putin’s first trip to Pyongyang in 24 years, and he’ll find the city much changed. In 2000, the massive unfinished Ryugyong Hotel loomed skeletally over Stalinist-era apartment blocks, in an almost-too-on-the-nose metaphor for the country’s paranoid and feeble state two years after the 1994-1998 mass famine. Putin was in town to officially reestablish relations with North Korea, which had ruptured following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, the DPRK is no less totalitarian, but the economy can now support a facade of prosperity in Pyongyang — including cladding for that still-empty hotel, and some high-rises nearby to soften the landscape. It also now has nuclear weapons to protect itself from the US and artillery shells Russia needs in Ukraine, meaning Putin has to show up with something a little more high-tech in hand.
He’s previously pledged to help North Korea put spy satellites in orbit, which it accomplished for the first time last year. But a subsequent launch this May, which South Korean intelligence believes was aided by Russian technicians, exploded shortly after takeoff. Nonetheless, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he wants to launch three more spy satellites this year, and we have our eye out for any indication of where the cooperation might go from here.
The Vietnam leg is less juicy by comparison. Hanoi and Moscow have a tight military relationship stretching back to the early Cold War, but Vietnam has recently been courting better relations with the US to offset threats from China. We’re expecting a carefully choreographed visit with little that could rock the boat.
XIÁN, CHINA- In the photos, people visit the scenic place of the city wall of Xi'an in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, northwest China, on March 4, 2020.
Hard Numbers: Chinese cities lift home-buying restrictions, Humanitarian aid ship sets sail, Car gun theft triples, Opposition wins in North Macedonia, Malaysia introduces orangutan diplomacy
230 million: On Thursday, officials in Hangzhou and Xi’an, cities with a combined population of more than 25 million people, lifted all restrictions on buying new homes. The moves are part of a push by many Chinese cities to bolster the country’s sagging property market. The announcements drew more than230 million views on the social media site Weibo.
1: Thefirst ship moving humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza departed Thursday for a floating platform built by the US military. On arrival, the cargo will be transferred to smaller US vessels that will then bring it ashore.
3: A new report finds the rate of guns stolen from cars in the United States hastripled over the past decade. In 2022, the last year for which stats are available, about 112,000 guns were reported stolen in the US, and just over half were taken from automobiles, most of them parked outside people’s homes.
58: Following an election earlier this week in North Macedonia, the opposition VRMO will control58 of the 120 seats in Parliament and the presidency. As a result, party officials say they can form a coalition government with like-minded allies to defy demands from Bulgaria’s government to recognize rights for the country’s Bulgarian minority in its constitution. Bulgaria can block North Macedonia’s bid to join the European Union, which requires unanimous approval of all members.
2: Malaysia’s government announced a plan to send rare orangutans, majestic primates only found in the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra, as gifts to zoos in countries that buy its palm oil. Malaysia isthe world’s second-largest producer of palm oil, a product found in more than half of supermarket packaged products. The EU said last year it wouldphase out the import of palm oil as a biofuel because its production encourages deforestation in some of the last regions where orangutans live wild.A crane moves humanitarian aid for Gaza in a joint mission between NGOs Open Arms and World Central Kitchen at the port of Larnaca, Cyprus, March 8, 2024.
Aid trickles into Gaza – but how’s it getting there?
Amid warnings that close to 600,000 Gazans face famine, the World Food Programme said six of its trucks managed to enter northern Gaza for just the first time in three weeks on Wednesday.
What aid is actually getting into the enclave, and by what routes?
By land: Before the war, an average of 500 aid trucks entered the Gaza strip daily. In the first week of March, the Israeli government, which controls access points into Gaza (see our explainer here), allowed in an average of just 164 per day.
By air: The US, UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and France have all begun airdropping food. But a single truck can deliver ten times as much food as a plane, according to the UN, and people who need food the most might not get any.
By sea: An EU-backed ship is sailing to Gaza from Cyprus now, carrying about ten trucks worth of aid. A US Army team is also sailing from Virginia with equipment to build a floating pier, which could theoretically receive enough food to feed Gaza, but will take at least two months to become operational.Palestinians are carrying injured victims to the hospital following an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on March 7, 2024, as battles continue between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
No Gaza truce by Ramadan
The Hamas delegation left Cairo Thursday after four days of fruitless talks that Israel boycotted, meaning there will be no cease-fire in Gaza ahead of Ramadan.
The impediments: Israel boycotted the talks because Hamas refused to provide a list of living hostages in advance. Hamas, for its part, said it could not agree to any cease-fire without Israel committing to withdrawing its troops in a phased pullout.
The nightmare for Gazans: A quarter of the population is reportedly "one step away" from famine conditions — with 575,000 on the verge of starvation.
France, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the US, and Jordan have airdropped aid, but the trickle won’t suffice. US President Joe Biden is expected to announce the construction of a floating pier off Gaza to take in aid by sea in his State of the Union speech tonight.
What we’re watching: Will Israel go ahead with its threatened invasion of Rafah? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had set a March 10 deadline for hostages to be returned. A leaked US diplomatic cable this week said that such an invasion could result in “mass civilian casualties, extensive population displacement, and the collapse of the existing humanitarian response.”