The Daily - A Fragile Cease-Fire in Gaza

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

After 15 months of war, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a temporary cease-fire. The deal prompted hope that the war could end soon, but also caused worry that the tentative terms could easily fall apart.Patrick Kingsley, the Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, explains why the agreement finally happened — and what it means for Gaza, Israel and the broader Middle East.Guests: Patrick Kingsley, the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Here’s what we know about the agreement.The Times obtained a copy of the provisional deal. Here’s what it says.Follow continuing coverage.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Well, I've been waiting this moment for 15 months. Finally, I cannot hear any drones. For 15 months I've been away from seeing my daughters. I'll be happy when I'm returned to North Gaza. I know it's completely destroyed, but still, I wanna go there. I wanna go to see my daughters, to hug them, to feel like they are still alive.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. And this is The Daily. After more than a year of war, Israel and Hamas have agreed to a temporary ceasefire. Relief, I guess, would be the first reaction. I'll be relieved when the hostages are back in Israel. That's when I'll be relieved. It prompted hope that the war could soon end. But also worry that the tentative terms could easily fall apart.

Today my colleague Patrick Kingsley on why the agreement finally happened and what it means for Gaza, Israel and the broader Middle East. It's Thursday, January 16th. Patrick, you've been covering this war since the very start. In fact, we've had you on so many times to explain to us the developments, to really educate us about what's going on there. And after many failed attempts at a ceasefire, one has finally been agreed on. We're speaking on Wednesday afternoon. So far, what do we know about what it says?

In essence, it's a three-stage ceasefire that could, if all goes well, end up being a permanent truce. The first phase is the only part of the deal that is really nailed down. That's a six-week phase during which 33 hostages, mostly alive, but some of them dead, are set to be released by Hamas and its allies who captured those hostages right at the start of the war on October 7, 2023. And in exchange, Israel is supposed to release several hundred Palestinian prisoners from

Israeli jails. And during that six weeks, we also expect Israeli troops to gradually withdraw, allowing several hundred thousand Palestinians who were displaced from their homes in northern Gaza to tents and makeshift camps in the south of the strip to return to their homes, to move back northward to a decimated Gaza city. During all of that movement and exchanges of captives, there will be more negotiations to see if they can extend this initial six-week phase into another six-week phase, during which the deal is supposed to become permanent and more hostages are supposed to be released for more prisoners. The problem is there is still much to be negotiated about that second phase.

And Patrick, what still remains to be negotiated exactly? There seems to be still some disagreement about where exactly Israel will withdraw from. And there's enough ambiguity in there that the deal could collapse after six weeks, if not before. And that ambiguity is intentional. Israel, and first and foremost, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, did not want to agree to a deal that would definitively end the war. Hamas had the opposite perspective. They wanted a deal that would end the war for certain. And so the mediators between the two sides came up with ambiguous wording that would

allow each side to feel like they were getting more or less what they want. The wording allows Israel to say that they can break the arrangement after six weeks and it provides the possibility for Hamas that the ceasefire will extend beyond 42 days into something permanent and that they will be able to survive the war intact as a group and in power as the governing force over Gaza. Patrick you've talked through two phases. What's the third phase? The third phase would not be significantly different from the second phase, but there would be final exchanges of dead bodies and other human remains, as well as the start of a massive reconstruction project to rebuild the Gaza Strip over several years. So why, after all these months, is this ceasefire finally happening now?

I think there's several factors here. One, Israel is stronger. Two, Hamas is weaker. And three, the Trump administration is about to come into power and has put pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli leader. Yeah, so let's dig into each of those points then. Why don't you start with Israel stronger? Since last summer, Israel has had a series of military successes. It has most obviously weakened Hamas, taken over more of the Gaza Strip, destroyed more of Hamas' infrastructure, killed more

Hamas leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, the man who did more than anyone to mastermind the October 7th attack on Israel at the start of the war. Further afield, Israel has substantially weakened Hezbollah, a key ally of Hamas in Lebanon. It has weakened Hamas' main benefactor, Iran, destroying much of its air defenses. And another member of the Iran-led alliance, the Syrian government, has collapsed. So Prime Minister Netanyahu can present more or less the same deal to the Israeli public, and in particular to his far-right allies, as being less of a capitulation as it was once seen by parts of his coalition government, because he and Israel are coming from a position

of greater military strength. And the flip side is that Hamas is therefore weaker. Gaza is decimated. Hamas' goal of setting off a kind of broader regional conflict that would substantially weaken Israel or perhaps even destroy it has come to nothing. And the going analysis is that this has made Hamas more willing to come to the table and agree to a deal that was on that table already for several months. And the third factor is the Trump factor.

It's the Biden administration in tandem with the Qatari government and the Egyptian government that has done most of the running in the negotiations, helping to draft the details of this agreement that has just been signed and conjoining the Israeli government for more than a year towards this agreement. But it seems to be the incoming Trump administration, President-elect Trump himself, and his incoming Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff that have applied the pressure that has been the straw that broke the camel's back. Steve Witkoff came to Israel last week, met with Netanyahu.

Since that meeting, the negotiations have gone from advancing fairly slowly to suddenly getting to the point of a deal being reached. And it seems to be that Trump, who has said for months that he wants to see a deal by the time of his inauguration early next week, may have been the decisive factor in getting this deal over the line. And what exactly did Witkoff say? I mean, how did he put pressure on Netanyahu that may have kind of really moved it for the Israelis here?

We went inside the room, so we can't say for sure, but it's possible that it was some combination of carrot and stick. The stick being that Trump, who's an unpredictable actor, would be very angry if a deal wasn't reached. The carrot may be that the Trump administration will back Netanyahu if he decides to resume the war after six weeks. That was less likely under President Biden, but it's seen as being potentially more likely under a Trump administration who might grant greater leeway to Israel in Gaza than President Biden.

The reverse could also be true. Having helped to author this deal, the Trump administration may see its reputation as being tied to its success and may place more pressure on Netanyahu in several weeks. And we await to see which of those two outcomes will be the case. So is the Trump envoy working directly with the Biden people on this? That's been one of the more remarkable aspects of the recent days of negotiations. You've had representatives of two administrations that really don't see eye to eye and have very different visions of American democracy joining forces to get this

deal over the line. The Biden administration that has led the way in drafting and wrangling over many of the details over so many months in these negotiations. It's Trump's Middle East envoy who appears to have played a major role in getting this deal suddenly over the line in recent days. So those are the mechanics of the deal. And we are left with questions about how exactly those mechanics will play out. And we're also left with questions

about what all this means in the long term for Israelis, for Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and also for the region, the Middle East as a whole. We'll be right back. So Patrick, how should we understand this deal and what it means for Gazans, for Hamas, for Israel, and really for the world? For Gazans, it is at least for a few weeks respite from one of the most intense aerial campaigns and ground invasions certainly in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also in 21st century warfare and Even if this deal collapses after six weeks, it gives them the opportunity to have a night's sleep without

bombardment. It gives people a chance to find their loved ones whose corpses have been trapped on the rubble for months, in some cases over a year. It gives hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in southern Gaza the ability to finally, after more than a year of displacement, return home to northern Gaza. Scores of universities, hospitals, medical centers have been destroyed during this war, and it could even take decades to repair some of that damage. And Patrick, who will do all of that rebuilding?

So Hamas is a movement and the Hamas controlled guards and authorities don't really have the ability to do much of this on their own. They're going to rely on massive overseas help from the rest of the Arab world, from the United Nations, and exactly how that is going to work has not yet been decided. And Patrick, what about Hamas in the context of this deal? What does the deal mean for that group? The deal gives them the chance of survival. As the war went on, they were losing more troops, more operatives, more leaders. Their top leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed, if you

recall, in October. Sinwar's predecessor, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed also in the summer. Now that the war has stopped, at least for now, and that there's a possibility that the initial six-week ceasefire will extend into something longer, they may be able to survive the war both intact as a movement and in power as a governing force in the Gaza Strip. Which is pretty remarkable given where we started, which was Israel saying that Hamas would be eliminated from the Gaza Strip. They said words to that effect after the October 7th raid by Hamas and its allies. Israel basically said its two goals of the war would be to return the hostages captured by Hamas and its allies on

October 7th and to destroy Hamas's military capabilities and its governing capabilities. If they are still able to govern the Gaza Strip after the war ends, or if the ceasefire becomes a permanent one, then that would represent something of a victory for the group, even if their actions have resulted in the decimation of the territory that they controlled before the war began. So to that point, what about Israel? What does this deal mean for Israel? In the short term, it brings also some respite, also some joy to an Israeli society that has

been traumatized both by the October 7th attacks, which were the deadliest attacks on Israel in its history, but also by the 466 days since in which Israelis have been torn by guilt and sadness over the continued incarceration of their friends, relatives in Gaza. And if at least some of those hostages can be released, it counts as a kind of redemption, not only for the hostages themselves, but for Israelis across the political spectrum. Longer term, if the deal holds and Netanyahu decides to continue it and to nudge it towards something permanent, then it could severely destabilize his own coalition government. He is in power in part through the support of several far-right ministers and lawmakers who deeply oppose ending the war with Hamas still in power,

even if that means leaving some hostages inside Gaza. So if he does agree to take this from a six-week deal into a longer arrangement, they could leave his coalition potentially destabilizing it or maybe even collapsing it, which could lead to early elections and perhaps, depending on the results of those elections, a transition of power within Israeli society. So short term, this brings relief and joy for Israelis as well as people in Gaza. In the long term, it could deepen some of the divides that we've seen split Israeli society for many different

reasons in recent years. You said that one of the reasons we're here in this moment talking about a ceasefire now is because Israel is actually in a stronger position today. And it makes me wonder about its position in the broader region. You know, as you said, a lot of Hamas' allies have been weakened. So do you think that through this war, Israel is ultimately in a more powerful position now in the region? Yes and no. In reputational terms,

Israel has dealt itself damage by the way it has been perceived to conduct this war. It is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as his former defense minister, Yav Galant, are wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. There has been criticism of Israel almost like never before as a result of the way it's conducted its war in Gaza. And in that sense, you could argue it has lost or it has at least lost ground in a diplomatic

war, a war for legitimacy and a war for reputation. But is that important to Israel at all? I mean, the diplomacy, you know, okay, there's the reputation, but it's not fundamentally related to its power in the region in winning, right? So Israel depends on international support for at least some of its actions. It depends on American funds and American military resources, ammunition, fighter jets, in order to wage its wars. And within the Middle East, it depends on good relations with the Arab world in order to cement its long-term status within the region. Before the war, Israel was close to forging a landmark diplomatic deal between itself

and Saudi Arabia, the most influential country in the Arab world. The war put those negotiations on ice and in fact made it much harder for Saudi Arabia to be seen, to be doing a deal with a country that many people in the Arab world believe is committing a genocide against Palestinians. And if the war ends, Israelis will hope that they can get those negotiations back on track. But militarily, yes, as you say, Israel has weakened Hamas, they've weakened Hezbollah, they have weakened Iran, and all of those battles contributed at least in some part to the collapse of Iran's ally, the Syrian government. And so Israel, despite all its internal divisions, has proved itself as the region's strongest

military power. It means, or at least Israelis will hope it means, whatever reputational loss Israel has suffered because of the conduct of its war in Gaza, both in the Middle East and across the world, it is simply too powerful militarily to be wished away. And that whatever the anger many people within the Middle East feel towards Israel, their leaders will feel that Israel is a country that they have to work with precisely because it is such a military force. Patrick, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. Patrick, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. The ceasefire is expected to be formally ratified by the Israeli cabinet and government in a vote on Thursday morning. It is set to take effect on Sunday, with Hamas releasing some hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners on day one. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today.

On a busy day of confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's cabinet, his pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, faced tough questions from Democrats about whether she could stand up to the president-elect and operate independently from him. So my questions now are, can you tell our truth to the president? So let me start with an easy truth that you could speak to the president. Can you tell us, can you tell him that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election? Can you say that? Do you have the independence to say that?

Do you have the gravitas, the stature, the intestinal fortitude to say, Donald Trump, you lost the 2020 election. Can you tell us that here today? Senator, what I can tell you is I will never play politics. You're trying to engage me in a gotcha. I won't do it. Bondi repeatedly dodged questions about whether she agreed with Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen

and whether she would support his plan to pardon January 6 rioters. Are the felons convicted of breaking into the Capitol on January 6th hostages or patriots, as President-elect Trump has said repeatedly? Do you agree with his characterization of the felons that I refer to? I am not familiar with that statement, Senator. I just familiarized you with that statement.

Do you agree with that statement? I'm not familiar with it, Senator. Bondi is expected to be confirmed in the coming days. And... Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.

Speaking to the American public for the final time before departing office on Monday, President Joe Biden described what he said were his gravest concerns before receding into life as a private citizen. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. In a clear rebuke of Metta's decision to end its fact-checking program, Biden warned of a, quote, tech industrial complex that he said is overwhelming Americans and called the country to, quote,

hold social media platforms accountable. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Alex Stern, and Muj Zaydi with help from Michelle Bonja. It was edited by Chris Haxel, Lisa Chow, and Paige Cowitt, contains original music by Diane Wong and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsvark of Wonderly. Special thanks to Adam Raskin.

That's it for the daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.