WSJ What’s News - Negotiators Race to Extend Israel-Hamas Cease-Fire

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

A.M. Edition for Feb. 28. WSJ correspondent Summer Said reports that mediators are hoping to extend a Gaza cease-fire expiring this weekend, even as Hamas’s military wing prepares for a new fight. Plus, the FAA readies a hiring push to attract more U.S. air-traffic controllers. And, markets—and Trump’s team—struggle to keep up with a flurry of tariff activity from the president. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Want to own part of the company that makes your favorite burger? Now you can. With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD. Ready for you. Ukraine's Zelensky heads to Washington in a bid to win U.S. support. Plus, as mediators work to salvage an expiring Gaza ceasefire, Hamas's military wing prepares for a new fight. Orders were given to abandon cell phones. A bunch of Hamas fighters are going inside Gaza

to try to search for spies. So they definitely do think that there is a nice chance that the war will restart again. And Markets and Trump's team struggled to keep up with a flurry of tariff activity from the president. It's Friday, February 28th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. stories moving your world today. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is set to meet with President Trump at the White House this morning.

Zelensky is hoping to finalize a mineral rights deal and then appeal to Trump for security guarantees, though it's unclear whether those guarantees are forthcoming. A senior Trump administration official said yesterday the U.S. would not put boots on the ground in Ukraine, though they suggested some form of indirect support might be open for discussion so long as U.S. troops weren't in harm's way. A joint press conference between Trump and Zelensky is set for 1 p.m. Eastern at the conclusion of bilateral meetings. Meanwhile, it is shaping up to be a key weekend in Middle East diplomacy as the first phase of a current ceasefire

between Israel and Hamas is set to expire tomorrow. The U.S., a key mediator in the talks, has said it's committed to reaching a second phase which would see the war formally end but would need more time to do so. So how likely is that? And how are the parties to the war viewing things? Summer Said is a journal senior Middle East correspondent. Summer, you have always got a good pulse on when diplomatic talks are actually occurring

versus when this is all just bluster that we're hearing. What's happening? Are the parties talking? So currently the US, the Qataris and the Egyptian negotiators are in talks inside Cairo with the Israeli officials with the indirect participation of Hamas to try to at least extend the current ceasefire to encompass the holy months of Ramadan. The issue is still both sides want two different things.

So Hamas is happy to extend the deal, but with different terms, while Israel is demanding that even if we go for an extension, it would be at the current terms that we've had in phase one. They still have not figured out how we move to phase two. Hamas still asking to proceed with a comprehensive prisoner exchange. They wanted to encompass a definitive end to the war. They want the full withdrawal of the IDF and the rebuilding of Gaza, while the Israeli side is asking for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza and have absolutely zero participation in the day after.

Nat. Soterios Johnson If they can't work out a way to extend this first phase of the ceasefire by a month, what happens, do we know? Dr. Fahey So we've been talking to Arab officials or the mediators and they've been saying that the Israelis have been telling them that within a week, if we do not get more hostages released, Israel will definitely resume the war. Now, the chances of that remain unclear.

There is still a nice chance that we will get some kind of halfway solution where we will see a release of a couple of hostages, probably dead bodies that will get us a bit of an extension so they have more room to negotiate for phase two. You mentioned there Israel willing to resume fighting if something can't be worked out within a week. Earlier this week, you reported that Hamas's military forces were regrouping, new commanders were being appointed, they were working out where they might position fighters if there was a return to the war. Just expand on that a bit. That was Hamas's militant wing making those preparations.

Does their political wing necessarily feel the same way? And could that all just be posturing, not wanting to seem ahead of talks like they wouldn't be willing to fight if it came to it? So there is definitely a lot of posturing that is happening from both sides. However, for the last three weeks, Hamas has definitely inside Gaza, so the military wing has been acting as if war is about to restart. So there were orders that were given to all of their militants to abandon cell phones, go back to the basic modes of communications, make sure that they do not move, widen the open inside Gaza. They created a whole entire unit

to just monitor the borders and watch out for infiltrations. There's also a bunch of Hamas fighters that are going inside Gaza to try to search for spies or devices that were left in buildings or ruins or schools. So they definitely do think that there is a nice chance that the war will restart again. And in terms of what happens next in these talks, Summer, how do we factor in the Trump effect? He had a pretty galvanizing effect on the ceasefire process last month, demanding the release of hostages or else. Of course, there are still more than 60 hostages in Gaza, though

many of them are presumed dead. How should we see his and the U.S. role in all of this? Definitely Hamas has taken these threats very seriously. But they also know that the only leverage that they have right now are the hostages. So Arab officials do not believe that Hamas will be easily giving away their last leverage. They believe that once their hostages are out, that's it for them, that the game is up and they will have to leave. So this is definitely the most difficult stage of the negotiations. While it may sound a bit ridiculous to say that phase one was easier to reach considering the fact that we've been negotiating it since November 2023, it was always known that phase

two was going to be the most critical and the most difficult phase of the negotiations that we were ever going to encounter. Samir Saeed is a Wall Street Journal senior Middle East correspondent. Samir, thank you so much for the update. Thank you. Coming up, the FAA readies a hiring push for U.S. air traffic controllers, plus how markets are reacting to President Trump's latest tear of threats and more after the break.

The Trump administration wants to hire more air traffic controllers and spend billions of dollars to upgrade the nation's aviation system. As part of a plan to increase staffing, the Federal Aviation Administration will boost pay for air traffic control students at its academy in Oklahoma City by 30 percent and streamline its hiring and training process to attract the best candidates. It hopes to reverse staffing shortages that have strained workers and at times caused flight delays in recent years. While the administration has been cutting jobs across the federal government, including the FAA, controllers and aviation safety inspectors have been exempt. In an interview with the journal, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he'd also ask

Congress to fund tech upgrades to U.S. air traffic control, pointing to its reliance on decades-old copper wire, floppy disks, and phone jacks. A tweak in Google's algorithm has thrown product review sites into crisis. Sites offering tips on everything from mattresses to savings accounts, such as CNN underscored and Forbes vetted, rely on the tech giant to drive much of their traffic and therefore revenue. But over the past year, Google has changed how such sites appear in its search engine, saying it wants to offer users higher-quality results. Journal reporter Alexandra Bruel told our tech news briefing podcast that that has been devastating for a once-lucrative corner of the news media.

These sites in recent years have become more and more important for publishers. Publishers make money on product review sites when people go look at these products, click on links, and purchase the products on Amazon or wherever they're purchasing the products. So it's an e-commerce revenue stream. And for a while, these sites were growing and they were growing thanks in large part to traffic from Google. Now with this policy, it's become nearly impossible

for many of these websites to make money. According to data firm, SimilarWeb, traffic for personal finance recommendations site Forbes Advisor fell 83% in January, while CNN underscored and BuySide from WSJ, which is operated by Wall Street Journal parent Dow Jones, were both down more than 25% in that period. And let's look at what's moving or not moving markets as we close out the week, starting with the response to President Trump's latest trade moves.

We got a few more of them yesterday. Further 10 percent tariffs on products from China, and clarification that 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico would kick in next Tuesday. That's on top of promised 25 percent EU tariffs, measures targeting automobiles, pharmaceuticals, and semiconductors, and reciprocal tariffs meant to equalize U.S. levies with duties and non-tariff barriers imposed by other nations. Given that flurry of activity, I asked journal finance editor for Europe Alex Frangos how and if markets are

able to keep up. The markets are really struggling to interpret the moves. And I think there's a difference of opinion. Some investors see this all as posturing, get closer to the deadline, raise the stakes, but they think there's going to get a deal done. But yesterday, he upped the China tariffs. And I think that spooked people quite a bit. China's come out this morning, said that they're going to retaliate. Markets overseas took quite a hit. But there has been this cycle where there's a scare,

markets wobble a little bit, but then they get used to it. And there's a lot of people we talk to who say, no, they're just going to wait until there's an actual tariff. We have threats of a lot of things, deadlines looming, studies of this and that, and a real sense that the apparatus inside the administration is completely overwhelmed with all these proposals and how they're going to do with them and how quickly can they really implement them. So it's very much a mixed bag. As the journal's Gavin Bade reports, Trump administration officials are privately indicating that the president's full reciprocal tariff action could take six months or longer to implement, with people

familiar with the discussion saying a previously announced April 2nd deadline affords too little time to fully analyze the tariff and non-trade barriers of countries around the world. Asian stocks have ended the day deep in the red. Meanwhile, Bitcoin has dropped below the $80,000 mark, accelerating a recent retreat from highs reached ahead of Trump's inauguration last month as investors lose their appetite for risky assets like cryptocurrencies. And on deck today, the Fed's favored measure of inflation, the Personal Consumption Expenditure's price index, is set for release at 8.30 a.m. Eastern.

And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevent and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend. Thanks for listening.