Worldcrunch
Israel and Hamas have reached a ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States — with an important role played by Donald Trump — along with Qatar and Egypt. It’s a relief to families of hostages and Palestinians in Gaza but also raises the question of the “day after,” which remains unwritten.
Jordan has cautiously followed the emergence of Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, from the ranks of jihad fighters to a statesman. Amman is increasingly concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood could exploit the rise of Islamists in Syria to sow chaos in Jordan, or the return of extremist fighters to areas on its borders.
The question of who will succeed Yahya Sinwar is essentially a question of whether Hamas will return from its “Iranian exile” and embrace the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and above all ‘mastermind’ of October 7, is dead. Washington and Paris are calling on Israel to seize this opportunity to put an end to the war, but Netanyahu may choose to cash in another dividend.
The Israeli military says Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, has been killed in Gaza. The strike is a major victory for Israel, closing a chapter in recent Palestinian history in which Sinwar rose to the top of Hamas, and bet everything on the Oct. 7 attack, which made him more divisive than ever among the people of Gaza.
Since Oct. 7, the Israel-Hamas conflict has continued to spread, deepening divisions within Israeli society and radicalizing a section of public opinion. Radicals both in Israel and Hamas are taking advantage of the chaos of war to prevent peace — just as they did in the 1990s. For how long will the world allow them to do so?
Almost 10 months after the Oct. 7 attack, the Middle East appears to be on the verge of a second act of tragedy. This new escalation of the conflict could result in regional war on a massive scale.
An Israeli missile struck children playing soccer in a schoolyard a day after international outrage at Russia’s bombing of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital. As the Israel-Hamas war drags on, ceasefire negotiations get harder as the rest of the world looks away.
The concept of “resistance” adopted by militants in the Middle East has a close relationship with oppression and “divine victory,” which Hamas and Hezbollah both embrace in a false interpretation of the Koran, despite the heavy human and material losses inflicted.
The announcement of the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor that he would seek arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister, as well as three Hamas leaders, provoked indignant reactions in Israel and the U.S. and revealed the rifts between the West and the global South.