“the return of the 20 remaining living hostages who had been taken by Hamas. The terrorist group is still looking for the remains of the 28 hostages they killed, to hopefully return the bodies to the families of those still grieving their loss. Meanwhile, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were released back to the West Bank and to Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, to fulfill the terms of the deal.
…
“The main issue still hasn’t been solved: Hamas’s weapons,” Akram Atallah, a London-based Palestinian journalist, told The New York Times. “The Israelis are demanding Hamas disarm, which is not a simple administrative measure. Hamas was founded on the basis of bearing arms.” The most likely possible outcome looks like Hamas refusing disarmament, the Israeli military responding with some amount of continued surveillance and physical presence in the Strip, and some amount of conflict bubbling up sporadically.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/14/war-is-over/?nab=1
“The Iranian parliament, led by the charismatic Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, was trying to limit the power of the monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh nationalized the oil fields, provoking a British blockade, while also clashing with the shah over domestic policy.
Mossadegh trusted the United States as a neutral mediator, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. The Eisenhower administration suspected that Mossadegh was too close to communists, and the CIA supported a coup d’etat by destabilizing the country. In August 1953, after months of protests subsidized by the U.S. and the U.K., monarchist generals in contact with the CIA surrounded Mossadegh’s house with tanks, bringing the shah back to near-absolute power.
Instead of allowing Britain to regain its dominance over Iran, the Eisenhower administration forced Iran to accept an American-led oil consortium. And the CIA helped train the shah’s fearsome new secret police, the SAVAK. When the shah finally fell in 1979, young revolutionaries took revenge by raiding the U.S. embassy, which they called a “den of spies,” and holding everyone inside hostage for more than a year. That began a 46-year conflict that continues to this day.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/23/a-brief-bloody-history-of-all-the-times-the-u-s-caused-chaos-in-the-middle-east/
“An Israeli-American soldier held hostage for more than 19 months in the Gaza Strip was released Monday by Hamas in a goodwill gesture toward the Trump administration that could lay the groundwork for a new ceasefire with Israel.”
…
“Israel says it still plans to escalate its offensive”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-says-release-american-israeli-073629378.html
“Even before this most recent war between Israel and Hamas, the very tiny, very rich Gulf state had carved out a bit of a reputation as a diplomatic broker, especially in hostage negotiations. This has been a deliberate gambit on Qatar’s part, which has cultivated and managed pragmatic ties with the region’s main players — becoming a kind of middle man between parties that otherwise do not get along. It’s a key US ally, hosting an American military base critical to US operations in places like Syria and Iraq. Qatar also has ties to Islamist groups, including Hamas, whose political arm has an office in Doha.
This has given Qatar leverage — and, most importantly, access. The United States and Israel do not negotiate directly with Hamas. That has made the Qataris an indispensable go-between. “You have to talk to Hamas to get anything done,” said F. Gregory Gause, professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. “The Qataris are there to help you out — and they’re there to remind you that they’re helping you out.”
Qatar’s role in this conflict extends beyond this week’s deal. In late October, Qatar helped negotiate the release of a couple hostages held by Hamas, and it may be helping to tamp down a wider regional conflict, given its good relations with Iran and open channels with the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah. Qatar played a role in mediating the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, and has supported Gaza, including financing salaries for Hamas civil servants through the sale of fuel to the group — with the okay of Israel, in part because Israel saw it as a stabilizing measure.
Qatar’s diplomacy isn’t limited to the realm of Israel-Hamas, either. Qatar served as an intermediary between the US and the Taliban before the two ultimately negotiated a peace deal directly, in Doha. Qatar’s open lines with the Taliban helped facilitate evacuations from Afghanistan after Kabul’s fall in 2021, and even after. And Qatar has increasingly become known for its skill in hostage negotiations, even outside the region. It recently helped broker a deal to get Russia to return four Ukrainian kids to their families.
“It wants to be influential, diplomatically, and it does understand that, obviously, it’s not a regional superpower that can dictate things,” said Bessma Momani, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo. Yet maintaining these delicate ties — and working those connections — is a very good way for Qatar to advance its interests, and its security. That approach comes with some risks, but, at least right now, they don’t outweigh the upsides for Qatar.
Qatar finds “a way to be helpful and resourceful in specific, niche areas that can have outsized influence,” Momani said. “That’s their strategy.””
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/11/22/23972238/israel-hamas-deal-qatar-broker
“One of the militants interviewed in the videos said that Hamas leaders promised him a cash bounty for every hostage he brought back to Gaza. “Whoever kidnaps a hostage and brings them to Gaza gets a stipend … an apartment and $10,000,” said the man, who added that Hamas promised to pay him in U.S. currency.”
…
“Toward the end of the compilation the men are asked if killing women and children is allowed in Islam. They all answered no. The interrogators also asked if their actions were akin to those of the Islamic State terrorist group. All of the men answered yes.
Douglas said the video was also meant to send a message to Hamas members in Gaza. “They’re doing this to put it on video. I think the whole ISIS and Hamas, equating those two organizations, is a good takeaway for Israel,” Douglas said, adding that other Hamas members are likely included in the target audience.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/videotaped-confessions-hamas-militants-kidnapped-145756186.html
“they like to say that they are an elected government, which is narrowly true, but again, the last election, the last parliamentary election, was in 2006. The average person in Gaza is 18 years old. The median person is 18 years old, which means the last time there was a Palestinian election, most people in Gaza weren’t even born. So they literally have had no opportunity to choose their leadership. I’ve been going to Gaza for more than a decade now, and one thing that I find increasingly when I go is: There’s a level of popular anger and popular resentment aimed at Hamas. Of course, there’s anger towards Israel, there’s anger towards Egypt, both of which maintain a blockade on Gaza, but the group has lost a lot of popular support. It was elected in 2006, partly as a protest vote against Fatah, which is the nationalist party that controls the West Bank. It’s an incredibly corrupt party. People opted for Hamas in 2006 not necessarily because they agreed with the group’s ideology but because they thought it was a cleaner alternative.
It has turned out not to be that. Most people in Gaza think that Hamas is equally corrupt, and they think that it has done an atrocious job running the territory over the past 16 years, but they have no opportunity to change their leaders, and so they’re stuck with this unpopular, ineffective government.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hamas-timed-attack-deliberately-now-151255255.html