I do not believe that Trump cares about Palestinians at all, but saying he has had nothing to do with this is just wrong at this stage, as much as we all hate it; we have Arab diplomats stating otherwise, and even the far right Israeli media is upset with Trump's stance. 

and I'm not sure what this secondary gain is yet, it could be as simple as turning Michigan red for the foreseeable future, it could be because he was promised something in return, it could be because he really wants to be seen as the peace guy and the anti-war president (he's not), time will tell in the end, but however you cut it, and morality aside, it was the politically smart and the obvious thing to do all along.

The question becomes, why the hell dead Biden not do the politically smart thing? 

Biden didn't just block the primary from happening, but he also tanked Kamala's campaign with his indefensible stance, the bigger problem is that he divided and weakened the left everywhere in the world, for example, UK Labour will suffer for generations because they couldn't oppose Biden, I really don't see them ever recovering from this. The irreparable damage this "centrist" president caused is unmeasurable and extends far beyond the USA. It wasn't just Palestinians who suffered, but Israelis too

Well done on Trump for getting such an easy win, even if he doesn't care for Palestinians, it's a win that could've been just as easily claimed by Biden, Macron, and Keir, but this is the level of political irresponsibility Biden has imposed on us all. 

Main events from Januari 18th

Yemen’s Houthis claim new attack on US aircraft carrier

In a statement, the Houthis said its fighters have targeted the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier “with a number of drones and cruise missiles” in the Red Sea. It also warned “hostile forces in the Red Sea of ​​the consequences of any aggression against [Yemen] during the ceasefire period in Gaza”.

The attacks marked the eight time the Yemeni rebel group have claimed an assault on a US aircraft carrier since it arrived in the Red Sea in December.

Earlier, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Al Jazeera that the group would stop military operations in support of Gaza when the ceasefire came into effect on Sunday.

US forces launch attacks near Yemen’s capital: Report

The Houthi-run Al Masirah TV is reporting that US forces have launched four attacks on the Al-Azraqeen area north of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. Earlier, the Houthis said they had launched an attack on a US aircraft carrier in the Red Sea.

Oil, Famine and Genocide - Inside Yemen's Forgotten War | ENDEVR Documentary



After seven years of war, there is no end in sight to the suffering in Yemen. In this exclusive film we report on the situation in the north-west of Yemen, held by the Houthis. 21 million people live in this enclave.

There, since 2015, out of sight, a dirty war has been going on. According to UN agencies, Yemen is facing one of the worst famines in the world with 400,000 children reportedly at risk of death. New diseases have appeared since the beginning of the war and there has been a sharp increase in babies born with abnormalities. But the war in Yemen is about more than just competing religious ideologies. Yemen owns substantial and underexploited oil reserves and controls roads leading to the Suez canal.

UN chief visits Lebanon as deadline for Israeli pullout looms

The UN secretary-general came to Lebanon to show support for the country’s new leaders. There’s a new president and a new prime minister, who is in the process of forming a new government.

Antonio Guterres said the international community is going to stand by them as they pursue recovery efforts.

The past few years have been very difficult for this country. The state is bankrupt and the economy has all but collapsed. So, Guterres is saying there’s a window for a new era of institutional stability.

He’s also saying there’s a chance for peace.

Guterres’s visit comes just days before the deadline for the full implementation of the ceasefire agreement between Hezbollah and Israel. By January 26, the Israeli forces need to withdraw from territory along the border and the Lebanese army is supposed to be deployed in their place – and Hezbollah is supposed to pull back.

Lebanon is calling on the UN to pressure Israel to make sure it does leave Lebanese territory so that stability will prevail.

There is a lot of concern, but the US – which is heading the monitoring committee – said just a few days ago that “we are on a very positive path to continue the withdrawal of the Israeli army as planned”.

So, really daunting challenges ahead for the new leadership and that deadline will show whether or not this country can continue what many are describing as a “smooth transition” to a new era. By this they mean the strengthening of the state at the expense of the different sectarian political groups in this country.

Israeli forces step up West Bank raids

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that Israeli forces have escalated raids in cities and towns across the occupied West Bank.

In Nablus, Israeli forces stormed a number of neighbourhoods as well as the Grand Mosque in the Sharfi market, AJA said, citing local sources. In the Tulkarem governorate, the soldiers fired live bullets as they stormed the towns of Shufa, Kafr al-Labad, Anabta, and Bal’a.

No arrests or injuries were reported.

And in Tammun, in the Tubas governorate, AJA said Israeli forces set up new military checkpoints.




Israeli forces launch attacks across Gaza

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reports that Israeli forces have been blowing up residential buildings in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the central Gaza Strip. It added that Israeli forces also launched air attacks on northern Gaza City and shelled the southern Rafah City.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

The attacks come as hours remain for the Israel-Hamas ceasefire to go into effect. The Palestinian Civil Defence says Israeli forces have killed at least 122 Palestinians, most of them women and children, since the truce deal was announced on Wednesday.

Journalists in Gaza celebrate as ceasefire approaches

_{Journalists gathered in front of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, just hours before a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was set to take effect on Saturday}

_{Israeli forces have killed more than 200 journalists in Gaza, according to the Government Media Office, as well as many of their family members}

Israeli forces launch attacks on central and south Gaza

Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic are reporting that the Israeli military carried out four raids on the northern and western areas of Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian media also reported an Israeli air raid on a warehouse in the central city of Deir el-Balah as well as the southern town of Abasan near the city of Khan Younis.

There was no immediate word on casualties.

The attacks with just hours to go before the Israel-Hamas ceasefire is set to take effect.

‘The skies above me are very quiet’

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud shared a video on Instagram, describing mixed emotions ahead of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

“It’s the first time in 470 days the skies above me are very, very quiet,” he said. “We know the scars of the war are still fresh, and the challenges on the ground are quite massive,” he added. “Rebuilding as well as absorbing what happened is massive, but keeping fingers and toes crossed, always for the best.”

_{Palestinians in Khan Younis celebrate despite delay in ceasefire}

Three killed in Gaza City as Israel escalates attacks

An attack has killed at least three Palestinians in Gaza City, our colleagues on the ground report.

We’re also getting reports of more Israeli attacks in different areas of the besieged territory.

Israel’s army attacks northern, central Gaza as ceasefire time passes

Israeli artillery shelling and air raids resumed in Khan Younis in the south and Nuseirat in the central Strip despite the Gaza ceasefire starting according to mediators’ timeline.

“The Israeli army continues to prepare for defense and attack, and will not allow the security of the residents of the State of Israel to be harmed,” it said in a statement.

The planned ceasefire – agreed after a year of intensive mediation by Qatar and Egypt – is the first step in a long and fragile process aimed at winding down the 15-month war.

PM Netanyahu said he instructed the military that the ceasefire “will not begin until Israel has in its possession the list of hostages to be freed, which Hamas committed to provide”. He had issued a similar warning the night before.

Israeli drone attack wounds many in Gaza City

We earlier reported an Israeli attack killed at least three Palestinians in eastern Gaza City. Now we have information that several people were wounded in Israeli drone fire.

Displaced Palestinians out on Gaza City streets

_{Some 90 percent of Gaza’s population has been displaced}

Gaza rescuers say 8 killed, 25 wounded in Israeli attacks

Gaza’s civil defence agency says Israeli attacks killed at least eight people and wounded dozens after 06:30 GMT, when the ceasefire was supposed to take effect. Agency spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said three people were killed in northern Gaza and five in Gaza City, with 25 wounded.

Ceasefire delay ‘heartbreaking’ for Gaza’s children: UNICEF

Rosalia Bollen from the UN’s agency for children says it’s “heartbreaking” to see the ceasefire delayed.

“I saw children waving and cheering and dancing. But at the same time I could hear continued shooting, very heavy weapons,” Bollen told Al Jazeera, speaking from Gaza’s al-Mawasi area. “The ceasefire isn’t there yet and that’s absolutely heartbreaking for these children.”

Over the past couple of days, children in the Strip have been telling Bollen all the things “they would love to do the moment a ceasefire starts”.

“They want to go back home, see what’s left … They want to sleep in their own bed. They want to find the toys they’ve had to leave behind when the war started and so it’s a very odd moment to be in,” she said.

Bollen said there are 1,300 truckloads of supplies ready to be brought in once the ceasefire takes effect. But impediments remain such as destroyed roads and warehouses.

Food, water, warm shelter and hygiene supplies are most essential, Bollen said.

“But some of the aid that children in Gaza need is not aid that we can bring onto trucks. They’ve gone through things that no child should ever have to witness, and they are in dire need of psychosocial support and a return to normalcy.”

_{Palestinians celebrate despite a delay in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza City}

Hamas official says list of captives to be given ‘any moment’

A Hamas official says the list of captives to be released under the ceasefire deal will be handed over “any moment”, but that “complexities” in Gaza and Israeli bombing were causing delays.

The Doha-based official, who took part in the ceasefire negotiations, told AFP, at “any moment, the names of the three prisoners … will be handed over, but the complexities of the field situation and the continued bombing have delayed that”.

Israel had said the ceasefire had been delayed by Hamas’s failure to hand over the list.

Israel received names of captives to be released: Reports

Israeli media are reporting that the names of the captives have now been handed over to Israel.

The mechanism of this is that Hamas informs Qatar, the mediator, and then Qatar informs Israel. It looks like this has now been done.

What we understand is that these are three women who are not soldiers – possibly over the age of 50, or minors – so this should technically mean that the ceasefire is now officially on.

Usually, there is still some form of delay in terms of attacks, but there was a feeling that this was simply going to be a delay, that this wasn’t going to be a derailing of the ceasefire.

Israeli strikes kill 10 Palestinians since planned start of ceasefire

The total number of Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks since the planned start of the ceasefire has now risen to 10, the spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence has said.

Six people were killed in Gaza City, three in northern Gaza and one in Rafah, with more than 25 injured, a statement said.

Hamas names 3 Israeli captives to be freed

Hamas has released the names of the three Israeli captives to be freed on the first day of the implementation of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, it said in a post on Telegram. The move potentially clears the way for the ceasefire to begin after an hours-long delay.

Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing – the Qassam Brigades, said, “As part of the prisoner exchange deal we decided to release today: Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Shtanbar Khair, 31.”

Gaza’s death toll at 46,913

At least 46,913 Palestinians have been killed and 110,750 wounded since Israel launched its war on Gaza, the Health Ministry says. At least 25 people were killed and 14 injured over the past 24 hours, it added.

The majority of the dead are children, women, and elderly. The death toll is presumed to be far higher, with an estimated 10,000 bodies buried in the vast concrete debris throughout the Strip.

Ben-Gvir submits resignation in opposition to Gaza ceasefire deal

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party have resigned from Netanyahu’s cabinet over the ceasefire deal.

The Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, party is no longer part of the ruling coalition, it said, adding it will not try to bring down the government.

A settler in Kiryat Arba – one of the most hardline settlements in the occupied West Bank – Ben-Gvir has been convicted of incitement to racism, destroying property, possessing a “terror” organisation’s propaganda material and supporting a “terror” organisation – Meir Kahane’s outlawed Kach group, which he joined when he was 16.

But in the March 2021 elections, Ben-Gvir’s party managed to enter parliament by merging with Bezalel Smotrich’s National Union party, becoming the Religious Zionism slate, and losing the election.

_{Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir}

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have always been opposed to any ceasefire.

They don’t believe the goals of the war have been met. In fact, these are men whose ideology calls for the reoccupation, the resettling of Israelis in Gaza and the annexation of the occupied West Bank – so they are against any deal.

This is why many analysts and many Israelis will tell you that Netanyahu has pushed back on a deal for the past 15 months. Why? Because both have threatened to leave his government, meaning a government collapse, meaning the end of Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, meaning new elections right now.

But Ben-Gvir’s exit doesn’t mean the collapse of the government, as he has said that if there is a return to war after the first phase, he will rejoin the coalition.

Next few weeks of Israel-Hamas ceasefire likely to be ‘difficult’

Yossi Mekelberg, with the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, says people should be “cautiously optimistic” over the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

“We need to prepare ourselves that the next six, seven weeks are not going to be easy. And probably there will be a lot of technical issues, just because both sides move very cautiously towards implementing this [deal],” said Mekelberg.

He told Al Jazeera, from the beginning of the war, most Israelis didn’t believe military pressure would bring the captives home, but rather “diplomacy and an agreement” would.

“On the other side, out of his own doing, [Netanyahu] is in the government with the most far-right elements in Israeli politics, and they have no interest in ending the war. They have a completely different messianic agenda,” said Mekelberg.

“They would like to occupy Gaza, they would like to resettle it and expel Palestinians.”

Ceasefire begins

After a nearly three-hour delay, the ceasefire comes into effect in Gaza.

Mediator Qatar confirms beginning of Gaza ceasefire

In a statement, the spokesperson of Qatar’s Foreign Ministry has confirmed that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has begun.

“Regarding reports when the ceasefire will begin in Gaza, we confirm that the names of the 3 hostages to be released today have been handed over to the Israeli side,” Majed al-Ansari said.

“They are three Israeli citizens, one of whom is of Romanian nationality and the other of British nationality, and thus the ceasefire has begun.”

Nineteen Palestinians killed during ceasefire delay: Civil Defence

At least 19 people were killed and 36 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza amid the ceasefire delay, by about three hours – to 11:30am local time (09:30 GMT), according to Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence.

One person was killed in Rafah, six in Khan Younis, nine in Gaza City and three people were killed in the north, he said in a statement.

 
Palestinian police officers deployed in various areas of Gaza

The Government Media Office in Gaza says thousands of Palestinian police officers have been deployed in the territory “as part of a government plan to maintain security and order across various governorates”, adding that municipalities have started “reopening and rehabilitating streets”.

“Government ministries and institutions are fully prepared to begin operations according to the government plan to ensure the swift and gradual return of normal life,” said the statement, adding that the return of displaced people will commence seven days after the ceasefire comes into effect.

“We also call on our people to obtain information from official government sources, stay away from destroyed areas to avoid potential dangers, avoid shelled homes to prevent sudden collapses, and stay clear of suspicious rockets and objects,” the statement added.

“Adherence to safety instructions and raising awareness levels is essential.”

Israel says 3 captives to be freed at 14:00 GMT; 4 more in a week

PM Netanyahu’s office says the release of three captives held in Gaza will take place after 14:00 GMT.

In a statement, it also said four other female captives would be freed in seven days.

The six-week, phase one ceasefire includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from central Gaza and the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza.

The deal requires 600 truckloads of humanitarian aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the ceasefire, 50 carrying fuel, with 300 of the trucks allocated to the north, where conditions for civilians are particularly harsh.