this video is brought to you by brilliant on Monday Reuters reported that after more than a year of apparently futile negotiations Israel and Hamas were finally nearing a deal that could bring an end to the war in Gaza while Joe Biden and his allies were Keen to take credit for the Breakthrough it looks like this sudden breakthrough is mostly down to Trump who's taken the lead on negotiations in recent months via his new Middle East Envoy Steve witkoff while nothing is has been formly agreed at time of writing a deal looks closer than ever so
in this video we're going to have a look at this new deal why it's pretty embarrassing for Biden and what might happen next dive deeper into politics with our magazine too long Yes we made a real physical magazine find out more by clicking the link in the description so let's start with a bit of context ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel began in November 2023 but little progress was made for the next 6 months or so the outlines of a deal finally emerged in May when qari and Egyptian negotiators proposed a three-phase deal which was
the basis of the deal President Biden announced in June broadly speaking the first phase involved a temporary ceasefire and the exchange exchange of some hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails the second phase involved the exchange of all remaining hostages and the third phase involved a total permanent ceasefire with negotiations on gaza's future governance structure however while both sides apparently accepted the three-stage framework they couldn't agree a deal the big sticking point seemed to be the hostages with Hamas refusing to guarantee that they could return them alive hamas's role in Gaza postwar governance structure which
Israel refused to counter ANS and the idf's rolling Gaza postwar with Hamas calling for a full and permanent withdrawal but Israel or at least parts of the Israeli government insisting on either a conditional withdrawal or a continued IDF presence in certain parts of Gaza like the so-called Philadelphia Corridor on gaza's Southern border with Egypt these issues were exacerbated by Dynamics within the Israeli government it seemed as if on multiple occasions Netanyahu would agree a deal of need to have it rejected by his far-right ministers namely itar benav and bezel smich Netanyahu relied on benav and
smich for his majority in the knesset and so couldn't go against them without risking a collapse of his government and thus elections which polling suggested he'd lose this has since become a point of Pride for Ben G who released a statement earlier this week essentially bragging about how he'd been able to torpedo previous deals however all of a sudden earlier this week there were a flurry of reports that a deal was close and a handful of outlets got their hands on the draft agreement according to the draft agreement which Hamas has now said it'll accept
each stage lasts 42 days in the first stage there'll be a temporary ceasefire with an increase in humanitarian Aid and Hamas will hand over 33 hostages for a yet unknown number of Palestinian prisoners in the second stage all the other hostages will be released once a permanent ceas fires being established and the third phase involved sorting out a reconstruction plan for Gaza overseen by Egypt Qatar and the UN interestingly it looks like Israel have backtracked on their demands a fair bit according to the draft agreement Israel will accept dead hostages in the first phase although
this will affect how many Palestinian prisoners are returned to Gaza Israel has apparently agreed to a phased but total withdrawal from Gaza and there are no Provisions in the draft agreement precluding hamas's involvement in gaza's post-war governance structure all in all it looks eily similar to a deal that Netanyahu apparently rejected in early July so what explains netanyahu's apparent U-turn well it probably has something to do with Trump who is due to take office next week and is taking the lead on negotiations via his new Middle East Envoy Steve witkoff it could be that Trump
has offered Netanyahu and Co some sort of concessions maybe American recognition of the annex bit of the West Bank or a preemptive strike on Iran to convince him to agree to the deal it could be a well orchestrated dance between Trump and Netanyahu Trump gets all the credits and Netanyahu who'd have to wind the war down eventually gets to blame everything on Trump when the Israeli right accuses him of selling out but the most likely explanation seems to be that Trump was just a bit more forceful with Netanyahu than Biden was this would be consistent
with Trump's recent rhetoric he warned they would be all hell to pay if no deal was agreed before his inauguration and posted a video on Truth social calling Netanyahu a dark son of a only a few days ago haret for instance reported earlier this week that witkoff forced Netanyahu to hold a meeting with him on the Sabbath and The Times of Israel separately reported the subsequent meeting was tense with witkoff leaning hard on Netanyahu to agree two concessions similarly netanyahu's allies have recently been complaining to Friendly media Outlets that Trump is exerting far more pressure
on Netanyahu than he expected if this is the case it would be conclusive proof that the US always had leverage over Israel for context over the past year or so there's been a long running debate in policy circles as to whether or not the us could actually Force Israel to wind down its war in Gaza critics of the Biden Administration suggested he wasn't doing enough to push Netanyahu into a ceasefire and Biden's Defenders claimed that short of cutting off Military Support which Biden was never going to do there was nothing he could do to affect
Israeli decision-making the fact that before he's even taken office Trump has successfully pushed Netanyahu into a ceasefire strongly suggests that the US had sufficient leverage all along Biden just wasn't willing to use it for some reason this is deeply embarrassing for the Biden Administration not only does it look impotent in retrospect but it's also possible this impotence cost the Democrats the election given that a non-trivial number of Voters either stayed home or voted for third party candidates to protest the Democrats support for Israel and the fact that the escalating chaos in the Middle East contributed
to an electorally fatal sense among many voters that Biden's foreign policy had created a more unstable world so what happens next well Ben gav has already suggested he'll vote against the deal but other parties have now joined netanyahu's government Netanyahu can probably get the deal through without Ben gav's support especially if smich supports it which is at least possible if the deal does pass it'll be worth keeping an eye on to see if Trump offered any proverbial carrots like a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia or a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities that might become
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