Dear friends--
I hope you are well. What a week this has been.
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Soon after I sent out last week's newsletter I realized I'd made a mistake. I had assumed that Donald Trump's warning that "All hell would break loose" if there's no Gaza-Israel ceasefire before his January 20 inauguration embodied a threat only against Hamas. But it speedily became clear it was directed against the Israeli government, too. Trump's emissary Steve Witkoff had joined the Biden officials working to nail down the ceasefire agreement and through forceful action (along with some probable offers of sweeteners in other fields) he succeeded in getting the ceasefire terms finally agreed, as announced in Qatar Wednesday evening.
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Pres. Joe Biden and his officials have frequently claimed they've been "working tirelessly" to finalize this deal. But in reality they've bowed to every demand made by an Israeli prime minister whose main objectives have been to prolong the war as long as possible, for his own personal/political reasons, and to inflict as much destruction and pain on Gaza's people as possible.
![]() In an interview aired by Sky News yesterday, the PM of Qatar, who has been a key part of the negotiating effort all along, noted that,
"This... framework that we have signed two days ago is the same framework that we agreed on in December 2023, which is basically 13 months of a waste, of negotiating details that have no meaning and [aren't] worth any single life that we lost in Gaza or any single life of those hostages that lost their life because of the bombing..."
Inside Gaza, news of the ceasefire has been received with great joy... But also significant wariness, since Gaza's Palestinians well know that in the period between announcement of a ceasefire agreement and the start of its implementation the Israeli military usually escalates its violence considerably.
The currently planned ceasefire doesn't go into effect until 8:30 am local time tomorrow (Sunday.) And Israel's air-raids and other operations have indeed continued to kill dozens of Gazans every day so far, since Wednesday.
The nature of the agreement
The London-based outlet Middle East Eye has published what it describes as the "Full text of the agreement," and has produced this visual summary of its main terms:
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(Click on that image, to enlarge.)
For 48 hours after Wednesday's announcement, PM Netanyahu tried various ruses to delay or back out of the deal. But with Witkoff apparently standing firm, Netanyahu's full cabinet finally, yesterday, had to sign off on it.
The details of this deal are, of course, extremely important for Gaza's extremely hard-pressed survivors, for the millions of Palestinians and other allies worldwide who've been living through the trauma of this genocide for the past 15 months... and for Israelis traumatized by Netanyahu's longheld refusal to engage seriously with the hostage-release effort and his readiness to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers and of many of the Israelis held captive in Gaza on the altar of his own political survival.
But the broad structure of this agreement is also worth noting:
- It has been concluded with Hamas as the only relevant counter-party to Israel (though Hamas's leaders have always said they've been consulting with their allies in the Gaza-based Resistance movement.) Hence,the determination that Netanyahu and Pres. Biden and his officials have frequently expressed, to destroy Hamas, has been shown to be unattainable. Hamas is now the essential Palestinian participant for this deal-- and for all the forward planning that's embodied in it...
- The supervisory/monitoring mechanism is NOT a UN body. It is the triumvirate of the U.S. administration, Qatar, and Egypt. Qatar and Egypt are both close military allies of Washington. Egypt has the only border with Gaza that is not wholly controlled by Israel; and Qatar has longstanding ties with the Hamas leaders. The big question remains: If Israel tries to renege on the January 15 deal, or to undermine it, what will be the reaction of Trump's Washington-- or of the other members of the Triumvirate, or of other world powers? We will see.
For my part I'm hoping against hope that the ceasefire goes into operation tomorrow morning (Palestine time) and that all of the deal's other provisions swiftly fall into place.
Those other provision include, crucially, the fact that Israel has to let into Gaza a stream of 600 trucks per day of the humanitarian-relief goods that Gaza's surviving people so desperately need.
I've been sharing UN-OCHA's reporting on the flow of trucks into Gaza for many months now. But OCHA hasn't even produced any new numbers since January 5. The number of truckloads/day for the first five days of January was precisely 51. That, compared with the flow of 500 trucks/day that Israel allowed in for a far less needy population in Gaza in the months leading up to October 7, 2023.
Here's the topper for the report (PDF here) that UN-OCHA released on Tuesday:
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Meantime, in the West Bank...
Over in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, attacks by Israeli settlers and security forces against Palestinian towns, villages, and farmers have, as we know, escalated considerably over the past 15 months. Another thing that's been happening has been that the US-trained and -funded security forces of the "interim" Palestinian Authority have been battling hard in the Jenin refugee camp for more than six weeks now, trying to subdue the Resistance networks that are deeply embedded there.
A few days ago, as the PA forces became bogged down, the Israeli air-force started bombing the camp. Then yesterday, the "Jenin Battalion", which is the main Resistance coalition, concluded a deal with the PA that will end the latter's 44-day siege on the Jenin camp and its pursuit and imprisonment of Resistance fighters, and allow PA police forces to operate in the camp-- under the sufferance of, and by agreement with, the Resistance forces remaining there.
I have seen several short videos showing members of the PA forces enthusiastically defecting to the Resistance ranks in Jenin. It seems that having the Israeli air force bomb the camp was not such a great idea?
But one other takeaway here is that the Hamas-PA cooperation that will be a necessary part of getting Gaza well rehabilitated and rebuilt may indeed be possible-- and that if it comes about it will most likely be firmly on Hamas's terms and not those of the side that's been favored (and funded) for so long by Washington...
![]() ... All of which makes me think that Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters, the book that Rami G. Khouri and I co-authored last October, is probably much more urgently needed than ever!
The book is one of the main products of the project of the same name that Just World Educational launched last spring. We were trying to challenge the extensive demonization to which this movement has been subjected by Western governments and media platforms, for so many decades now.
Do please buy the book, read it, and share the news of it-- and of the broader project-- widely with your friends and networks.
(By the way, I am planning to speak at one or more events around this book in London, when I am there for the Book Fair, in mid-March. If any of my other friends in the U.K. wants to schedule me for a book talk, in the period March 4-13, then let me know asap!)
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Washington and West Asia in a time of flux
It's been bitingly cold here in Washington DC for almost two weeks now, and the cold is expected to intensify. Small wonder that Donald Trump has decreed that his inauguration on Monday be moved indoors.
![]() Pres. Biden and his team, having been full participants in Israel's genocide in Gaza for the past 15 months, and then having lost an election, have been trying to put a brave face on matters in their last few days in office. In a lengthy "exit interview" aired by MSNBC yesterday, he described Netanyahu's repeated decisions to bomb locations where there were known to be significant numbers of civilians present as "perfectly understandable"-- and he warned that Trump's arrival in power might launch an era of "oligarchy" in the United States. (As though Biden and Harris's repeated kowtowing to wealthy donors-- especially on the crucial Gaza issue-- was not also a clear mark of incipient oligarchy... )
He also tried to claim credit for the January 15 Gaza deal by noting it was essentially the same as the he and his team claimed to have nailed down back in May (but which was then torpedoed by Netanyahu.) The fawning interviewer there, Lawrence O'Donnell, did not ask the obvious follow-up question: why Biden had failed throughout the months since then to get the deal completed-- whereas on Witkoff's very first diplomatic visit to Israel and Qatar, he achieved that in just a few days....
As to what else we can expect from Trump over the coming weeks, in West Asia, in the United States, or elsewhere, it is honestly very hard to say. The whole region of West Asia is in a great degree of fluidity.
The ceasefire agreement for Lebanon is supposed to be capped by a complete Israeli withdrawal and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty nationwide and especially South of the Litani, with a deadline of January 26. What will the two-power "monitoring mechanism" there-- the United States and France-- do, if that deadline is not met and Israel continues to lengthen its already very long list of violations?
The situation in Syria continues very unsettled, as Israel and Turkey work to consolidate the holds they have on sizeable chunks of Syrian land, as the de-facto administration of the (?former) jihadi operative Ahmed Sharaa figures out how to try to rule the areas that he now controls, and as U.S. troops have been beefing up their presence in the country's Northeast.
![]() In Iran-- or rather, in Moscow-- Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived yesterday in the Russian capital, where he is slated to sign a comprehensive, 20-year "strategic partnership" that covers cooperation in trade, investment, transport, logistics, and culture, as well as "regional and international issues"...
Free-speech infringements in Washington DC
On Thursday, when Anthony Blinken was trying to give a last peroration as Secretary of State in order to burnish his (extremely badly tarnished, or actually non-existent) credentials as a diplomatic visionary, the veteran journalists Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini tried to ask him some tough questions. State Dept spox Matt ("Count Dracula") Miller made clear he would not be calling on them, so they tried to ask their questions anyway.
![]() The videos of what happened next went speedily viral. Max was escorted speedily out of the briefing room, as he continued asking tough questions about Blinken's longheld ties to Zionist functionaries. And for Sam Husseini, Miller brought in three beefy "diplomatic security" officers who manhandled him painfully out of his seat and carried him out of the room.
![]() In other concerns for free speech activists here in the U.S., the legislation that bans the short-video app TikTok is due to go into operation later this weekend... And meantime, many Americans who've been active on TikTok have been downloading and migrating their work to another short-video app called RedNote.
The kicker here? This new app is not just Chinese-owned-- it is fully Chinese. It was populated until recent days almost wholly by millions of Mandarin-speaking creators. They were happy to use it to share beauty, cooking, reading, and other lifestyle tips-- and then suddenly they were flooded with millions of new "TikTok refugees".... But they have tried to give us a good welcome.
I haven't had much time to try out RedNote ("Xiaohongshu") yet. But maybe Just World Ed and Just World Books could use it as a good way to connect with Americans as well as an international audience?
And talking of Max Blumenthal...
I've been delighted to be invited to join him and the inspiring UNRWA-USA senior staffer Hani Almadhoun as a panelist at this hybrid (live + online) event hosted by the DC-based Palestine Center, on Thursday, January 23:
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I think the timing is great, as by Thursday we'll have a much clearer idea of how the ceasefire implementation has been going. Do join us if you can!
I shall also be talking ceasefire...
![]() ...with my great PalCast colleagues Tony Groves and Dr. Yousef Aljamal in the Palcast episode we'll be releasing midweek. Catch it if you can!
Last week, I was unable to take part in the recording session. But the episode that Yousef and Tony recorded with their guest Dr. Ayesha Khan was really excellent!
![]() Dr. Khan is an Emergency Medicine physician who recently served for some weeks in Gaza. She painted a vivid picture of the immense challenges faced by healthcare workers, from severe shortages of essential medical equipment and supplies to the overwhelming pressure of treating displaced individuals living in hospitals....
Tune in to this important conversation on Apple or Spotify, and follow PalCast on those platforms or others to help us build a world where equality and justice prevail.
And finally, forthcoming from Just World Books!
![]() I am super-happy to tell you that our plans to re-issue the nail-biting thriller Vanished: The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda by the talented British-Palestinian novelist Ahmed Masoud will be coming to fruition this March 25!
That is the release date of this powerful novel, whose action starts in Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp in that period when the First Intifada was raging and Israel was using any vile method it could think of to control the whole population...
This great book has gained some great endorsements, both from when it was first issued, by a Cyprus-based publisher back in 2015, and in its newer (Just World Books) incarnation. You can read many of those endorsements here.
But if you're in a position to publish a timely review of the book, or you'd like to help us with pre-publication outreach/ publicity for it in other ways, please let me know. We now have a PDF of the book's interior we can share for these purposes, and we'll have printed Advance Review Copies available soon.
... So that's it for now. Lots going on!
Wishing the best for you and all those you care about--
~ Helena
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