Dem
47
GOP
53
Things are not going too well in Gaza right now. Israel says that Hamas violated the ceasefire in three ways: (1) refusing to return the 13 remaining hostages' bodies, (2) crossing into territory that was off-limits and firing on (and possibly killing) an Israeli soldier and (3) staging a fake "discovery" of a missing hostage, by burying a dead person and then arranging for that body to be "found" shortly after Red Cross inspectors arrived. The last of those three claims has been verified by several international media outlets; the other two remain hazy.
In response to these provocations/alleged provocations, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had ordered the Israeli military to carry out "immediate, powerful strikes in the Gaza Strip." That order was followed, of course, and according to international sources, at least 20 Palestinians, including several women and children, were killed.
We don't have all that much to add here. Obviously, neither side is behaving like they particularly want the war to be over. It also looks an awful lot like Donald Trump threw his weight around to get the two sides to play nice for a week or two, apparently in the misguided hope that would land him a Nobel Peace Prize. Now that Nobel season has passed, it seems that either Netanyahu is no longer interested in accommodating Trump, or that Trump is no longer interested in getting involved and playing peacemaker, or both. And whatever is going on, anyone who would like to see an end to the killing and the destruction can't be too optimistic right now. (Z)