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The Gaza Split

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The Gaza Split

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Ceasefire or not? Yesterday, Israeli strikes killed 100 people in Gaza, claiming that the ceasefire had been violated, since Hamas has not yet returned the bodies of all the dead hostages taken on October 7, 2023, and attacked Israeli soldiers in the southern part of the territory, near Rafah.

News broke last week that two IDF soldiers were killed in Jenina, which is located on the eastern side of the Yellow Line that indicates the military pullback. Though Jenina is under IDF control, there are apparently Hamas cells that still operate in some capacity there. “As troops have worked to clear the neighborhood of Hamas infrastructure—including a tunnel network—operatives have emerged from underground and attempted attacks,” reports The Times of Israel. 

“There is and will be no immunity for anyone in the leadership of the Hamas terror organization, neither for those wearing suits nor for those hiding in tunnels. Anyone who raises a hand against IDF soldiers, his hand will be severed,” said Defense Minister Israel Katz.

“The Israeli military is digging in along the cease-fire line inside Gaza, strengthening fortifications and establishing infrastructure that further divides the territory into two,” reports The Wall Street Journal. For the first time, journalists were allowed access to that zone, which “divides Gaza roughly in half” with the IDF “manning existing outposts and erecting new ones.” Yellow concrete blocks are being laid, and it sure looks like the idea is for an Israeli military presence to continue there for a long time.

Per the truce brokered by President Donald Trump, “Israel is supposed to pull back farther toward Gaza’s borders once an international security force is on the ground and Hamas has been disarmed,” reports the Journal. “Hamas, however, has refused to give up its weapons and is cementing its control over Gaza.” It’s a truce that doesn’t look all that much like a truce; instead, Israel controls about 53 percent of the Strip, with Hamas forces still operating in some capacity in the remaining 47 percent. It’s very possible that rebuilding will look rather bifurcated, with the Israel-controlled zones subjecting Palestinians to some amount of surveillance but being free of terrorist control, while the remaining chunks of the Strip remain fairly leveled, with no foreign investment and very little rebuilding. Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff are widely seen as the architects behind the split-rebuilding plan, which is controversial among the other stakeholders trying to broker peace.

“Arab mediators are alarmed by the plan which, they said, the U.S. and Israel have brought up in peace talks,” reports the Journal. “Arab governments strongly oppose the idea of dividing Gaza, arguing it could lead to a zone of permanent Israeli control inside the enclave. They are unlikely to commit troops to police the enclave on those terms.” But what exactly is the solution if Hamas won’t surrender arms?

Venezuela update: When The Wall Street Journal asked prominent Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado earlier this week what she thinks about Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive provocations toward the Maduro regime, she responded: “President Trump pledged to dismantle the drug cartels poisoning American families, and he is fulfilling that promise.”

Trafficking is “a national security crisis for the United States, and for Venezuela as well. The money generated from those criminal activities does not build schools or hospitals. It finances repression, torture, and the machinery of terror that keeps a criminal regime in power.” Trump made an “accurate diagnosis of Venezuela’s reality, and acted accordingly.” And the Venezuelan people had long “asked the world to understand that Maduro is not a conventional dictator but the head of a transnational criminal organization. The Trump Administration recognized that fact and treated it as such.”

When asked explicitly about foreign military intervention to end the Maduro regime, Machado responded that Venezuela has been “under foreign intervention for decades, by Cuba, Russia, China, Iran, drug cartels, and terrorist organizations” and that “democratic allies” can help the Venezuelan people “recover the sovereignty that belongs to them.”

It’s hard to tell how authentic she’s being. She has a vested interest in maintaining and strengthening an alliance with Trump. If Trump really is interested in regime change—and if he can do so in a way that doesn’t simply lead to another Maduro operative gaining power—Machado stands to gain; she won the opposition primary back in 2023 and was the rightful challenger to Maduro in 2024, before being barred from running by the government. From her perspective, this must look like a huge opportunity to secure the liberation of the Venezuelan people—liberation she’s been fighting for. She has real reasons to back Trump, who is possibly preparing to take military action to try to unseat Nicolas Maduro. (It’s worth noting that Trump has not sought congressional approval for this, and has been conducting extralegal boat strikes on suspected narcotraffickers, supplying no evidence to the American people or to legislators that the people he’s killing are legitimate criminals. Also: We don’t tend to blow people into smithereens when they’ve committed crimes, so even if evidence were provided, Trump is not comporting with U.S. law.)

But it’s also possible that Machado’s being way too hopeful here; U.S.-led regime change in Latin America has not historically panned out so well.

She also made an even more explicit pitch to Trump sympathizers, noting that Maduro-unseating could lead to fewer migrants flooding across U.S. borders: “The vast majority of Venezuelans are desperate to return home. They didn’t leave by choice. The longing for family and national reunification is immense. The moment Maduro leaves power, hundreds of thousands will begin to return. And soon after, it will be millions coming back to rebuild the nation they were forced to abandon.”

Scenes from New York: 

If you want to hear all about the threat posed by Mamdani, I highly recommend this Weissmueller joint.

QUICK HITS

  • “The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency that had expected to review some of President Donald Trump’s construction projects, including his planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom,” reports The Washington Post. “The commission, which was established by Congress more than a century ago and traditionally includes a mix of architects and urban planners, is charged with providing advice to the president, Congress and local government officials on design matters related to construction projects in the capital region. Its focus includes government buildings, monuments and memorials. White House officials have traditionally sought the agency’s approval.” (Interestingly, though Trump gets all the credit for being a norms-disrespecter, Joe Biden did it first: “Biden in 2021 fired Trump appointees from the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, with Biden administration officials at the time defending the moves as an effort to diversify the panels.” But that “was the first time in the commissions’ history that a president had forced out sitting members, drawing some criticism from art and architecture experts that Biden was politicizing its work.”)
  • “The number of legally sanctioned homicides by civilians in the 30 stand-your-ground states has risen substantially in recent years,” reports The Wall Street Journal, having analyzed FBI data. “Justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a large sample of cities and counties in those states, the Journal found, compared with a 16% rise in total homicides for the same locales.”
  • Tariffs make prices rise, whowouldathought?



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