Braxton Taylor
Officials from the U.S. and Qatar say they’ve reached an agreeable ceasefire for Israel and Hamas, potentially ending more than 15 months of war that’s killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and caused more than two million people to flee their homes since the Hamas terrorist group launched its surprise attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 90 hostages taken on that day are still believed to be held somewhere in Gaza; the Israeli military estimates nearly a third have already been killed.
The first day of the draft ceasefire isn’t expected until Sunday, which means the two sides can continue to attack each other until then. Israel’s military wasted no time, and conducted several strikes in Gaza that have killed at least 70 people since the accord was announced, Reuters and the Associated Press reported Thursday.
According to a draft of the agreement, “Hamas is expected to release 33 hostages in exchange for several hundred Palestinian prisoners held by Israel” within the first six weeks, or 42 days, the New York Times reports. During that time, “Israel is also meant to gradually withdraw its troops eastward, allowing for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return home.”
“The question is if the ceasefire will survive beyond that first phase,” AP reports. That will require more negotiations. “In those talks, Israel, Hamas, and the U.S, Egyptian and Qatari mediators will have to tackle the tough issue of how Gaza will be governed, with Israel demanding the elimination of Hamas,” AP writes.
For what it’s worth, the broad terms of the ceasefire have been available for eight months, going back to a text proposed by U.S. officials and President Joe Biden last summer. But several notable developments have occurred since then, including the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza, Israel’s dismantling of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group, the Israeli killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the early December collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. In addition, “both sides have been galvanized by President-elect Donald Trump’s imminent return to office,” the Wall Street Journal noted Wednesday evening. But “For Hamas, the turning point toward a cease-fire came in October when Israel killed Sinwar,” the paper adds.
POTUS46: “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday. “I laid out the precise contours of this plan on May 31, 2024, after which it was endorsed unanimously by the UN Security Council. It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a ceasefire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran,” said Biden, “but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy.”
POTUS47: “This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November,” President-elect Donald Trump alleged Wednesday, writing on his social media platform. “We have achieved so much without even being in the White House. Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return,” he claimed.
But pause those celebrations just yet: Israel’s cabinet has already “delayed a scheduled meeting to discuss the agreement on Thursday, postponing one key step in implementing the deal,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday morning. “The prime minister’s office said the cabinet wouldn’t meet until Israeli negotiators said Hamas had accepted all aspects of the deal.” It’s still too soon to know “if Netanyahu’s statements merely reflected jockeying to keep his fractious coalition together or whether the deal was at risk,” AP adds.
- By the way: Israel’s military is seizing Syrian tanks, missiles, and rockets from territory the Israelis have occupied since the fall of the Assad regime last month. (Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute described it Wednesday as “a de facto invasion of sovereign territory.”)
One useful consequence of the ceasefire: If the deal is finalized, “The Houthis will now be expected to halt disruptive maritime activities in the Red Sea, something that the US, UK and allies will be watching closely,” said Burcu Ozcelik of the London-based Royal United Services Institute. “Moving to the next phases, which have more direct consequences for shaping the longer-term realities for border security and governance in the Gaza Strip, such as full Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor on the Egyptian border, and the implicit question around the future of Hamas and its alternatives as a governing and military body—will be far more challenging,” she added.
A Houthi spokesman shared a guarded, but stereotypically anti-Israeli response to news of the ceasefire, writing Wednesday, “The Zionist enemy entity represents a danger to all and, with its continued occupation of Palestine, remains a threat to the security and stability of the region. True peace in the region will not exist until this temporary entity, forcibly planted through Western and American power, is removed.”
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson, Bradley Peniston, and Audrey Decker. Share your newsletter tips, reading recommendations, or feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 27 BCE, the Roman Senate granted Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus the new title “Augustus,” which officially marks the start of the Roman Empire.
Around the Defense Department
Developing: The Pentagon will test how generative AI would perform in a fight with China. In the next 90 days, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, working with contractors and other Pentagon organizations, will take a hard look at how generative AI tools similar to ChatGPT could help commanders make battlefield decisions more quickly against high-tech adversaries, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
“Our goal is to test in the INDOPACOM [area of responsibility] with some specific Navy use cases over the next 90 days, a prototype between Anduril, Palantir AI solutions to try…drive down the time down and increase the decision space for commanders,” Radha Plumb, the head of the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, told Defense One on Tuesday. More, here.
Update: Littoral combat ships are…indispensable? The commodore of a littoral combat ship squadron and the Navy’s deputy chief of surface forces argued Wednesday that the long-derided ships have put their readiness ills behind them and are making real-world contributions that prove themselves necessary. Meghann Myers reports from the Surface Navy Association conference in Crystal City, Virginia.
Also: The state of the Navy’s shipboard laser efforts is embarrassing, says the leader of U.S. Fleet Forces Command. Adm. Daryl Caudle blasted his own service for failing to widely deploy directed-energy weapons on its ships despite four decades of experiments. Breaking Defense has more, here.
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Industry
New: Anduril picks Ohio capital for its new factory. The company will build its first “Arsenal” autonomous-weapons factory in Columbus, the company announced today. The company plans to spend $1 billion to renovate a 700,000-square-foot facility to churn out a slew of Anduril products, including its Fury fighter jet drone, Roadrunner drone defense system, and Barracuda line of cruise missiles. Construction is to begin as soon as various approvals are received, with the aim of starting production in July 2026.
“First of its kind.” Instead of requiring “highly skilled labor and very defense-specific supply chains, very kind-of exquisite materials,” the Arsenal factory and its weapons are designed so “the broadest kind of workforce possible can build and assemble those systems,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, told reporters Wednesday. For example, the facility will use a common set of tooling, machinery, and processes for every type of autonomous system Anduril builds, Brose said.
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Trump 2.0
New: Ohio GOP Rep. Mike Turner was fired as chair of the intelligence oversight committee by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Margaret Brennan of CBS News reported Wednesday. According to Punchbowl News, “Trump was a big factor here,” Melanie Zanona reported. “The far-right did not like how Turner handled [the] FISA fight. And Turner is pro-Ukraine & NATO,” she added.
Now what? “It is unclear who Johnson intends to appoint to fill the role, but multiple House Republicans predicted it would be Rep. Rick Crawford (R., Ark.), the most senior Republican on the panel after Turner,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Russ Vought, Office of Management and Budget director-designate, drew criticism from both sides of the aisle for his refusal to confirm he would follow congressional spending laws when distributing funds to agencies, noting Trump has called existing restrictions unconstitutional and he would follow the president’s directives. Government Executive’s Eric Katz has more from Wednesday’s hearing, here.
Will Trump’s pick to lead the CIA be apolitical? John Ratcliffe assured lawmakers Wednesday that he will, if he is confirmed as agency director in the coming weeks.
Why it matters: As the leading U.S. spy chief in Trump’s first term, he drew controversy over perceived politicization of intelligence assessments, NextGov reports. For example, while serving as Trump’s director of national intelligence shortly before the 2020 election, Ratcliffe declassified a CIA memo alleging Russian intelligence suggested Hillary Clinton devised a plan during the 2016 campaign to link Trump to Russia’s DNC hack as a distraction from her email server controversy. The decision was opposed by then-CIA Director Gina Haspel and other top intelligence officials. “It was my decision, but it wasn’t my process,” Ratcliffe told senators Wednesday of that episode. Read on for more.
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Etc.
Lastly today: Four more U.S. warships named for living people. On Wednesday, outgoing Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced names for a planned guided missile frigate and three guided missile destroyers:
The honorees are three decorated war heroes and an Obama-era Navy secretary noted for his own propensity to flout the policy, established in 1969, of not naming U.S. warships for living people. That policy, first broken in 1974, has since been broken with increasing frequency.
With Wednesday’s announcement, the six most-recently named ships have all been for the living. “Some observers have perceived a breakdown in, or corruption of, the rules for naming Navy ships,” the Congressional Research Service noted in its Jan. 16 update to “Navy Ship Names: Background for Congress.”
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