Al Jazeera and news agencies

Mediator Qatar said more details of the agreement would be announced at a later date.

US President Donald Trump says Hamas and Israel have agreed on the first phase of his plan for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza and an exchange of captives.

“I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first phase of our peace plan,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.

“All the hostages will be released very soon, and Israel will withdraw their troops to an agreed upon line,” he added.

Mediator Qatar said more details of the agreement would be announced at a later date.

“The mediators announce that tonight an agreement was reached on all the provisions and implementation mechanisms of the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, which will lead to ending the war, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of aid. The details will be announced later,” Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Majed al-Ansari wrote on X.

The announcement came hours after Trump said negotiations were going “very well” and that he may travel to the Middle East later this week.

“I may go there sometime toward the end of the week, maybe on Sunday,” he told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.

Senior officials from Qatar, Turkiye, Egypt and the US joined the delegations in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Wednesday, the third day of the talks, as the mediators pressed the two sides to resolve their differences over Trump’s 20-point proposal.

The first phase of the plan calls for a ceasefire and the release of 48 Israeli captives held in Gaza, including 20 who are believed to be alive, and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Hamas has submitted its list of detainees to be freed as part of the proposed swap.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and special envoy Steve Witkoff, as well as Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer — a close aide of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — were participating in the negotiations on Wednesday, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.

Also joining the discussions was the prime minister of longstanding key mediator Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.

The Hamas delegation includes leaders Khalil al-Hayya and Zaher Jabarin, two negotiators who survived an  Israeli assassination attempt in Doha that killed five people last month.

In a statement released late on Wednesday, senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said the group welcomed the participation of Qatar’s prime minister and Turkiye’s intelligence chief, alongside Egypt’s intelligence chief, in the current round of talks.

He said their involvement gave the negotiations “a strong boost” towards achieving positive results on ending the war and facilitating a prisoner exchange.

A delegation from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group is also set to arrive in Egypt to participate in the indirect talks, according to a statement from the group.

The PIJ is the smaller of the two main Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip and holds some Israeli captives.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the mediated negotiations had made “a lot of headway” and that a ceasefire would be declared if they reached a positive outcome.

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said the talks remained tense with “some serious disagreements”, as crucial details were yet to be hammered out – including the timing and the extent of an Israeli withdrawal, the make-up of the post-war administration for the Gaza Strip and the fate of Hamas.

“You could say that the initial phase of the initial phase is working out,” he said. According to him, both sides appeared to agree on “some sort of parameters” for a captive-prisoner exchange.

“According to the plan, … after Hamas hands over the captives, then the war should be over,” Bishara said. “Israel says no, the war will be over only after Hamas disarms.”

Israeli attacks continue

Even as the talks progressed on Wednesday, Israel continued its attacks on Gaza. At least eight Palestinians were killed across Gaza over the previous 24 hours, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Wednesday. At least 61 others were injured in attacks, it said.

Gaza’s Government Media Office said in a statement on Wednesday that Israel carried out 271 air and artillery strikes over the past five days, despite calls from the US to stop the bombardment. The attacks targeted densely populated areas and shelters for displaced people across the enclave, killing 126 civilians, including women and children – with 75 of them in Gaza City alone.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza’s az-Zawayda, said the situation on the ground “looks extremely bleak” as Israeli drones were still targeting residential buildings, particularly in Gaza City.

“Civilians have said the scale of bombardment sounds less intense in comparison with the days preceding the onset of the current round of negotiations,” Abu Azzoum said.

“They say that might be a sign that mediators are exerting further pressure on Israel to at least mitigate the scale of its bombardment on Gaza for one reason: It’s to allow for Hamas fighters to retrieve bodies of Israeli captives as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal,” he said.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has warned that just 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning, and only a third of 176 primary care facilities work.

Hanan Balkhy, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said Gaza had been struggling with “dire shortages” of electricity, clean water and medicine, as well as broken equipment and damaged infrastructure in the health facilities still working.

“Some facilities have been hit and rehabilitated and hit once more,” she said.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed more than 67,000 people, according to health authorities, and has destroyed large swaths of land in the enclave where almost all two million residents have been forcibly displaced.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/8/trump-says-he-may-travel-to-middle-east-as-gaza-deal-very-close

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Only Israelis Could Commit Genocide For Years And Then Demand Sympathy — And Other Notes

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Never forget October 7th 2023, that fateful day when Israelis were brutally massacred by Israeli tanks and Israeli helicopters and Israeli drones and Israeli soldiers and Israeli bullets, and also by Hamas a bit.

❖

I’m sorry but it’s just plain hilarious that we’re still expected to hate Hamas after spending two years being shown exactly what it is that Hamas has been fighting.

Only Israelis could spend two years committing genocide and then demand everyone feel very, very sorry for them on the anniversary their genocide started.

❖

Hamas commander: Put the baby in the oven.

Hamas fighter: One of these 40 beheaded babies?

Hamas commander: No, cook a different baby. Leave those 40 beheaded babies in the pile.

Hamas fighter: Heil Hitler.

Hamas commander: Heil Hitler. [Turns, explodes 200 cars with a grenade.]

❖

The thing about October 7 is that if Israel supporters are going to insist on using it to justify everything that’s being done in Gaza, then the rest of us have no choice but to refuse to give a fuck about it.

If someone is using something as a weapon to hurt people, then you need to take their weapon away. If sympathy about October 7 is being weaponized for genocide propaganda, then you have an ethical obligation to withdraw your sympathy.

I don’t enjoy mocking and dismissing people who try to harness sympathy for October 7. It wasn’t particularly fun raining on the big sympathy parade the hasbarists threw for the second anniversary as they make a desperate effort to win back some of the global support they’ve been hemorrhaging all year. That’s just what you need to do when people are using something to facilitate crimes against humanity. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise.

❖

CNN’s Van Jones, who in 2021 was given $100 million by Jeff Bezos, recently came under fire for claiming that people oppose the Gaza holocaust because Iran and Qatar are running a massive “disinformation campaign” to show people dead babies in Gaza. He made a joke about how everyone’s seeing “dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby” on their phones which cracked up Bill Maher’s studio audience.

This is one of the ugliest, nastiest pieces of western media propaganda about the Gaza holocaust that I have ever seen, and we’re two whole years in. Only someone who thinks “dead Gaza baby” is a hilarious punchline would believe people need to be tricked by foreign influence campaigns into caring about dead babies in Gaza.

❖

Someone who is truly and sincerely worried about a rise in antisemitism will oppose the mass slaughter of children under the Star of David banner by a state which claims to represent all Jews while Jewish billionaires buy up media to silence criticism of that state and Jewish oligarchs openly purchase the president of the world’s most powerful government to ensure the facilitation of that state’s atrocities.

❖

Progressive darling Zohran Mamdani has come out and described Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro and Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel as “dictators”, just as the Trump administration ends diplomacy with Venezuela in yet another step toward possible war. So that’s some nice timing.

The Democratic Party is a US empire party. The very best Democrats just want a slightly more polite and humanitarian empire. All of them support war and militarism. All of them support the subjugation of the global south by tyrannical force. Everyone needs to get clear on this.

❖

It’s funny how white supremacists freak out about global birth rates, because it’s just the result of white supremacism getting everything it wanted. Whites spent centuries extracting wealth from the global south, and it turns out fertility rates decline the wealthier a population becomes. They plundered and exploited and enslaved and extracted from the darker-skinned people whom they viewed as inferior, and now those populations are the only ones reproducing at above replacement levels.

They’re freaking out because they understand their civilization will come crashing down without working-age people stepping in to keep the gears of the nation turning as prior generations age out, and now the only way they’re going to get those workers is by inviting them to immigrate from other continents. Those immigrants will have significant collective bargaining power because they are needed; they won’t just remain some permanently subjugated underclass. Eventually they start intermarrying with the white population, and before long humanity consists of lovely shades of tan. White supremacism loses, ultimately because it got everything it has ever asked for.

This is one reason why there’s so much overlap between white supremacism and Christian fundamentalism, by the way. White supremacists understand that they can’t have wealthy, educated women choosing when they do and do not reproduce, because it turns out having and raising children is a massive ordeal and a woman with rights and resources will only sometimes feel safe and supported enough to do it. So they need to find ways to turn them back into a man’s property and force them to churn out white children.

This is also a lot of the drive behind all the tradwife stuff, the incel stuff, the anti-abortion stuff, and the “your body, my choice” rape apologia you see on the far right. White supremacists are searching for ways to bump up white birth rates against the wishes of women. White supremacism is unworkable without male supremacism.

This is also why you see racists like Elon Musk simultaneously freaking out about declining birth rates and pushing AI like their life depends on it. They understand that automating society is the only way to stave off the future wave of immigration that will otherwise be necessary to keep civilization functioning. But it turns out AI is a bust, and that bubble is going to burst before long. Again, white supremacism loses in the end.

❖

I saw a good tweet from Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello saying “It’s wild how people can effortlessly understand the righteousness of everybody from Robin Hood to Andor and then in real life simp for the Sheriff of Nottingham and the Death Star.”

This happens because in Robin Hood and Star Wars the storyteller is sympathetic to the rebel characters while the pundits, editors and reporters who tell the stories of our time are sympathetic to those in power.

David Attenborough can get you cheering for the seal or for the polar bear depending on whose journey is being followed as a sympathetic protagonist. The narrators in our stories are those who control the narrative.

_________________

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https://www.activistpost.com/only-israelis-could-commit-genocide-for-years-and-then-demand-sympathy-and-other-notes/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.