Hamas Refuses Israeli Cease-Fire, Hostage Swap Deal

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a failed cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, Congolese candidates denouncing an extended election, and a mass university shooting in the Czech Republic.

Ongoing Talks

Hamas rejected an Israeli offer on Wednesday to implement a weeklong cease-fire if the militant group releases 40 hostages, according to Egyptian officials mediating the talks. Hamas said it will only consider freeing hostages after a cease-fire goes into effect and Gaza receives more humanitarian aid.

The 40 hostages would include all 19 women and two children still in captivity as well as older men in need of urgent medical care. Hamas alleges that three Israeli hostages, including both remaining children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Israel said it has not confirmed that the three people are dead.

Representatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad—an Islamist militant group active in Gaza that, along with Hamas, participated in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and took hostages—are expected to also participate in talks in Cairo in the coming days. They are insisting that Israel release all of its thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including high-level militants, in exchange for handing over the remaining hostages.

At the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, nations continued to haggle over a resolution calling for a pause in fighting. The vote was scheduled for Monday but was delayed numerous times due to the United States threatening to use its veto power if the draft’s “cessation” language isn’t changed to a “suspension” in fighting, alongside other demands. Washington wants a truce that “doesn’t do anything that can actually hurt the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. However, Blinken pushed Israel to scale back its military actions in Gaza on Wednesday, urging for “more targeted operations” rather than the full-scale war currently underway.

Israeli forces uncovered an alleged Hamas command center in Gaza City on Wednesday. Israel believes the underground network of tunnels was used to transport weapons, militants, and supplies. Hamas military infrastructure was also “located in the direct vicinity of commercial stores, government buildings, civilian residences, and a designated school for deaf children,” an Israeli statement said.

The Israel Defense Forces intensified attacks across northern Gaza on Thursday, and Hamas launched rockets at Tel Aviv. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began on Oct. 7. And as of Wednesday, there are no more functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported.

“More than ever, a humanitarian ceasefire is needed now to reinforce and restock remaining health facilities, deliver medical services needed by thousands of injured people and those needing other essential care, and, above all, to stop the bloodshed and death,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Today’s Most Read

• Ukraine Braces for Political Disaster in 2024 by Oz Katerji
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• Could Hamas Become a Global Threat? by Colin P. Clarke

What We’re Following

Calls for a rerun. Voting continued for a second day in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday after polling stations battled hourslong delays, long lines, and other logistical nightmares. Nineteen candidates are vying to be the nation’s next president, including incumbent leader Félix Tshisekedi. However, five opposition hopefuls united late Wednesday to condemn the country’s extended election day, arguing that the decision was unconstitutional. They called for the elections to be rerun.

Congo’s electoral commission hopes to begin releasing some of the election results on Friday, with a provisional outcome expected by the end of the year. Tshisekedi is slated to win a second, and final, term. Nearly 44 million people registered to vote, but turnout numbers are predicted to be lower following an election day marred by operational hurdles.

Steps toward friendship. Top military leaders from the United States and China met via videoconference on Thursday for the first time in more than a year. Gen. Charles Brown, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chinese Gen. Liu Zhenli discussed “the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication,” according to a U.S. readout.

The meeting followed U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreeing to reopen high-level military talks during San Francisco’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last month. However, “[d]espite signs of renewed engagement, both Xi and Biden remain committed to their current confrontational course, which means the prospects for stabilization remain distant at best and foolhardy at worst,” China expert Craig Singleton told FP’s Robbie Gramer last month.

Rare gun violence. At least 15 people were killed in a mass shooting at Charles University in Prague on Thursday. Police said the shooter, a 24-year-old student at the university, was “eliminated,” and they are investigating his motive. Before the attack, the gunman also killed his father in their family home in Kladno, outside of Prague. Local authorities do not suspect any links to extremist groups.

The attack was one of the Czech Republic’s worst mass shootings in its history. Prime Minister Petr Fiala expressed his “deepest condolences” for the victims and their loved ones on X, announcing that he would cut short his trip to Olomouc in order to attend an extraordinary government meeting on the situation.

Economic protests. Argentine President Javier Milei faced significant public unrest on Wednesday when thousands of people took to Buenos Aires’s streets to protest his economic shock policies. In an effort to decrease public spending, Milei last week announced cuts to subsidies, the closure of multiple government ministries, and a devaluation of the peso by more than 50 percent to the U.S. dollar.

This is Milei’s first major test since coming to power on Dec. 10, and he tried to preempt it last week by announcing new restrictions on demonstrators. Although some people are protesting, Milei’s political and economic reform promises found sizable support in a country plagued by high inflation, staggering poverty, and political corruption. However, “the paradox of populism is that it often identifies real problems but seeks to replace them with something worse,” history professor Federico Finchelstein wrote in Foreign Policy.

Odds and Ends

Ninety seconds could make or break your future—or so a group of South Korean teenagers are arguing. On Tuesday, aspiring college students sued the government after their college admissions exam ended a minute and a half early. They are asking for $15,400 per student, or the cost of a year’s studying to retake the exam, considered one of the hardest tests in the world.