We host a roundtable on the planned Gaza ceasefire with former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy of the U.S./Middle East Project, Gazan analyst Muhammad Shehada of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News. We discuss how incoming President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff pressured Israel to accept the deal and what it reveals about the outgoing Biden administration’s refusal to use its own leverage for the same end. “Joe Biden could have ended this long ago,” and that he chose not to “exposes the utter moral rot that existed within the Biden White House,” says Scahill. Still, our guests say it’s unlikely that the ceasefire announcement signifies true relief for Palestinians beset by Israel’s genocidal violence. Levy says Netanyahu is already working to renege on the deal and continue a war that has helped him retain his political power, while Shehada warns that all signs point to the continued subjugation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories in conditions “more painful than the war.”
