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A short prompt of good news for starting the week- the likelihood of the current Gaza conflict ending just got significantly higher today, as Hamas has released at least the first 7 of 20 surviving hostages to Israel, with more expected later today (or maybe already completed), as part of a Trump-mediated peace deal that is excepted to culminate in a regional summit this week.
Big if carried through, and while there was leadup to it last week, there was a fair bit of (and fair grounds for) skepticism on if the deal would actually be followed through. There were questions on if Hamas even could deliver all the living hostages given how the hostages were often not under Hamas's direct organizational control (but sometimes under other groups), and this deal does not address the bodies of the dead hostages, among other things.
There is also some irony, or possibly some future culture war conspiracy theories, about how this will not get Trump a noble peace prize, since they announced that late last week.
That said- and I think this is good news in general- it's also worth noting this doesn't mean stability or even a lasting peace. While the Yemen-based Houthis have indicated they will stop their Red Sea attacks so long as Israel upholds the ceasefire, this runs into complications like how Hamas has already engaged in gun battles with gazan clans as it tries to re-assert control, which goes significant premise of Hamas being removed as the military and civil authority of Gaza. Which remains a huge, unanswered question which could restart this problem all over again, if Hamas remains in power for lack of anyone actively displacing. The NYT is running a piece on how mediators are already signaling this isn't a comprehensive deal for either side.
One thing that isn't in question, however, is that the return of the still-living hostages is going to reshape the underpinnings of Israeli politics, as the post-October 7 war cabinet coalition that kept Netanyahu in power will lose much of the reason for being. This means political instability, for worse or for better, as Israel rebalances. The next election would be no later than late next year regardless, and could come earlier.
Absent some new (and detrimental to all) nonsense, this means that a lot of the people who only supported Nnetanyahu because of the war will likely be more willing to withdraw their support and trigger early elections, which would be no later than about a year from now anyways. This does not, however, mean a general discrediting of the Israeli right, and a decades-belated return of the Israeli left (whose original decline was after the failure of the gaza withdrawal almost two decades ago). The war was a significant polarizing effect on Israeli politics and society, and while I'd not bet on Netanyahu I'd also not bet on any part of the political left seen as opposing the war for pro-Palestinian reasonings.
I'll end it there. While there is plenty of reasons things could yet again get worse, and while I am sure eventually they will, for the moment I'll encourage people to view this new news as good news, which can well make many people's lives better.
This led to some incredibly stupid discussions I've seen with both leftists and rightists assuming that the Machado selection was some sort of a woke Yass Queen finger in the eye towards Trump instead of doing just the barest amount of Googling to recognize that this was very much in the line with the Trump admin foreign policy goals, ie. getting rid of Maduro, which was then confirmed with Machado going out of her way to congratulate and give credit to Trump after the selection.
It’s clear that the Nobel committee for reasons of generic Nordic internationalist liberalism could not stomach giving it to Trump directly (think of the humiliation at parties!) but decided to give it to a Trump-aligned Venezuelan conservative and anti-communist as a kind of consolation and gesture, in that Trump could hardly say she absolutely didn’t deserve it.
There is a little bit of that but giving it to trump also seems very premature, especially given his other proclivities.
Not least because it's awarded for deeds done before the year 2025. How exactly did Trump advance peace in 2024 when he wasn't even a president?
Yeah, I couldn't imagine them giving a nobel peace prize to a newly-elected president before he'd even done anything. That would be the scandal of the century.
It should have been (and in some ways was!) the scandal of the century. All the more reason such mistake (giving a US president an entirely premature Nobel peace prize) shouldn't be repeated.
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Wake me up if Israel/Palestine stop killing each other for more than a few months! I think this is a case where Trump's approach of steamrolling Israel into accepting his terms worked well and good for him, but it also seems way too easy to be real. Also, it is somewhat difficult to evaluate Israel outside of the context of Ukraine, on which there has been no progress toward a peace that doesnt just reward Russia's initial invasion.
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Of course, there's another reason why the Nobel committee would be adverse towards granting Trump Nobel right now - there's already a precedent of giving an US president a Nobel for practically nothing (sure, sure, cease-fire and all that, but it's still uncertain how well it holds and the decisionmaking process had already been going on for quite a period at that time) and then getting a lot of flack for it. For American conservatives, certainly, this might seem unfair with Obama and Trump being considered the opposites, but for practical purposes the rest of the world does often tend to consider them to belong to the same category - American presidents.
Some have also pointed out that the Machado decision is generally well in line with other recent Nobel Peace Price decisions - four out of five last years have seen the NPP being at least in part awarded to dissidents from American enemy countries (Dmitry Muratov from Russia in 2021, Ales Bialiatski from Belarus in 2022, Narges Mohammadi from Iran in 2023, Machado now.)
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Yes - I was surprised that the line on MAGA Twitter was "Trump woz robbed" and not to congratulate Machado and make hay out of her anti-leftist status (which she was very much up for), possibly along with a call for Trump to be nominated next year for the Gaza ceasefire. (If it holds, he may have actually earned a Nobel Peace Prize. If it doesn't, given the history, he has definitely earned a Nobel Peace Prize).
Trump himself went for the pro-Machado approach, so I don't know why the number of Trump sycophants posting "Trump woz robbed" were doing it. Obvious candidate theories include King Canute's courtiers tier more-royalist-than-the-King competitive uber-sycophancy, back-channel co-ordination to give Trump himself plausible deniability that he was having a bitchfest by proxy about not winning it, and failure of the administration to co-ordinate with its supporters on MAGA Twitter.
I think the actual reason was that despite the fact Trump is ostensibly in charge and agitating for war with Venezuela, it is the exact opposite of what his base wants and voted for. "No more pointless foreign wars" was one of Trump's main selling points, so the Nobel going to someone who wants to start another pointless foreign war isn't actually seen as a good thing for Trump by his base, even if it is a "good thing" for the wealthy ghouls who run the MIC and are actually in charge of US policy.
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I think it was just an atavistic reaction, partly to the simple idea of it being the height of wrongness for the God-Emperor to not get what he wants at all times and partly to the "brown foid from a shithole country? Must be a woke commie!" kneejerk assumption.
If you put it to the same standard as Obama getting one for being Brown, charismatic and existing it is a bit of a robbery considering Trump's actually secured Peace in places
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