At last, Israel and Hamas have reached a deal — of a sort. On Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump announced that the warring parties in Gaza agreed to implement the “first phase” of the peace plan he presented in September. While this doesn’t quite mean the war is completely finished just yet, it appears to be an earnest attempt by Israel and Hamas to begin ending two years of bloody conflict, destruction, and despair.

Over two years of war — launched after Hamas invaded Israel and killed around 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took around 250 more as hostages back to Gaza on October 7, 2023 — Israel has annihilated the Gaza Strip. It has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, starved and displaced most of Gaza’s 2 million residents, and reduced most of the territory’s build

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