Gaza ceasefire: How Hamas and Israel's worst war changed history
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Donald Trump's power made the two sides sign out. So I call on him to make sure that not only the first stage, but also that the second and third stages will be completed, that all the hostages will come home and we'll put this nightmare to an end. They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. I recognize the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War.

Hunger. Terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battle Lions. It's Friday, the 17th of January 2025.

One year and three months since Hamas fighters massacred over a thousand Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more, and Israel in response launched the most destructive air and artillery bombardment this century, Gaza's agony may finally be coming to an end. Israel and Hamas this week agreed to a hostage release and ceasefire deal that, if implemented, will see the guns fall silent at a quarter past midday on Sunday, 470 days since the war began.

There are still many hoops to jump through. As we speak, Israel's government has accused Hamas of trying to scupper the deal by adding last minute demands. And for now, fighting is ongoing. At least 78 people have been reported dead in the first 12 hours after the deal was announced.

We'll be hearing from Gil Dickman, one of the most recognisable faces of the Israeli hostage protests and a cousin of the slain hostage, Carmel Gat, and the Palestinian journalist Ruwaida Amr, who has survived the war inside Gaza since the beginning and is currently in Khan Yunus, for their reactions. But first, a quick catch-up on the latest death tolls, both civilian and military, since October 7th, 2023.

Gaza's death toll is 46,707 people. The West Bank's is 826 people. Israel's is 1,843 people. On top of that, we should add that there are 94 hostages left in Gaza of the 251 seized by Hamas on October 7th. Israel believes that only 60 of them are still alive.

The nascent peace deal is a product of months of American and Qatari brokered talks, and the breakthrough seemed to come on Wednesday evening when US President-elect Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, we have a deal for the hostages in the Middle East. They will be released shortly. Thank you. Not long afterwards, US President Joe Biden made a formal announcement. Good afternoon. It's a very good afternoon because at long last...

I can announce a ceasefire and a hostage deal has been reached between Israel and Hamas. More than 15 months of conflict began with Hezbollah's brutal massacre on October the 7th. More than 15 months of terror for the hostages, their families, the Israeli people. More than 15 months of suffering by the innocent people of Gaza. Fighting in Gaza will stop and soon the hostages will return home to their families.

My co-host Venetia Rainey was up late into the night looking into the details of this deal. Venetia, what do we know about what has been agreed? So this is quite a complicated deal. It's going to unfold in three phases, according to leaked documents, and we haven't had the official line out yet. It's believed to be roughly the same deal that Biden was pushing last May. So phase one, as you said, only properly comes into effect just after midday on Sunday, and it's going to last about six weeks. No fighting during that time.

time. Three Israeli hostages will be instantly released on Sunday, and then another 30 will be released over the following weeks in dribs and drabs. These will be women, children and civilian males over the age of 50. Most of that 33 first tranche of hostages are thought to be alive. In exchange, Israel is going to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners,

There's a certain number per Israeli hostage that we don't know exactly. I've seen lots of different numbers bandied around between 30 and 50. And these prisoners include people who've been convicted of terror offences, some people serving life sentences, and some people who've been detained in Gaza after October 7th, including some women and children.

On the ground in Gaza, the Israeli army is supposed to withdraw from densely populated parts of the Strip to a buffer zone around the border, but they will retain a partial presence in these two corridors that I'm sure our listeners will be very familiar with now, the Philadelphia corridor on the border with Egypt and the Netselim corridor, which essentially cuts the north and the south of Gaza into two. Gazans have been displaced, which is unfortunate.

Basically, everyone at this point will be allowed to return home and around 600 aid trucks will be allowed in every day. And that includes some with fuel for hospitals and so on. We're already seeing those trucks start to queue up at the border.

So that's phase one. That's the very ambitious plan for the next six weeks. Phase two, this is a lot vaguer. Negotiations for this are supposed to start on the 16th day of phase one, so in a couple of weeks. And this will be the really tricky bit, to be honest, because these aspects are even more contentious. It should see Hamas release the remaining alive hostages. These are mostly men of fighting age and male soldiers. Israel, in return, will release more Palestinian prisoners. And the Israeli army will fully withdraw from Gaza.

Obviously, this is complicated. Israel has not said that it will agree to a complete withdrawal until Hamas has been completely eliminated. Hamas has said it won't hand over the last hostages until Israel removes all of its troops. So you can see the sort of catch-22 that you end up in there. And that taps into the arguments that we're seeing in the Israeli cabinet at the moment. We've had Bezalel Smatrich, the finance minister, saying that he wants Netanyahu to assure him that the fighting will resume after those six weeks.

So we'll have to see whether they can even get to those negotiations on the 16th day of phase one. Phase three, there's no timeline for this. It would involve the return of any remaining hostages' bodies and a three to five year reconstruction plan to be conducted under international supervision. Someone has to take over the governance of the Gaza Strip. Will that be the Palestinian Authority?

We don't know. Nothing like that has been agreed yet. Could you also just lay out for us the hoops that have to be got through before Sunday? The deal was announced on Wednesday, about 24 hours before we are speaking, for the benefit of listeners. So there's still a couple of days before the ceasefire is meant to come into effect, but it's got to go through several votes, particularly on the Israeli side.

Right.

After that Security Cabinet meeting, it would go to a full government vote. And Netanyahu, I should say, is expected to have the votes to carry both of those meetings. But the fear is that if he does push the vote through, parts of his coalition will resign and that would collapse his government and force elections.

Thank you, Venetia. Well, earlier today, I managed to get on the phone with Ruwida Amar. She is a Palestinian journalist, a native of Gaza, who has been in the Gaza Strip throughout the war, has been displaced several times. She managed to reach us by phone from Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip.

I began by asking her how she felt when she heard the news of a ceasefire. I'm waiting this moment for a long time. From the beginning of the war, I was hope the war will finish in one, two, three days.

One week, two weeks, one month, two months. But when it continued until more than 13 months, it was very terrible. So when I heard in the news there is agreement, maybe it will be very soon. And when Donald Trump said it must be there is agreement and stop this war before 20,

of January, it was like there's hope. So when I heard this news, I was so happy because finally I will not have drones,

war plans, bombing everywhere. I will be in serve, I can move anywhere and I can work as I want, okay, without any worry if I will back to my family. There's no words can describe the feelings when you know this world will stop. I'm so happy and

We are so excited to come on Sunday. Which part of the Gaza Strip are you in? I'm in the south, in Khanoun city. But I've displaced my home many times because nowhere is safe in Gaza. But I'm in my home for maybe more than two months because before that I evacuated my home with my family and we're back.

What's the atmosphere in in Khan Yunus? Is there

Is there still fighting there today? Are there airstrikes going on or is it relatively calm? Yesterday when they said there's this fire in Gaza will be on Sunday all the people were very happy, okay so excited about it and we know until now there's no such fire because there's bombing everywhere and maybe many people killed last night and until this moment so the people are

are very careful because they don't be one of the loose people in the last moments of the war okay they're they are waiting for Sunday to live as normal people and they are uh

so excited to back to their homes in in the north after more than one year without their homes their neighborhoods their areas is there fighting in khan eunice can you hear bombing or fighting near you today or yesterday yes yes i heard bombing from the tanks bombing shell everywhere we use about

You said there that you're kind of used to it, that the last moments of a war are often the worst before a ceasefire comes in.

And obviously Gaza's seen several wars, you know, over the past 20 years. I suppose one of the questions is what comes next for Gaza after this? Are people talking about the future, about rebuilding? Or is that all of those questions, are they to be answered later?

To be honest, this question is very hard, okay, because we don't know what will be tomorrow or next many months or the future of Gaza because everything destroyed, the homes,

schools, universities, so all of them destroyed in the war. So we are thinking about how we can back to our normal life. The future will be very hard to rebuild and your relationship with the people because you lose many people around you. So how you can live as normal without them, it

It will be very hard, but in the future we will focus on rebuild Gaza.

So we are looking for the peace, to live in peace. It's not easy for the people in Gaza to live in the war many times every year or every two years, live in war. No, we need to live in peace without problems, political problems. We need to save our future, save our children, save our memories, save our lives.

Ruwaida, thank you so much for speaking to us. Hopefully there will be good news on Sunday. That was Ruwaida Aimer speaking to us from Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip. Now let's hear an Israeli perspective. Venetia. Yeah, so earlier today I spoke to Gil Dickman. His cousin Carmel Gatt was taken hostage on October 7th. She was staying at her parents' home in Kibbutz Beri.

She was executed by Hamas along with five other hostages last September. Her body was retrieved from Hamas Tunnel shortly afterwards during an IDF raid. Gil has become since then one of the most recognizable faces in the Israeli movement pushing for a hostage deal. I started by asking him how he was feeling. Well, I'll just start with mixed feelings because we know that there's a very high chance that we will see hostages coming back in just a few days.

And I've been in this large family that is the hostage family forum. And I see it as a large family. So it became a large family.

for the last 15 months. So the people who are awaiting hostages are basically my family. And it feels like the people coming home are sort of my family members. So I'm very excited to see them. And I really hope it happens soon. And I really hope that many of them are alive as we expect them to be and even well, but you never know.

And it's mixed with the feeling that, you know, my cousin Carmel was supposed to be a part of this deal. And this very same deal was on the table in May. Just a few months ago, she was still alive. It didn't come true. It wasn't to be, I guess, because the two sides and I myself blamed the Israeli side. They did not come to an agreement. Then Carmel stayed behind and was shot to death.

I mean, it's just an appalling waste, isn't it? You said you blame the Israeli government. Can you explain why? The way I see it and from what I understood, it's the very same deal that we had in May. It's the very same deal that we have now, but they didn't come to an agreement. And when I asked the Minister of Defense back then,

Yoav Galant, why they didn't agree in May or in July when it was on the table, he said that he also did not understand and he thought that Israel should come to close talks between Israel and Hamas and agree and find a way or a path to agreement.

And what Netanyahu decided to do is to send a large document with many clarifications that he had for the deal that was on the table.

And that was the thing that stopped the negotiations and made it so the deal didn't come true. And actually, I was with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington in July. And I asked him, why don't you sign it now? And he said that he had problems with the deal and we should put more pressure and then it would be better.

And what ended up happening is that they put more pressure. The deal stayed the same and more hostages died, including my cousin. She was supposed to come out in the very first few days of this deal. And they didn't sign the deal in time and she was left behind and killed. And I'm very much afraid that the very same thing is going to happen to the hostages themselves.

that are a part of the second and third phases of this deal. Because what they're agreeing upon now is the first phase of the deal, including 33 hostages. And there are 65 other hostages who are to be left out of the deal if Israel decides to come back to war or if Hamas puts...

obstacle that he puts on the table. So I'm very much afraid that there is nothing to ensure the safety and the life of the hostages that will be supposed to be a part of the second and third phases. And the only thing that they say in the agreement is that on the 16th day of

of a ceasefire, they're going to start the negotiations about the second and third stages, the second and third phase. And it's way too late the way I see it. They have to start now. That's also what we said to Prime Minister Netanyahu. I just spoke to him two days ago. We had a meeting with him. We tried to understand how he can make sure that all hostages will come out. He didn't have any answers that he wanted to share with us. He said that he would

like to keep it a secret because he doesn't want the other side to know. And we see that Minister Bacaraz Motric right now is trying to get Netanyahu to promise that after the first stage, they will come back to war, that the war will resume. That's exactly the opposite of what

We want, as families, exactly the opposite of what the Israeli people want and what the people in Gaza deserve and what all the world wants. The world wants this war to end and for hostages to come home. That's what the world wants. And it's time we do it. I wonder, Gil, you're talking about the second and third phases, but as far as I can tell,

When we're speaking, and I should say it's Thursday afternoon right now, it looks like the Israeli cabinet still hasn't signed off on the deal. Can you explain what's going on there from your understanding? From what I understand, two things are happening in parallel. One of them is regarding some Palestinian prisoners that may or may not be on the list that Hamas asked for. I think they'll find a solution for that.

And the second thing is this conversation between Bezalel Smolty, an important minister in the Israeli government, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, he doesn't only want the deal to pass because he has the votes to pass the deal. He wants to make sure that he's going to have a government.

after the deal is passed. So he has to explain to Vitalis Motric or to promise him that he will have a way or that even he will actually go and resume the war after the first stage. And that's very, very disturbing for us.

Because we don't care who has the government and who hasn't the government. That's not what we care about. What we care about is that we start the deal and then we continue with it till the end, till all the hostages are home. That's from what I understand, that's what President-elect Donald Trump wants. That's what he promised. And I call on him, on President-elect Trump, to push like he pushed...

very hard in the last few days and weeks. He actually made this deal happen. President Biden has laid out the agreement, but they didn't come to an agreement. And Donald Trump's power, and he has a lot of power, made the two sides sign out. So I call on him to make sure that not only the first stage is signed,

signed and it goes on the way because I believe this train has left the station and we're on the trail to the first stage but also that the second and third stages will be completed that all the hostages will come home and we'll put this nightmare to an end

So do I understand you correctly that Netanyahu can put through the ceasefire deal, but his government might collapse and that would trigger elections? The ceasefire deal could keep going, but he might then face losing power. Is that right? That's exactly right. Netanyahu has the votes in his government, but he's afraid that if the deal is going to get underway, he will lose power.

And he now has to balance between the two. And for us, this is unbelievable that we're even talking about this, that politics is now a part of the conversation of whether people will come back alive from being imprisoned by a terror organization. Put politics aside and just do it. You've spoken really powerfully in the past, and I hope you don't mind if I just quote you briefly. The Israeli people want life. We fight for the lives of the hostages. We don't fight for revenge.

I'm wondering how you think Israelis can move on from the horrors of the last year or so. What I saw in the last few months is that I was correct in this. The people of Israel want life. They care more for the hostages that will be released than for killing more terrorists in Gaza or trying to destroy Hamas. Saving lives is the most important thing. And we know that we can feel safe and secure

only once the hostages are back home. So I think the first stage would have to be that we take the steel to the finish line and all the hostages will come back home. And the second and third things are going to be to find a replacement for

for Hamas. Hamas is a terror organization. They shouldn't be in control of two and a half million Palestinians. That's not fair. It's towards the Palestinians and that's not fair towards the Israelis. They don't deserve it. We don't deserve it. It's a terror organization and they don't care about the life of their own people. They sacrifice lives of their own people. And I believe we as the people of Israel don't do that. So if we find a replacement for Hamas and

If we find the ways to keep ourselves secure from not only from Hamas, but also from all our neighbors, basically, I think finding a solution, a diplomatic solution that could include Saudi Arabia and many other powers in the region might be a solution for Israel's future. But in order to start this, you have to first finish the war and get the hostages home.

What's the mood like in Israel at the moment as you wait to see whether the hostages will start to emerge on Sunday? Yesterday evening was, I thought it would be celebratory, but it was more, I think, hesitant. And it is still like this today, because we've been promised that the hostages are coming back home for such a long time that it is hard for us to believe that this is actually happening.

Also, some of the hostage families are very, very disturbed and worried. And I think other people are also feeling the same way. They are afraid that some of the hostages will be left behind. And that's a very disturbing part of the deal. We also know that some of the hostages, even among the 33 who will be released as a part of the first phase, some of them are

are already dead and we don't really know who or even how many and that's sick in a way because we're going to get hostages back and we're going to get

the happiest news possible for the families who will receive their loved ones alive and the saddest news possible when some of the families are going to receive their loved ones dead. And I really expect difficult times in the next few weeks here in Israel, but I hope we see it through because that is the only way out.

Finally, do you know some of the names of the people who are supposed to be released in that first 33? I've heard the Beebe family, for example. Yeah, the Beebe family as well. They are part of the list. And even when you are a part of the list, that doesn't mean necessarily that you're going to be released. My cousin, Fermella, was on the list for the eighth day of the ceasefire, but then the ceasefire collapsed midway and just a few hours before she was supposed to be released.

and she stayed behind. So even if I tell you names of hostages, we can never be sure whether they will actually come out in the next few days or weeks. But Romigo Nan should be a part, and Kik Sigal...

and many others, Ohad Ben Ami, and all the female soldiers, Liri Elbag, Karina Araye, Vianiela Gilboa, Agam Berger, and we're really waiting to see all of them, Naama Levi. Even saying these names and thinking about the moment when their parents are going to hug them, when Naama's mother is finally going to hug her after

Seeing this affordable video of her being dragged by a Hamas terrorist on October 7th, or the father and mother of Lili Elbag finally hugging her, her two sisters, Shai and Roni, they really became sort of my family. I see them all the time and we're practically a big family. So to think about the moment they'll finally get to hug her.

is still something I can't really believe and I really hope we'll get to see it soon. That was Gil Dickman. Benicia, we heard in both of those accounts from Israel and from Gaza a degree of caution and acknowledgement that

You know, this is still very complicated. A lot could still go wrong or be derailed down the line. It's worth mentioning one of the reasons you were speaking to Gill was because, sadly, his cousin is dead and that the families of surviving hostages have said they're not going to talk to the press until this is finalised and it's happened.

which is a sign, I suppose, of the understandable nerves around all of this. You've looked at the deal closely. Just flesh out a few of these obstacles and a few of the unanswered questions that are still going to be left here, even if this does go through, even if on Sunday the guns fall silent. I think the big question for Israelis is,

Which hostages are still alive? What state are they going to be in? There are so many unanswered questions around that. You know, the war has meant that I think Hamas has probably lost track of some of the hostages. They haven't been able to provide that information to the Israeli government. So people are really wondering what state their loved ones will be in and whether they're even alive. We also don't know what order they're going to be released in. And that's likely going to depend on the logistics of moving these hostages to the southern border where they're supposed to be picked up by the Red Cross.

And then for Gazans, assuming as you say that the fighting really does stop, the two immediate question marks are over aid and what's left of their previous lives. The aid needs in Gaza are absolutely enormous after 15 months of intense war, obviously. The Rafah crossing, we don't know what state that's in. The Israeli inspection system, is it ready to allow in hundreds of trucks a day? How will the distribution system work? We know looting has been a huge problem due to the lack of security. That doesn't just disappear overnight.

And there's also the question of who will do the distribution because the main UN agency in Gaza is UNRWA, but UNRWA is slated to be banned from operating anywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories next week after an Israeli law was passed in October due to the organization's alleged links to Hamas. No other UN agency or NGO has a network that can replace UNRWA overnight.

And then this other question of what's left of Gazan's previous lives. I mean, we've seen pictures, we've seen footage that the level of the ruin, Asian, of Gaza is quite staggering. 93% apparently of residential buildings have been damaged. So for many, there's just this question of will they even have a home to go back to? There's something like 40 million tons of rubble that have to be removed.

And basic services are in disrepair, you know. We've heard aid officials talking about a second war that will get underway in the coming weeks if the ceasefire does actually hold. And that's the war for shelter, for food, for medicine, for basic essentials like nappies and formula. So I think lots of questions still remain and this is really just the beginning of a new stage rather than the end of anything.

It is quite extraordinary, isn't it? We heard Ruida describing how, look, Gaza has seen many, many wars over the past couple of decades, that people kind of understand the pattern of them, that they know, for example, that the fighting always gets worse right before the ceasefire. And they're seeing that now, but also saying that the level of destruction of this one is, it puts it in a completely different,

different category and the question of rebuilding is going to be profound. The other big question is who is going to end up running the Gaza Strip

These are all absolutely huge questions. But nonetheless, it does feel, and then the reason, listeners, we are talking about this today, although we tend to talk about the Middle East on Mondays, is that this really does feel like a turning point, that perhaps finally this war that has dominated global attention for well over a year may finally be coming to an end.

Yeah, I think, you know, when we think about Middle Eastern history, we think about what Israel calls the War of Independence, what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe in 1948. We think about the Seven Day War. We think about the Yom Kippur War. This will definitely go down as one of those events.

wars that has reshaped the region in so many ways. Roland, you wrote a really interesting analysis piece for us, which we'll link to in the show notes. And I think that's where we should end about how this war has reshaped the world. Can you explain a bit more about that?

So, yeah, I mean, if you think about this war, what the world looked like beforehand and what it looks like afterwards, things have changed in quite a profound way. I think we start with Gaza and Israel, right, as you quite rightly talk about in the long history of that conflict.

This is Israel's longest ever conventional war. I mean, you could talk about the intifadas and so on, which ran on for longer than that. But in terms of conventional wars that Israel has fought, it is the longest war this country has ever fought. It has changed Israel. It's also changed Gaza.

people who follow these things talk about it because it's a different color from space now you know the level of destruction is compared to the firebombing of i know hamburg or dresden or something in the second world war and we heard writer talking there about you know how many people she's known who've been lost about the struggle of rebuilding her life amid all that human loss all of that destruction um profound internal impact inside israel you know it

Obviously, Israel's response, it brought the country together. There was already within the first week of this war getting underway, you know, the tensions within society. You could see the corrosion there. You could see the sense that different parts of society had to answer somehow for what had happened there. I've spoken to a lot of Israelis telling me basically, OK, we're going to deal with the war. But after that, then there is going to be a reckoning with Israel.

Often it's Netanyahu they blame. Often it's the intelligence or military establishment for failing to prevent October 7th. And then you've got the wider region. This gave birth to a war between Israel and Lebanon and ended up with the destruction of basically the defanging of Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah is now dead. Who would have thought of that? Hezbollah as a military unit has been destroyed.

massively, massively degraded, which presents questions for Lebanon. And then almost as a direct consequence of that, Bashar Assad in Syria, 12, 13 years after the Arab Spring and the start of the Syrian civil war, finally collapses, largely because Hezbollah is in no position to protect their old ally. By extension, Iran has just seen its 20 years of foreign policy, 20 years of building up this axis of resistance.

basically go up in a puff of smoke. So a massive remaking of the Middle East. You've got Israel's relationship with the West that has survived, but that's been really, really strained. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, the International Criminal Court's investigation into Israel for genocide, which was brought by South Africa, the arrest warrant against Netanyahu. I mean, these things have really strained that Western relationship. And I know you and I were talking earlier about what this means for international law. Yeah.

No, this is a massive issue. And this war has thrown up questions about the, I suppose what we would call the post-Second World War consensus, that go to the heart of this period of conflict and instability that basically this podcast, you know, we set up to report on. That is basically, is there such a thing as enforceable, impartial international laws? When the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yov Galen, the Israeli Defense Secretary...

That was the first time they'd ever done that for a Western ally. And for supporters of international humanitarian law, that was seen as a really, really good thing because it finally made clear to the world that they were impartial, that international law would be enforced without fear or favour. And yet, for Israel's key allies, for Israel, for the United States, for Britain, which is a big backer of the International Criminal Court, suddenly they were saying things like, well, that's unacceptable. Whether or not

the idea of impartiality in international humanitarian law and the prosecution of war crimes can survive in an era of conflict and great power competition is something that is going to play out over the next several years in quite a dramatic fashion and this is just the beginning of it.

But the last point I think we need to make in this podcast, it's about Donald Trump. It's not a coincidence that this deal has appeared just days before he becomes the next president of the United States. To be honest with you, I'm not entirely clear what he said to Netanyahu or to whoever else to get this through. Well, I saw a fantastic tweet by a higher arts journalist basically saying that Netanyahu

Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy for Trump, went to Netanyahu, twisted his arm, twisted it a bit more, twisted it a bit more, and then really held it behind his back until he said yes. He used slightly cruder language than that, I'm paraphrasing. And I was reading from Axios as well, they were looking into some of the reporting about how this deal has been pushed through. And yes, lots of negotiation between the outgoing administration of Joe Biden and the incoming administration of Donald Trump.

But also just Donald Trump saying that he would not have the patience and bringing a sort of real estate agent energy to this deal and just saying that this is the deadline. Get it done. I don't want to have to deal with it. There's some suggestion that he has his eye on a bigger Middle East deal, whether that's the Saudi Arabia-Israel normalization or some kind of Israel-Palestine peace deal. He wants some kind of maybe even a Nobel Peace Prize or something during his tenure. Yeah.

He sees this as small potatoes and he's made clear that he has absolutely no patience and that the current terms of the deal would probably expire when he came in. So I think for both sides, that has been a huge incentiviser to just get this done. It's one indication of how...

I'm not going to say it's an indication of how things are going to go in other talks, but it gives us a sense of the approach he's likely to bring to the other issues on his plate, whether that's Ukraine, whether that's China, those big foreign policy challenges. We already knew that, you know, the second Trump term was going to be quite different. I think this is just the beginning of what is going to be a very interesting four years.

And on that note, we are out of time. Venetia, thank you very much. Our listeners, thank you for joining us. Battlelines will be back on Monday afternoon with the latest updates on this and the other big foreign policy defense and conflict stories from around the world. That was Battlelines. Goodbye.

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