Ben Cohen

Since October, there's been a ceasefire.

So the kind of intense warfare that you saw for the two years after the Hamas atrocity of October the 7th, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel and killed more than a thousand people and kidnapped more than 250 people, that phase of the war is now over.

The ceasefire was imposed

by primarily by US diplomacy.

And it has not been, it's been very far from plain sailing since then, even though the issue has dropped out of the news a little and its profile is not what it was.

All the basic problems that were there before October the 7th, 2023 are still there.

The

On the positive side, just to emphasize the positive first, more humanitarian aid has been getting into Gaza since the ceasefire.

The United States through CENTCOM created a Civil Military Coordination Center, CMCC, based in Israel in the town of Kiryat Gant.

And that is at the moment primarily responsible for monitoring the ceasefire

coordinating humanitarian aid flows into Gaza and more general clear up, post-war clear up, removing debris and trying to make some of these towns and cities in Gaza more habitable.

And so that has been encouraging, and the CMCC obviously has the support of this administration, but it also has the support of the Israelis and the Arab states.

But away from that, things are not quite so rosy.

The point was, in the first phase of the ceasefire, that all the hostages would be released, all the Israeli hostages that were seized by Hamas.

That essentially happened, although one hostage, the remains of one hostage, Rana Gvili,

are still in Gaza.

They still have not been returned.

His family is desperate.

They want closure.

So, in fact, Hamas has technically not met its obligations under the first phase of the ceasefire.