Why D.C.’s airspace is riskier than we previously thought
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What are the key issues in Gaza's ceasefire deal?
But first, to the Middle East, where Hamas has agreed to release three Israeli hostages on Saturday as scheduled in the planned ceasefire deal. Earlier in the week, Hamas threatened to postpone their release, accusing Israel of violating terms of the agreement related to humanitarian aid and allowing displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza. Hamas also said some Palestinians are still being targeted by gunfire. Israel denied those claims and had threatened to resume attacks on Gaza if Hamas refused to release the hostages as planned.
Everyone here on both sides has just been kind of holding their breath for the last few days, waiting to see if this can be worked out.
Kat Lonsdorff is NPR's Middle East correspondent and spoke with us from Tel Aviv. She says although this recent dispute appears to be resolved, there are still questions about how phase two of the ceasefire deal might move forward. We know some of the big picture goals. More Israeli hostages and detained Palestinians could be released. Israeli troops could withdraw from Gaza. And the terms of a permanent ceasefire could be explored. But we don't have many specifics.
That's what we're all really watching right now is to see if those talks about phase two do in fact start and what we can hear about what's happening in them.
President Trump made the precarious ceasefire deal even more delicate by saying last week, while hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, that the U.S. will take over Gaza, displacing millions of Palestinians so the U.S. could build on their land. And the president recently told Fox News' Brett Baier that Gazans would not be allowed to return home.
Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. Would the Palestinians have the right to return? No, they wouldn't, because they're going to have much better housing, much better... In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them, because if they have to return now, it'll be years before you could ever... It's not habitable. It would be years before it could happen.
The reconstruction of Gaza was something Israel and Hamas agreed to discuss for phase three of the ceasefire agreement, at least before Trump weighed in. Lonsdorff told us many Palestinians are extremely upset by what Trump is suggesting.
I think it is really important to point out that the idea of being relocated is a very emotional and unsettling one for Palestinians. Historically, Palestinians have been displaced or forcibly moved from their land and then never allowed to return again, including most Palestinians living in Gaza right now. They're refugees from what was once Palestinian land and is now Israel.
Hamas has said Trump's plan would, quote, put oil on the fire in the Middle East, and it's been rejected by a number of countries in the region. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has said Trump's proposal could change history and called it worth paying attention to.
How is the airspace near Reagan National Airport a risk?
So far, nearly a month into the ceasefire agreement, 16 out of 33 hostages who were scheduled for release have been freed by Hamas, and over 600 Palestinians have been released by Israel. Let's turn now to air travel and new details about the very complicated airspace around Reagan National Airport, just outside Washington, D.C. Last month, an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane that was coming in for landing. All 67 people on both aircraft were killed. As we've mentioned before, air travel is one of the safest transportation methods. But in this region, the airspace is particularly complex given the number of civilian and military aircraft sharing space.
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