Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where our heads are still spinning from the dizzying pace of the news lately.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump’s incendiary Gaza proposal, migrants sent to Guantánamo, and a possible DeepSeek ban.
Negotiations for the second phase of the fragile Gaza cease-fire began this week. There are myriad obstacles to the six-week truce moving forward to the next stage and widespread uncertainty about who will govern postwar Gaza. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has made a bold, controversial proposal for the United States to take control of the coastal territory.
To get a clearer picture on where things stand, SitRep sat down with Sharren Haskel, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, at the Israeli Consulate in New York City on Tuesday.
What Israel wants. Since the cease-fire began on Jan. 19, there have been exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners. But 79 hostages remain in Gaza, many of whom are believed to be dead. Bringing those hostages home remains “our greatest mission,” Haskel said. “We want all of them to come back. We want all the families to be reunited.”
When asked about the hurdles to moving the tenuous truce forward, Haskel said Israel doesn’t want a cease-fire but a “long-term solution where we can live side by side with our neighbors.” This will require dismantling Hamas’s military power and ensuring that the militant group doesn’t “hold any civilian power so that it cannot control and indoctrinate an entire population,” to deny the militant group the ability to recruit, she said.
Haskel conceded that Hamas’s military capabilities can’t be completely destroyed, but she said Israel has been able “to turn it from a full operational army of terror with a lot of equipment capability” to a type of guerrilla terrorist organization and that that change “makes a difference.”
How Israel sees UNRWA. The Israeli diplomat said Israel’s “fight against UNRWA is part of the fight on the civilian power held by Hamas,” referring to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the main U.N. aid agency for Palestinians. An Israeli ban on the agency went into effect last week, despite opposition from much of the international community, including top U.S. allies.
Israel has alleged that UNRWA has been “infiltrated by Hamas,” a charge that the agency vehemently rejects. A U.N. investigation last year found that nine UNRWA staffers, out of the more than 30,000 the agency employs, “may have” had links to Hamas. Those staffers were fired.
Critics of the ban, which bars UNRWA from operating on Israeli soil and prohibits Israeli authorities from interacting with the agency, warn that it’s coming into effect at a precarious moment and risks undermining the cease-fire by contributing to instability in Gaza.
“They don’t understand the situation in-depth,” Haskel said of those critics, while dismissing U.N. investigations into the agency’s alleged Hamas ties as a “joke.”
Haskel reiterated Israel’s allegations of deep ties between UNRWA and Hamas, insisting that the U.N. agency is “part of the problem” and ineffective at distributing humanitarian assistance. But experts on international aid say no other agency or organization has the same capacity as UNRWA to assist Palestinians.
About Trump’s Gaza idea… Amid open questions about the sustainability of the Gaza cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington this week and met with Trump at the White House.
At a joint press conference with the Israeli leader on Tuesday, Trump sent shockwaves across the globe when he said the United States should take over Gaza, relocate its entire population of 2.1 million Palestinians to other countries, and rebuild the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The president initially suggested that Palestinians in Gaza should be permanently displaced. The administration subsequently backtracked on this, stating that the displacement would be temporary while emphasizing that the president had not committed to involving U.S. troops (after he didn’t rule it out at first).
Trump’s proposal was swiftly rejected by Palestinian leaders and U.S. allies worldwide, including Egypt and Jordan. Saudi Arabia also unequivocally rejected the plan and signaled that it threatened the Trump administration’s goal of seeing the country normalize ties with Israel. U.N. chief António Guterres responded to Trump’s idea with a warning against “ethnic cleansing.”
But Haskel welcomed the proposal.
“Trump’s idea for finding the Palestinian people, temporary refuge while the US rebuild[s] Gaza, is an outside of the box solution that we should seriously look into. More of the same won’t work,” Haskel told SitRep via WhatsApp on Wednesday.
“We have been looking at different solutions for the day after the war with Hamas. We have been trying for more than 75 years to solve this dispute and every solution has failed,” Haskel continued. “We have to start again in Gaza and that’s essentially what the [U.S.] President is suggesting and this won’t happen without American leadership and regional cooperation. All that the usual suspects are suggesting regarding the future of Gaza is rewarding Hamas’s terrorism of October 7 with Palestinian statehood.”
Haskel’s comments echoed remarks from Netanyahu, who told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump’s proposal was a “remarkable idea” that “should be really pursued, examined, pursued, and done because I think it will create a different future for everyone.”
Trump on Thursday doubled down on the plan despite international condemnation. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said Gaza would be “turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” adding that Palestinians would be “resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”
On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that he had ordered the country’s military to make a plan for the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians from Gaza.
The latest Trump appointees confirmed by the Senate:
Pam Bondi as attorney general
Chris Wright as energy secretary
Doug Collins as secretary of veterans affairs
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Migrants to Guantánamo. The Trump administration on Tuesday flew out 10 migrants to be detained at the U.S. facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The migrants were alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization, officials said.
Guantánamo may be most known for its infamous detention camp where suspected terrorists captured as part of the war on terrorism have been held for years, but it is also home to a facility that has been used to detain migrants picked up at sea. Trump made headlines last month when he ordered the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare that facility to hold 30,000 migrants—sparking sharp criticism from legal experts and human rights groups.
However, the Defense Department said the 10 migrants would be held in vacant detention facilities before being deported elsewhere. According to the New York Times, the deportees were seen as too risky to hold in the migrant site and were instead housed in an empty part of the military prison.—Christina Lu
Spy risks. To comply with Trump’s executive order to slash the federal workforce, the CIA has sent the White House an unclassified email with the names of all of its hires over the past two years, the New York Times reported. The list includes the employees’ first names and last initials.
The move has alarmed former officials and Democratic lawmakers who warn that the information could make the individuals more vulnerable to hacking by foreign adversaries. “Exposing the identities of officials who do extremely sensitive work would put a direct target on their backs for China,” Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said in a post on X, calling it a “disastrous national security development.”—Christina Lu
DeepSeek ban? Two U.S. congressmen—Republican Rep. Darin LaHood and Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer—introduced a bill on Thursday aimed at banning Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek’s software from U.S. government devices. The lawmakers expressed concern that DeepSeek’s new AI-powered chatbot, which took the world by storm last month, could “steal the sensitive data of U.S. citizens” and share it with the Chinese Communist Party.
Their reasoning may sound familiar to anyone who has followed the travails of the social media app TikTok over the past few years. Concerns over that app’s ownership by a Chinese company led to U.S. government device bans, followed last year by a total ban that Trump has now put on hold. It remains to be seen whether DeepSeek will face the same fate.—Rishi Iyengar
Roberto Marquez sets up a makeshift memorial for the victims of the deadly midair collision near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on Jan. 31.Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
Put On Your Radar
Friday, Feb. 7: Trump is set to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Sunday, Feb. 9: Parliamentary elections in Kosovo.
Presidential and legislative elections in Ecuador.
Monday, Feb. 10: France hosts the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit.
Tuesday, Feb. 11: Trump is set to meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
“You can report that I was speechless.”
—U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, reacting to Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over Gaza. Coons decried the plan as “insane.”
Looking for an exciting new vacation spot? How about North Korea, where tourists are being permitted to visit for the first time in more than five years? Koryo Tours, a Beijing-based tour operator, is advertising packages for trips to the city of Rason beginning on Feb. 12—just a few days before a major national holiday celebrating the birthday of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Koryo says tourists can experience enthralling attractions such as the Sea Cucumber Breeding Farm and the Paekhaksan Combined Foodstuff Processing Factory or even open their own bank accounts at the Golden Triangle Bank.
