World roundup: April 8 2024

Stories from Lebanon, Myanmar, Haiti, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 8, 876: An Abbasid army manages to defeat the rapidly expanding Saffarid empire at the Battle of Dayr al-ʿAqul, possibly saving the caliphate and definitely sending the Saffarids into a decline from which they never recovered.

April 8, 1904: The French and UK governments sign the Entente Cordiale, a series of seemingly relatively minor documents ironing out colonial disputes in Egypt, Morocco, Canada, parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. Despite its humble appearance, the Entente Cordiale is considered the end of the centuries-long rivalry between France and the UK (and their various predecessors) and the beginning of their modern accord. It paved the way for improved relations, driven in part by a shared fear of Germany and leading to a full military alliance in World War I.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Gaza ceasefire talks have resumed in Cairo with apparently full attendance—Israel, Hamas, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States in the person of CIA Director William Burns. According to Axios’s Barak Ravid, Burns showed up on Sunday with a fleshed out proposal for a six week ceasefire coupled with the release of captives by both parties (40 by Hamas, 700 by the Israelis). It builds on previous discussions but also makes additional demands of both Hamas, which would temper its demands for the release of Palestinians held by Israel and provide a definitive list of 40 Israelis it would free during the ceasefire, and Israel, which would allow some number of displaced Gazan civilians to return to the northern part of the territory. Hamas would be obliged to free 40 living hostages even if (as its negotiators have apparently admitted) it’s no longer holding that many living captives in the so-called “humanitarian” release category (women, elderly men, and men with health conditions). Hamas now says it is “studying” the proposal.

More than the additional concessions in Burns’ proposal, the story that’s emerging from Cairo is that the Biden administration is taking the lead in this round of talks in a way it hadn’t done previously. Certainly that may have something to do with the fallout from the Israeli drone strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen workers last week. Maybe that was a final straw of sorts for the administration. But there’s some evidence suggesting that the administration’s real motivation is the desire to avoid a regional war stemming from the Israeli airstrike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus last week. While Iranian officials are publicly promising to retaliate, they have yet to actually do so and now there’s a report from the media outlet Jadeh Iran that says Iranian officials have told the administration that they will hold off if there is a ceasefire agreement.

In other news: