World roundup: March 4 2024

Stories from Israel-Palestine, Myanmar, Germany, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

March 4, 581: A senior official in the Northern Zhou court named Yang Jian seizes the throne and names himself Emperor Wen of the new Sui Dynasty. Yang had been father in-law to Northern Zhou Emperor Xuan, who died young and left his six year old son on the throne as Emperor Jing. Yang’s allies at court engineered his appointment as regent, and after dealing with a rival general, Yuchi Jiong, he did away with the regency and took the throne directly. The Sui’s legacy includes the reunification of China, ending the Northern and Southern Dynasties period and helping to usher in a new era of imperial prosperity that continued into the succeeding Tang Dynasty.

March 4, 1493: Christopher Columbus and his crew aboard the Niña arrive at the port of Lisbon, Portugal, on their return from his first voyage to the lands soon to be known as the Americas. After navigating some legal hot water over interpretations of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which divided the Atlantic into Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence, Columbus returned to Spain, convinced he’d charted a western route to Asia. He was slightly off, but to be fair they eventually figured that out.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Negotiators in Cairo continued to discuss a Gaza ceasefire on Monday, despite the Israeli government’s decision to boycott the session. Their absence, as I noted yesterday, is reportedly due to Hamas’s unwillingness to provide a list of those hostages who are still alive. It seems the group is only willing to do so after a deal is concluded. Despite this, Egyptian sources told Reuters that the Israelis are engaged in the discussion remotely. Further dampening any sense of optimism about the success of these negotiations, it sounds like the Israelis and Hamas are still fundamentally at odds over whether they’re negotiating a temporary halt to the fighting or a process that would end with a full, indefinite ceasefire. As before, Hamas wants the latter while the Israelis are insisting on the former.