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It's 10 p.m. on Sunday, May 18th here in New York City. It is 5 a.m. on Monday, May 19th in Israel, as Israelis start their day and anticipate the possibility of or even movement on a new hostage ceasefire deal.

Over the past 24 hours, there has been a lot of press reporting in Israel about a possible

deal or near deal to include anything from the release of up to 10 hostages for temporary

ceasefire, perhaps for 40 to 60 days, or the release of all

hostages and Hamas having to leave Gaza as an end to the war. At this point, the possibilities

range between no ceasefire all the way to an end to the war. So while we are eager to report on

these developments, we also don't

want to rush to report on what so far appears to be just ranked speculation. After all, you'll recall

last week's histrionic news reports, for those listening, I'm putting news reports in quotes,

that President Trump would be meeting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas

in Riyadh, or that President Trump would agree or acknowledge Saudi Arabia's condition

for Palestinian statehood as part of any normalization deal with Israel. None of these things

wound up happening. Now, a lot did happen in the Middle East last week, and we do believe something

may happen in these hostage deal negotiations. So rest assured, we are monitoring events closely,

and we will drop an episode on all of this as soon as there is something we believe that

warrants analysis, even if it's not on our regular schedule. One thing we know is that during a cabinet meeting today,

Prime Minister Netanyahu approved resumption of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The Prime Minister's office issued a statement saying that, quote,

this was the recommendation of the IDF and due to the operational need to enable the expansion of intense fighting to defeat Hamas.

Close quote.

And the IDF's operations into Gaza, its military operations, have been moving forward while negotiations are taking place in Doha.

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