From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Taverny Sea, and this is the Daily.

Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza for almost a year, but despite catastrophic losses,

Hamas seems no closer to declaring defeat, and despite considerable military gains, Israel seems no closer to declaring victory.

Today, my colleague Patrick Kingsley on why the war in Gaza is still going and what it would

take to end it. It's Wednesday, August 28th.

So, Patrick, I wanted to hear from you in Israel today because we're coming up nearly on a year

since October 7th, and it really feels like every week you write at least one story about the ceasefire negotiations.

Some weeks it looks like progress toward a ceasefire deal.

Other weeks, no progress.

Meanwhile, the threat of a wider war in the Middle East is deepening. Just this weekend,

there was a huge exchange of rocket fire in Israel's northern border with Lebanon. You know, that doesn't

seem likely to end while the war in Gaza is still going so

we all felt like it was really time to come to you and ask a basic question

which is why can't they agree to a ceasefire and perhaps more fundamentally, why is this war in Gaza still going on?

So these are very good questions.

Both the questions come down to two men, essentially.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel

and I hear Sinwa of Hamas.

And to understand why they have such fundamentally mutually exclusive positions on the

war, we have to start with the ceasefire which is the most basic building

block for stopping the war and the two leaders have a fundamental disagreement

here nettin yahu the Israeli, essentially wants a temporary ceasefire.

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