In which Stewie and the bromancer line up for an arvo treat, a reminder that while much has been scribbled, much remains to be scribbled ...

 

Astute herpetology students will note that the pond didn't take up the bromancer this morning, but that was because the pond is currently indulging in an arvo reptile debrief - who knows how long the madness will last? - and so had to save up by holding back a space filler (a bit like a stocking filler).

Sacrifices had to be made, and the bromancer was it ...

Speaking of sacrifices, the pond had hoped to do a little more about that festival, but then Jonathan Liew wrote We know what the comedians got out of the Riyadah comedy festival. What about the Saudi regime? for the Graudian, and that was that.

And speaking of comedy, how to top RFK Jr. Ties Autism to Circumcision and Tylenol in Bonkers Rant.

More laughs than joking about bone-sawing a journalist for a little cash in the paw ...

...Erik Polyak, executive director of health advocacy group 314 Action, said it was “peak clownery” for RFK Jr. and Trump giving medical advice, “if clowns were allowed to wreck our health care.”
“Their expertise comes from binge-watching Grey’s Anatomy—no one should ever take medical advice from these two,“ he said.
“Their ‘findings’ are like a game of Mad-Libs, picking random words and stringing them together to sow fear and chaos. RFK Jr. is a disgrace to the scientific and medical community and it’s beyond time for him to leave office, before it’s too late.”

Back on the tracks Tootle, and so to find room for Stewie as a warm-up act for the bromancer ...what with Stewie being a short, tidy three minute read, or so the reptiles said ...

The header: A Middle East deal that all sides can celebrate, but will it lead to a lasting peace?, This deal is historic not only because it will release the hostages, but it gives long-term peace in Gaza its best shot yet.

The caption for King Donald looking truly weird: Donald Trump reading the note from Marco Rubio. Picture: AP

Stewie was inclined to triumphalism of the Our Henry kind, but was beset with saucy doubts and fears ...

The hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is a stunning and historic diplomatic triumph that sets Gaza on a very rocky but achievable road map to peace.
It is Donald Trump’s best moment of his second presidency and although this peace plan still remains vulnerable to future problems – this is the Middle East after all – the immediate benefits are indisputable.
For Israel, the promised release of the 20 living hostages and the remains of 28 others amounts to a revival of the nation’s soul and the end of two years of torture for the hostages, their loved one and for all Israelis.
Their imminent release paves the way for the war’s end by taking away the single biggest justification for Israel continuing to fight it.
For the people of Gaza this should be a moment of celebration after the hell of the past two years. Under this first phase of the deal, the bombing will finally cease and large supplies of aid – food, medicine and water – will flow into the enclave.
The key question now is whether the deal signed by Israel and Hamas will finally end this war, or merely pause it.
The so-called ‘first phase’ of deal does resolve the issue of the hostages but it still leaves many questions and disputes unresolved.

A bigger question might be whether the apartheid and the systematic ethnic cleansing continues, but the answer to that is likely obvious enough, so it was time to drag in a different kind of Jimbo doing Jimbo talk, Sky News host James Macpherson discusses the “historic” peace deal between Israel and Hamas, orchestrated by US President Donald Trump. “But first, today's historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas has exploded,” Mr Macpherson said. “Ridiculous narratives that we've been sold over the past two years – false narratives about Israel the monster, Trump the tyrant, Albanese the statesman, and about Pro-Palestinian protestors who wouldn't know peace if it hit them with a placard. “Hamas agreed to release all the hostages being held in Gaza. And Israel immediately agreed to end the war. Just like that! “So, there you have it. After two years of bloodshed, peace broke out – not because of hashtags, not because of protests, not because of ‘international pressure’, but because one side finally stopped behaving like demons.”

Say what? One side finally stopped the demonic mass starvation war crime strategy, not to mention the strategy of blowing up everything in sight, and killing as many civilians as could be managed?

The pond has run this Wilcox before, but will doubtless find reasons to run it again...

Carry on the stewing, Stewie ...

These include whether Israeli forces – once they retreat to the so-called ‘agreed’ line after the hostages are released – will continue to retreat further from Gaza.
Hamas wants all Israeli forces to leave the strip but it is highly unlikely that Israeli would also agree to leave the new buffer zones along the Gaza-Israel border, which are aimed at preventing a future October 7-style border incursion.
The other unresolved disagreement includes whether Hamas will agree to disarm as the Trump peace plan demands. Among the solutions informally floated are that Hamas hands back its larger weapons but keeps small arms. Part of the problem is that war-ravaged Hamas is probably not able to command all of its fighters to give back their guns, much less enforce such an order.
Floating above all this is the lack of clarity about what should replace Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the fear that Hamas wants to play a role in this.
Hamas has agreed to relinquish power in Gaza – at least in theory – and says it wants a technocratic group of Palestinians to initially rule the enclave.
But will Hamas agree to the peace plan’s proposal for foreigners like Tony Blair and Trump to have a key oversight role in this new body?

Tony Bleagh? 

Cue Oliver Eagleton in The Graudian, and Why Tony Blair just can't kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East...

Spoiler alert, this was the wrap up:

...It is not unreasonable to suggest that Blair might see a business opportunity beneath the rubble of Gaza. To figure out who may benefit, we can look at his network of paymasters. Since 2021, Larry Ellison, founder of the tech company Oracle, has donated or pledged £257m to the TBI. The thinktank has, in turn, transformed into what one commentator has called an “Oracle dealership”: promoting the company’s software around the globe, including in impoverished countries where it has been criticised for potentially “trapping” and “indebting” users. Ellison is also a prominent supporter of Israel who has given millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and, according to Haaretz, once offered Benjamin Netanyahu a seat on the Oracle board. Were Blair to rule over Gaza – perhaps establishing “regional datacentres” in line with the TBI-linked plan – it is possible that Ellison could wield major influence.
The TBI has also received huge sums from the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, while Blair has been given a lucrative advisory contract by the UAE state-owned investment firm Mubadala. All three states have readily endorsed the plan for Gaza. Once the besieged enclave is opened for investment, they may well be first in line. Blair’s work for these petro-monarchies tallies with his involvement in the fossil fuel industry, having taken cash from a BP-led consortium, the oil company PetroSaudi and the South Korean UI Energy Corporation, which has interests in the Middle East. Given that Israel has recently granted new licences to explore for oil and gas off the Mediterranean coast, such connections could prove significant later down the line.
In one sense, then, this “peace plan” could simply be read as an extension of Blair’s belief in market-led development. Yet this chapter in the annals of colonialism also has a uniquely Trumpian twist. Visions of a new world order that underpinned earlier regime-change projects are gone. Here politics is reduced to dealmaking, grand strategy to crude self-interest. The fusion of public power and private profit is complete. Blair may be creating new realities, but few would want to inhabit them.

The pond would have liked a reference to Bleagh as an East Indian Company administrator in the glory years of Indian oppression, just to make clear it's a variation on a Riyadh comedy festival gig ...

The American comedian Sinbad once famously observed that “comedians are funnier when they’re riding the bus”. And perhaps both Saudi Arabia and its hired entertainers are labouring under a kind of convenient delusion. The naivety of the Saudi government in imagining that comedy can whitewash its many crimes is matched only by the naivety of the comedians, some of whom genuinely believe their presence is a kind of cultural bridge, a force for positive change.

At this point the reptiles flung in the bromancer, acting as a break from Stewie and as a warm-up for his own appearance in print ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan discusses US President Donald Trump’s peace plan in Gaza, and how Israel and Hamas have agreed to the first round of de-escalation. “We don’t know if it will hold, but it looks like the first round will go ahead,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Steve Price. “The first round is the most important round, it is the release of Israel’s remaining hostages, a cessation of fighting, to cease fighting, and the restoration of aid into the Gaza Strip, then that will be closely followed by Hamas disarming and giving up power. “Even if it's just the first phase and we get an ugly stalemate after that, that is tremendous progress.”

Then it was time for Stewie to wrap up, playing both ends and hoping somewhere they'd meet up.

The pond seems to remember from reading film reviews that it was akin to falling between two chairs, or stools, or whatever...

And which Arab countries will provide members for this new body and how quickly? And will Hamas be willing to not to play any part in this process?
These are all urgent unanswered questions that still need resolving in the short term. The longer-term questions of the reform of the corrupt Palestinian Authority and the realisation of a two-state solution are tomorrow’s problems at this moment.
So will this first phase of a ceasefire actually end this war? Hamas and Arab nations fear Israel may resume the war if agreement cannot be reached in the short term about the disarmament of Hamas or the governing body that will replace it.
But there are several reasons to hope this breakthrough over the hostages will permanently end this terrible war. Firstly, Trump, having invested so much in getting this deal signed, will not want to see his own peace process squandered by a resumption of fighting by Israel.
Trump can be expected to exert enormous pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from resuming his offensive in Gaza.
The hostage deal also makes it much harder for Netanyahu to argue a valid justification for resuming the war. The fact that Hamas held hostages gave Israel a valid reason to continue the fight no matter what the cost. But once the hostages are home, Netanyahu will struggle to argue for a new offensive in Gaza, given that Hamas is no longer a coherent military or political force, but rather a ragtag group of soldiers without a central command.
Gaza has been reduced largely to rubble and the strategic benefits of any renewed Israel offensive would be doubtful.
Polls suggest Israelis are desperate for the war to end, so it would be difficult for Netanyahu to persuade anyone beyond his right-wing allies in his government that renewed conflict is justified.
None of this guarantees that this peace deal will not stall or even collapse at some point. But the successful completion of this first phase in the coming week – with the release of the hostages and the resumption of large aid supplies into Gaza – makes it much harder for this war to resume again.
And that – along with the release of the hostages – is why this is such a huge moment in the Middle East.

Huge.

And so to the bromancer, the entire reason for this arvo outing ...

The header: Much to be done but a huge victory for Trump and Netanyahu, While uncertainties remain, the proposed Gaza peace deal could achieve what seemed impossible: the release of hostages, cessation of fighting and humanitarian relief.

The caption for the uncredited collage done in AI slop style: The psychological relief to the whole of Israeli society from getting their hostages back will be profound.

Like Stewie, the reptiles clocked it as a humble three minute read, but the pond simply had to go there, because the bromancer used a part of the pond's most favourite executive meeting word salad.

Much has been done, but much remains to be done.

AI thoughtfully broke it down in a way only a computer could ...

Key Components
"Much has been done": This part of the phrase emphasizes the significant achievements and completed work. 
"But much remains to be done": This part acknowledges that the task or goal is not yet fully realized and that there is still work to be done. 

Undiluted rocket science.

Let us observe the bromancer in keen AI mode:

The peace deal for Gaza is a tremendous win for Donald Trump, and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This may not be the greatest day in the history of civilisation, as Trump so immodestly claims, but it is certainly the best day in the Middle East for at least two years.
There are still so many uncertainties ahead, so many things that could go wrong. But Trump says the remaining Israeli hostages that Hamas holds, 20 believed to be alive and 28 believed to be dead, will be released on Monday. That would be a magnificent moment.
The longer-term elements of this deal involve a new governing structure for Gaza and the involvement of a sizeable portion of the Arab community, both in Gaza reconstruction and Gaza governance, not to mention the end of terrorism from Gaza and eventual Israeli withdrawal from the territory. That’s all a long way off and you can be excused for being acutely sceptical about its chances.

Indeed, indeed, much has been done, but much remains to be done ...as the reptiles offered a visual interruption, replete with impeccable framing, Liam Mendes reports from Hostage Square as the ceasefire and return of hostages is announced.

That was the last visual interruption, as the bromancer kept on blathering about what had been done and what needed to be done ...

But this deal appears to achieve three immediate aims:

Israel’s hostages are released.
The fighting stops in Gaza and therefore there should be no more needless deaths in Gaza. This will be a blessed relief to a tortured ­Palestinian population.
And food and medical aid can flow into the territory in much greater quantities than has been happening for the past two years.

That is all just in Phase One of this deal. If that much happens, that’s fantastic progress. We still have to see if Hamas itself honours the first part of the deal, the release of the remaining hostages. Israel in return will release some 2000 Palestinian prisoners, some of them guilty of grave crimes. But the psychological relief to the whole of Israeli society from getting their hostages back will be profound.
Then we have to see if Hamas actually gives up power in the parts of the Gaza Strip where it is still influential, and then beyond that whether it gives up weapons and some of its people accept the offer for amnesty and international relocation.
Once the hostages are returned to Israel, as everyone observes, Hamas loses its last point of leverage with the Israelis.
There is no reason to think, however, that Israel would use that opportunity to re-intensify its military campaign in Gaza. Because once the hostages are returned, Israel has no immediate need to continue a big military campaign.
This deal is also a big victory for Netanyahu because it constitutes surrender by Hamas. This is a peace of exhaustion. In some ways, it’s impossible to exhaust Hamas because so many of its fighters accept, even welcome, death for the extremist Islamist cause of hatred and destruction that motivates their lives.
But certainly the Arab world, including backers of Hamas such as Qatar, are exhausted by this war. That’s why they put Hamas under so much pressure to finally agree to the Trump plan.
It is of the utmost importance that we not lose sight of the chief moral responsibility for the tragedy of Gaza these past two years. It rests almost entirely with Hamas.

Indeed, indeed, and the current system of apartheid had nothing to do with it, nor Benji boosting Hamas with cash in the paw, blithely ignoring the monster this Dr Frankenstein was helping, and it was Hamas that made Benji indulge in the war crime of mass starvation, not to mention mass indiscriminate destruction?

The pond has run this 'toon before and possibly will find a reason to run it again in the future ...

And so to the wrap up ...

It was Hamas that engaged in a terrorist attack of such vicious obscenity that it was precisely designed to provoke a very big Israeli reaction.
Israel, like any nation in similar circumstances, was determined that such an attack could never be repeated.
But an even greater moral indictment of Hamas rests in the fact that any time in the last two years Hamas could have put an end to the destruction and death suffered by Gazans, and indeed by Israeli soldiers, by releasing the hostages and laying down their arms.
It is Hamas that has been in­different to the suffering of Palestinian civilians.

Fair dibs, the reptiles at the lizard Oz have been equally indifferent ...what with the daily disappearing of the suffering of Palestinian civilians to the hive mind cornfield.

Sorry, do carry on to your conclusion ...

This war had to end some time. It may be that the Israeli strike on Hamas personnel in Qatar was a crucial trigger. It apparently convinced Trump that Washington had to get more involved in ensuring the security of Gulf Arab allies of the US.
It also seems to have convinced the Qataris that their sponsorship of Hamas held acute dangers for them if the war continued.
The whole process underlines the centrality of the US in the ­Middle East, as in most parts of the world.
There’s a mess of trouble to come, but this is a good day.

And what of the aforementioned sponsoring of Hamas by Benji?

Crickets ...

And yet ...per Haaretz, A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas alliance ...

And so on and on, and so to wrap it all up with the infallible Pope. 

Sure the pond has run it before, but there's every chance the pond will find a need to run it again, because while much has been done, much remains to be done ...

And now you've been Ozsplained, for a little light relief after all the harrowing ethnic cleansing stuff, time to get Foxsplained ...