Hamas…Israel 10/21/2025….Vance Knocking Hamas…Aid Moving Slowly into Gaza….

Hamas is STILL operating within Gaza…..

• At a press conference in Israel, the US vice-president JD Vance referred to Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” and said the Israeli army was “defending itself” throughout the conflict. He said there is “a lot of work left to do” and that it is going to take a “long time” and thanked the Israeli government.

• Vance said he believes the peace plan is going to last and is “durable” but repeated Trump’s claims that, if Hamas does not cooperate, it will be “obliterated”. “A lot of this stuff is difficult, a lot of this stuff is unpredictable,” said Vance. “We don’t yet have the international security force set up.”

• Vance said that unless Hamas disarms, “very bad things are going to happen”. But he declined to put a deadline on Hamas disarming, adding: “I don’t think it’s actually advisable to say this has to be done in a week.”

• Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner said there had been “surprisingly strong communication” between the United Nations and Israel over humanitarian aid. He echoed Vance’s comments about people “getting a little hysterical about supposed incursions” of the ceasefire.

• Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East who has been at the heart of negotiations for the ceasefire, said “we are learning so much here” and that the peace deal is going to be used in other conflicts to end war. Witkoff said he met with freed hostages today and that “there was a lot of tears in the room”.

• International organizations said they were scaling up humanitarian aid entering Gaza, while Hamas-led security forces launched a crackdown against what it called price gouging by private merchants. The World Food Program said it had sent more than 530 trucks into Gaza in the past 10 days, enough to feed nearly half a million people for two weeks. That’s still well under the 500 to 600 that entered daily before the war.

• Israel urged Canadian prime minister Mark Carney to drop his pledge to honour the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he travelled to the country. Carney was asked in an interview with Bloomberg published last week if he would fulfil the commitment of his predecessor Justin Trudeau to arrest Netanyahu on war crimes charges if he came to Canada, to which he replied “yes”.

• Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman plan to meet at the White House on 18 November, as the wealthy Gulf nation seeks a defence pact with the US, CBS is reporting, citing sources.

• The Gaza health ministry said that Israel has transferred the bodies of 15 further Palestinian people to Gaza as part of the ceasefire. The International Committee of the Red Cross handed over the bodies to the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, it said.

• Hamas’ armed wing said it would hand over the bodies of two hostages it recovered on Tuesday in Gaza at 9pm (1800 GMT), as part of the group’s ceasefire agreement with Israel. Hamas has so far handed over the bodies of 13 of 28 deceased hostages.

• Gaza’s health ministry said in its latest update that the bodies of 13 people were brought to hospitals across the territory in the last 24 hours. It said eight people had been injured over this time period. The health ministry, whose figures the UN finds credible, says that it means at least 68,229 Palestinian people have been killed and 170,369 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023.

• Maintaining the Gaza ceasefire is critical for delivering aid in the territory, the United Nations has said, repeating a call for all border crossings to be opened. “Sustaining the ceasefire is vital; really it’s the only way we can save lives and push back on the famine in the north of Gaza,” Abeer Etefa, Middle East spokesperson for the UN’s World Food Programme, told reporters in Geneva.

• Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met the head of Egyptian intelligence, Hassan Rashad, in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the prime minister’s office said. During the meeting, it said, they discussed advancing Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, Israel-Egypt relations and strengthening the peace between the two countries.

• France’s president Emmanuel Macron called for aid routes into Gaza to be reopened as a matter of “absolute urgency”. “The situation in Gaza remains very fragile,” Macron told a news conference in Ljubljana alongside Slovenian prime minister Robert Golob.

• The EU has been criticised for pausing sanctions against Israel’s government in response to Donald Trump’s peacemaking efforts in the Middle East, as the fragile ceasefire came under threat. After meeting EU foreign ministers on Monday, the European foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, announced a pause on efforts to suspend preferential trade with Israel and sanctions against people responsible for fuelling the conflict on both sides….

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