The Mideast ceasefire and hostage release agreement seems to raise more issues than it settles. If Hamas has been so crushed and ‘put on their heels’ (to use hawk verbiage), how do they have so much leverage as to have secured a lopsided deal involving getting hundreds more of their prisoners freed than the US and Israel did? Why is Hamas calling this a military ‘victory,’ and Israel vowing to resume the conflict in a few weeks, as if this is just a stage in an ongoing operation? Shouldn’t a ‘permanent’ ceasefire be something that ends the hostilities, period? Antiwar reporter Dave DeCamp (who spoke at LPQC in 2019) runs down the implications: