Monday Briefing: U.S. pushes for new hostage talks

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January 22, 2024

By Justin Porter

Good morning. We’re covering a new push for a hostage deal in Gaza and the meaning of North Korea’s latest threats.

Plus the Australian Open.

Protesters yesterday in Jerusalem called for the immediate release of hostages. Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

A White House official heads to the Middle East for hostage talks

President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, will travel to Egypt and Qatar to meet with top leaders about a deal for the release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for a temporary pause in fighting.

Here’s the latest.

Egypt and Qatar helped broker a cease-fire in November during which Hamas released more than 100 people from captivity. The hope is that another such deal can be arranged. But American officials have said that a new hostage release has been complicated by Hamas’s evident desire for a permanent cease-fire.

McGurk’s trip comes as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, once again said that he would not meet Hamas’s demands of a withdrawal of Israeli forces in return for the release of hostages. “Let it be clear: I utterly reject the Hamas monsters’ capitulation terms,” Netanyahu said yesterday.

Netanyahu again rejected the idea of the creation of a Palestinian state, just a day after President Biden floated the possibility of a disarmed Palestinian nation. Biden has argued that some kind of two-state solution is the only viable resolution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a position held by most U.S. and European leaders in recent history.

“I will not compromise on full Israeli security control of the entire area west of the Jordan River — and that is irreconcilable with a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu posted on X.

Elsewhere in the region:

At least two U.S. service members in western Iraq were injured on Saturday when their air base came under fire from what American officials said were Iran-backed militias.

A senior Iranian intelligence official was killed in an Israeli strike in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Saturday.

Gaza’s women are bearing the brunt of the war’s toll.

This map shows how Houthi attacks have upended global shipping.

In an image released by North Korea’s official news agency, Kim Jong-un visits a munitions plant. Korean Central News Agency, via Reuters

Is North Korea really planning to attack?

On Jan. 5, North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells in waters near South Korean border islands. Last week, it said the South was a “hostile state” it would subjugate through a nuclear war. On Friday, it said it had tested an underwater nuclear drone to help repel U.S. Navy fleets. There’s stark disagreement over the meaning of this latest drumbeat of threats.

Several analysts say it’s a clue that Kim Jong-un, the North’s leader, has become disillusioned with diplomatic engagement with the West, and a few are raising the possibility that the country could be planning an assault on the South.

Others are more skeptical. Park Won-gon, a North Korea expert at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, believes it’s more likely that Kim wants to convince the North’s enemies that he could start a war, “because that could lead to engagement and possible concessions, like the easing of sanctions.”

China, which is bound by a treaty to provide assistance if the North were to be attacked, may also be a target of Kim’s tactics. By raising tensions, said John Delury, a professor of Chinese studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, Kim can get an idea of what Xi Jinping “is willing to do to placate him.”

Markers all over Taiwan, like this replica of the Statue of Liberty in Taipei, show its connection to the U.S. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Dangerous doubts are growing in Taiwan

With China asserting its claim to Taiwan with greater force, the island nation is a bundle of contradictions and doubts.

As Taiwan’s people watch the U.S. deadlock on military aid for Ukraine and Israel — and try to imagine what it would actually do for them in a crisis — their faith in America is plummeting. In recent polling, only 34 percent of respondents saw the U.S. as trustworthy, down from 45 percent in 2021, and studies of online discussions show deepening concern that the world’s oldest democracy will lack the strength or the will to help.

But that distrust could make it easier for the island to be swallowed up.

The New New World: For Chinese people visiting Taiwan, seeing the island’s recent election up close inspired both envy and tears.

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Asia Pacific

A school dormitory in Henan Province, China, on Saturday, in a photo released by state media. Wu Gang/Xinhua, via Associated Press

Around the World

A market in Donetsk, Ukraine, that the Russia-installed local authorities said was shelled yesterday. Alessandro Guerra/EPA, via Shutterstock

Other Big Stories

A Morning Read

The fruit of the pinanga subterranea. Agusti Randi, via Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

A year ago, European botanists traveling to Borneo, the third largest island in the world, “discovered” a species of palm that flowers underground, an extremely rare quirk.

But while the plant might have been new to them, it wasn’t to the Indigenous groups who live there. And it isn’t hard to find: The plant, pinanga subterranea, grows everywhere on the island.

Lives lived: Robert Whitman, a pioneer of performance and multimedia art, died on Friday at 88.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.

Mirra Andreeva yesterday at the Australian Open. Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press

One tennis miracle after another

Until recently, no one had ever heard of Mirra Andreeva; now, she’s all anyone is talking about. At 16 years old, she is pulling off a miracle every other day as she takes over the Australian Open.

She recently blitzed past Ons Jabeur, a three-time Grand Slam finalist for Tunisia and Andreeva’s female tennis idol, and on Friday she somehow managed to climb out of a 5-1 hole to defeat Diane Parry of France in the deciding-set tiebreaker.

Andreeva hails from a small city in Siberia — not known as a bastion of the sport she loves. But her mother’s fascination with tennis and a move to Cannes opened the sport to her. As she juggles court stardom with her third year of online high school, she says this life suits her just fine.

“I like being here,” she said. “I like to travel all over the world. I’m OK with what’s happening.”

Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese sauce. Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Cook: Make Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese from her book “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.”

Listen: This week’s Popcast covers genre-expanding jazz albums.

Unsubscribe: Services that do this for you don’t work. Here’s some free advice that does.

Declutter: Designing a room for your kids? Start with storage.

Play Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you tomorrow. — Justin

P.S. Laurel Graeber, who has covered kids’ entertainment at The Times for nearly three decades, shared her favorite stories and interviews.

We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at briefing@nytimes.com.

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