From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. To Unclair Harvey, It's Tuesday, May twenty, twenty twenty five. Children as young as six appear to be accessing pornography online. That's according to school principles, who say the evidence shows up in their schoolwork and in the notes they pass. And New South Wales parliamentary inquiry is investigating the harmful effects of
pawn on mental, physical and emotional health. In Ukraine, Australia is desperately trying to get school teacher Oscar Jenkins swapped for Russian prisoners of war, the Australians reporting today. There's also speculation Russia will want the alleged Russian born spies Kira and Igor Korlev, who are in custody accused of espionage here in Australia. The war in Gaza changing Israel's tactics and maybe also its goals, with suggestions it might
settle for disarmament rather than the destruction of Hermas. Today Chief International Correspondent Cameron Stewart on whether this nineteen month old war could finally be inching towards some kind of resolution. Ever since October seven, twenty twenty three, when Hermas massacred and took hostage civilians, including children in Israel. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, who has been crystal clear about his goals in.
The face of pure evil, free societies have no choice but to fight.
As recently as March Nettanna who said Israel would never budge.
So I want to sure all our friends around the world, Israel will fight, and Israel will win. We will bring our people home and we will destroy Hamas.
We are nineteen months on and Hamas still exists, as the government of Gaza and israelis are still awaiting the return of more than fifty five hostages, including some dead bodies. Now, as the United States, led by Special ENVOYE. Stephen Witkoff, attempts to get the two sides to agree on something, there's a new idea surfacing. What if Hamas were not destroyed but just disarmed. What if its fighters were forced to leave Gaza. Here's what Prime Minister Netanyah his office
is saying. We've used an Ai voice to read the pam's officer's statement.
The negotiating team in Doha is working to exhaust every possibility for a deal, whether according to the Whitkov outline, or within the framework of ending the war, which would include the release of all hostages, the exile of Kamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip.
And at the same time Israel is pursuing a new type of war in Gaza itself.
Prime Minister Netan Yahoo had promised his military would ender the strip with full force. It marks the largest ground assault on northern Gaza. Since Israel resumed its offensive in March.
The Israeli military has been relentless in its attacks across the Gaza Strip.
The IDEA says it struck what it called more than one hundred and fifty terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip.
Israel had defeated Hamas effectively as o coherent military force, but not as a terrorist force, not as a sort of pop up force that could attack Israeli soldiers at any one point two time.
Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent.
And so they were kind of playing whack a mole where they just basically would defeat them in one part of Gaza and not in the other. And this new offensive from Netnia, who is designed to stop that. He's going to send troops in to various parts of Gaz, who is divided, according to leak documents, into about four zones, and Israeli troops will go into certain zones and they
will stay there and stay and occupy those zones. So it's a different type of conflict that Netnya who has launched this time around.
Can There've been two conflicting ideas in Israel's response to the October seven terrorist attack. One is the elimination of Hamas and its command structure in Gaza, and the other is the total destruction of Gaza itself, including the great loss of civilian life. Those two things have so far gone together. Now there's talk about an idea of demilitarizer of Hamas and the exile of its militants. That would require some sort of authority in Gaza certifying that that
has been done and handing over militants. What do you think about the idea, firstly, that Hamas could disarm.
I think it's a fairly unrealistic idea that Israel has her musk will disarm. I mean, I must has not been defeated as a military force. Certainly they've been hugely degraded. Let's not pretend that they're in any way a coherent force. But what Israel wants to do is remove them entirely as a militant force in Gaza. I don't see how that's possible. I don't see how they go to exile, because obviously if they left Garza, they'd be very traceable.
I wouldn't imagine those fights would want to do that. I think the question here that Israel is probably grappling with is that to actually get Harmas to disarm is very, very difficult. They might have to accept a real politic decision here at some point and say they want Hamas out of power. In other words, they don't want Hamas to administer the Gaza Strip anymore, but they would have to accept Hamas would still exist to some degree in
Gaza as a minor military force. That's probably the sort of middle ground that Israel may have to work towards, because it doesn't seem realistic to expect that Hamas will suddenly put down its weapons and leave the Gaza Strip. I don't see that that's a feasible concept.
We've been here before, haven't we, cam where Israel has attempted to deal with the international approbrium over Gaza by withdrawing and hoping that that's the end of it. It's never the end, is it. No, it's not.
In fact, Israel's now created buffer zones, which actually takes a reasonable amount of the Gaza territory and calls it a buffer zone where they try to obviously protect Israeli citizens from Hamas militants. And so that looks like it might be quite a permanent thing. I don't think Gaza as we know it will be in exactly the same at all at the end of this conflict. I think
it'll be a smaller enclave. And it's really hard to imagine that Israeli military forces will not have the major say in Gaza in the foreseeable future, even under a peace plan.
We're looking at Gaza and we've got to get that taken care of.
A lot of people are starving, a lot of people are there's a lot of bad things going on.
What's the Trump factor? Do you think he can We saw the release of a hostage last week air Dan Alexander, and it didn't turn into the kind of horror show propaganda moment that Hamas had created with the release of the other hostages, there was not a public handover in a square where the hostage was paraded. Has Donald Trump got something to do with that?
Yeah?
I think the Trump factor is incredibly important at the moment and very very unknown. I think netnyar Who's trying to second guest Donald Trump, he doesn't really know how much support Trump has for what netnar Who is actually doing, especially this new campaign of sending troops into Gaza to stay there indefinitely. Trump has certainly distanced himself somewhat from netna Who in the last two weeks. Of course, he went to the Middle East and pointedly did not visit Israel.
The US has been talking directly to Hamas and that's what led to the release of the last US hostage last week, and they did things like they unilaterally stopped the bombing of the who is in Yemen again without
consulting Israel. So Israel is really scratching their heads and working out how much Trump is with them, even though rhetorically Trump has been very strong as far as Israel's attack on Harmas has gone, but we really haven't heard from Trump about whether or not he supports this latest move by Netna to actually send a big ground force into Gaza. It's been a bit of a deafening silence. So that is a huge question hanging over this whole operation.
The only person in the world I think who can really influence Netaho is Trump.
Coming up. There are growing fears of famine in Gaza. How does that change the calculus for Israel. There's a proposal now that Israel would lift the food or humanitarian ban and allowed food trucks into Gaza in return for the release of nine hostages by Hamas. How much has Israel do you think been affected by international concern over the prospect of a famine in Gaza.
Well, they only seem to have reacted to it very recently in the last forty eight hours. Of course, this embargo on eight ins of Gaza has been going on for a long time now, and so I think Israel has certainly under Netnya who's been very reluctant to be influenced by international opinion in this respect. But it looks like they have been at this point in time. But that's because there have really been some quite acute reports
coming out of mass famine in Gaza. Very hard for israel I think to justify that in an ongoing sense, and there may, of course well have been pressure on Israel from the US to try and do something here, because Trump in fact pointedly said, very bad things are happening in Gaza. Terrible things are happening there. We're going
to have to do something about it. Now, that's unusual for Trump to say that, so I suspect the US has been behind the scenes pressuring it in Yahoo to do something to end this.
In fury, Israel has moved a big step closer to its goal of eliminating Hamasa's leadership. Mohammed Sinwa, one of Israel's most wanted figures, was reportedly killed inside one of her Massa's tunnels inside Gaza. Israel believed he was one of the masterminds of the October seven attacks, and it says he was hiding in a tunnel under the European Hospital in han Uness.
The Israeli military said it struck an underground command center beneath the hospital. One hospital official tallt CNN it was a quote catastrophe with people buried under the rubble.
Look, it's definitely a big blow. Mohammed Simoi is of course the brother of the former leader Semowa, who was assassinated in October last year, and so those two brothers are very important in Hamas's leadership structure. Also, Mohammed Simwa's psidekick, who was going to replace him, was actually also killed in that blast. So look, Hamas have lost all of their top leaders. They really have. They've been decapitated. But the trouble for the West here is that Hamas does rejuvenate.
They've got a very dispersed leadership structure. There's always new recruits coming on. I think that by decapitating their leadership it makes it very difficult for Hamas, but it certainly doesn't destroy them as a coherent force.
In this conflict. Can you see a path to victory for Israel now that it has so significantly degraded, for example, Hesbellah and Iran's ability to support organizations like Hamas.
Israel has won a huge strategic victory out of the tragedy of the October seventh in the sense that they have really crushed Hesbelah in Lebanon. They've really bought Iran to its knees as far as a country that's able to threaten Israel and of course Hamas has been largely crippled in Gaza, but the real problem here for Israel is just how to finish off the conflict in Gaza. To try and get Hamas to give up power in
Gaza has been such a challenge. There are limits to how far Israel can continue to pume all Gaza, given the horrific, truly horrific civilian casualties that are occurring and the fact that Hamas just keeps surviving. So the problem for Israel really is the endgame. They just can't work out exactly how to finish this conflict, even though ironically, as far as militarily go, they've actually won it.
Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent. That story is developing quickly and you can read the latest twenty four to seven at the Australian dot com dot au