From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Tuesday, January twenty one. The second Trump Era has officially begun, with the Donald officially sworn in at the Capitol in Washington, DC overnight. Donald Trump is the oldest person ever to be elected to the White House at seventy eight, and he's now both the forty fifth and
forty seventh president of the United States. To watch video of the inauguration and to read all about what Trump two point zero means for Australia and the world, go to the Australian dot com dot au. Now, all hell will break loose if the hostages aren't freed by inauguration day. That was Donald Trump's rather opaque threat, and it seems
to have worked. Hamas has begun returning civilian hostages. It took on October seven, twenty twenty three, in stage one of a ceasefire hammered out by international negotiators, including representatives of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Israel has opened its prison gates to release Palestinian inmates. That's Israel's end of the deal. So what's the price Israel will pay for this peace and can we say who was won this war?
Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent, and Cam, as we're speaking on Monday, Israel is releasing prisoners from its prisons.
Ninety Palestinian prisoners are being transferred out of Israeli jails. It begins one of the largest prisoner and hostage deals in modern history. The three women were taken to Israeli soldiers just inside the border, waiting for each of them their mothers.
Israel holds thousands of Palestinian people who it accuses or has convicted of crimes over the years, including some people who they have brought back from Gaza during this recent war. What do we know about the people who are being released from Israeli prisons right now?
The people who have been released from Israeli prisons have been the subject of intense negotiation for months now, and the first ones to be released they'll be about nineteen hundred overall under the deal. If the three stages of this ceasefire agreement are completed, about nineteen hundred will come out, but at the moment ninety have come out. These are
almost all women and children. And then progressively, they will go to more serious offenders who will be released up to an including several who have been accused of and convicted of killing Israeli's in terror attacks.
It would seem kind of shocking for some of our listeners to think that Israeli is holding quite young people. Many of the prisoners are under the age of twenty, Say, Cam, what do we know about who the people are who Israel detains.
I think the original ones who are going to be released clear are relatively lower level of offenders. As you say, I mean these often are teenagers who are hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers on the West Bank for example. They are often detained if they repeat. Defenders often get incarcerated women as well, and so they're the sort of group of people of prisoners who are of course very easy
for Israel to release. As far as the political swap goes, it gets much harder for Israel obviously once you go down the track and you get to very hard bitten offenders have actually murdered Israelis.
This goes to one of the big questions I think as we think about this war, Cam, what's the price of peace? How much has Israel had to compromise to end the fighting for Benjamin Ettnya who to get the hostages home for those families who've been demanding that he do so.
Yes, I mean nineteen hndred Palestinian prisoners for approximately one hundred hostages, of which only about sixty I believed to be alive, is of course seen by many as a very uneven swap. But look, I think this is the price that Israel had to pay to get these Israeli hostages released. Hamas would not accept a lower price than that.
I think Benjamin Ettnia, who is in a position now having really dismantled Hamas as a viable, large militant force, he really was under enormous pressure to try and get a hostage deal together because there's no way that Israel and then this war without those hostages coming out. So this was something which I think that Benjamin Natier, who, especially with the incoming president Donald Trump, the pressure that he applied, I think Netnio who thought that the time was right now to make this deal.
Let's talk about the Trump factor. Cam He famously said that if the hostages weren't released by January twenty, the day that he was inaugurated that all hell would break loose in the Middle East.
If those hostages aren't back. I don't want to hurt your negotiation. If they're not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East scale and it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good frankly for anyone.
All hell will break out.
We never really learned what all hell was going to look like. What do you think the Trump factor was?
I think the Trump factor was from har Massa's point of view, they certainly didn't want America to become more involved in their eradication. Now exactly what format would have taken is very hard to know because clearly the Americans we're never going to put troops into Gaza, but it certainly would have added to HARMSSUS calculations. I think from Netania, Who's point of view, though clear he knew that the timing of this cease fire, if he agreed to it,
would be a credit to Trump. Trump would get a fair bit of credit for it, which he has. In fact, one of the mothers of one of the hostages who's released has thanked Donald Trump precisely, and so I think Netanya, who he wants to have a good relationship with the incoming president. It's very important to him and for Israel on the track, and I think that would have been a fact that in his own political calculation as to the timing of.
This coming up. How does Israel win back a generation of young people who believe it has committed war crimes. When you look at the history of Israel since its creation after the Second World War came, it's a series of wars Israel invaded by its Arab neighbors or Israel taking aggressive action against them.
The first and to father was sparked by the deaths of four Palestinians in December nineteen eighty seven. By the time it ended in nineteen ninety three, more than one thy one hundred people had died.
In the course of six frantic days, Israel decimated the armies and air forces of Egypt, Jordan and Syria and redrew the map of the Middle East.
Jaza today's firing of a rocket from Gaza towards Israel is a serious and unacceptable violation.
Another news, Israel has come under intense international criticism over what Palestinians have called the biggest land grab by the state in three decades, when we look back at the war that began after October seven, what do you think we'll think did Israel win?
Now? It depends how we characterize the win. I think this is a very different skirmish and conflict. I think to a lot of previous ones, this is a seismic event, the conflict that has happened in the last fifteen months after the massacre of October seven. I think that what we have seen here is Israel emerging from this conflict as the dominant strategic player in the Middle East in
a way that we've never seen before. What's happened from Hamasa's miscalculation of massacring Israeli's has been the crushing of Hamasa's a viable militant force. But I think strategically, more significantly for Israel, it led Hezbollah to support Hamas in a fatal miscalculation that, as we have seen, has led Israel to literally crush Hesbella as a viable military force in Lebanon, one of Iran's key terror proxies. Iran itself
has been humbled. It attacked Israel twice as a result of this conflict and got beaten up twice as a result, and so really Iran emerges from this as a strategically weakened player in the Middle East. That is Israel's greatest enemy, only the Yemen who the rebels are firing missiles at
Israel at the moment, and that's only spasmodic. In other words, Israel has really tamed its borders, and we've had the fall of the Syrian regime as well, where Israel has gone and destroyed military equipment just to prevent any future threat arising from Syria. So I think Israel has emerged from this as the strategic leader in the Middle East in the way that no one would have imagined just fifteen months ago.
One of the things that Hamas's leader Aa Sinoa and the organization wanted to achieve on October seven was the mobilization of international opinion to make Israel react and to incite revulsion in the West with the inevitable pictures of death and destruction in Gaza. They've definitely succeeded in that, haven't they came?
Look, that's true. The greatest loss to Israel from this conflict has been its international reputation in the way that it's fought. The war in Gaza widely seen as been too heavy handed, a terrible severne death told by any calculations upwards of forty thousand, and Israel will take a lot to get that international reputation restored. However, I think from Israel's point of view, that really hasn't been a
priority at all. Of you read the media and look at the debate there in Israel, Claire, it's really been a matter of survival for the Israelis. They just wanted to ensure that they are in a position never to be attacked again like they were in October seven. I think the international reputation side of it has come a distant second in Israel to actually winning the conflict and protecting and their citizens from future attacks.
And so what now, How does Israel handle a generation of people who are maybe now at university or now in their twenties. They are the diplomats and the prime ministers and the presidents of the future. They've been exposed to the Middle East conflict, often in a very partisan way, and many of them would be sympathetic to the Palestinian side. Now can how does Israel win those people back to understanding why Israel exists.
It's going to be a long term generational battle for Israel who win back the hearts and minds of those people, I think. I think it's interesting Israel was criticized far too prematurely in this conflict. I think a lot of the people you're talking about, sort of liberal left academics especially, had a hostile view to Israel well before October seven, saw it very much as a colonizer, a hostile power,
aggressive power in the region. You know, they didn't take into account any other fact as such, of the fact that Israel has been repeatedly attacked since it was created. It's the only democracy amidst of Islamic dictatorships in the
Middle East. It has values that Western academics would like, such as equality for women, a whole lot of issues that they would identify with, and yet Israel has played to be the bad boy really from day one, even in Australia with the Opera House protests, even before Israel had retaliated for October seven.
Anti Semitic slurs chanted and an Israeli flag set on fire during that illegal pro Palestinian rally last night.
I think you saw this reflex of anti Israeli and unfortunately bleeding into anti Semitic behavior in universities around the world. And I think so Israel started in a position of disadvantage. And I think that obviously, as the war has gone on in Gaza and the criticism of its conduct of that war has increased, that has made that position even more difficult for Israel. So I think we're looking at a generational challenge for Israel to win back the hearts
and minds of some of those people. I'm very doubtful that they even had it to begin with.
Cameron Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. You can read Cam's analysis of both the Israel situation and the Trump inauguration. He's a busy guy right now at the Australian dot com dot au