Israel has accused Hamas of breaking the terms of the ceasefire agreement by not releasing all the remains of hostages after the peace deal was signed in Egypt yesterday. The Israeli government has reportedly given the terror group, which has so far handed back four bodies of a possible 28, until the end of today to return the rest. Almost all the external wall insulation fitted under the previous government’s energy efficiency scheme was installed so badly it needs to be repaired or replaced. Some 98% of the roughly 23,000 homeowners who took advantage of the programme have been left with shonky cladding that is likely to cause damp and mould. This season’s fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris showed that the “body positivity” movement is over, with 97% of models on the catwalks a UK size 4 to 8. Vogue, which tracked the sizes of models across 198 shows, found that only 2% could be categorised as “mid-size” (a UK 10-16) and less than 1% were “plus-size”.

The real lesson of the Gaza deal

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, says William Hague in The Times, John F Kennedy received two different messages in 24 hours from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the second of which left markedly less hope of peace. Rather than panic, JFK completely ignored the later message and replied only to the earlier, more positive one – and the following day Khrushchev backed down. Ten days ago, Donald Trump did something similar. When Hamas responded to his 20-point ceasefire proposal without mentioning whether it would disarm – a key element of the plan – Trump just ignored the oversight and treated the whole ceasefire as a done deal. Like Kennedy, he understood the importance of “maintaining momentum”.

It wasn’t Trump’s “sheer personal will” alone that got the agreement over the line. It was also his use of America’s “hard power”. Arab states were willing to play ball because they need US tech and military protection; Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to stop bombing Gaza because Israel is heavily dependent on American arms. Britain did contribute to the process, through Tony Blair’s longstanding efforts to find solutions and Jonathan Powell’s tireless diplomatic support. But recognising Palestine as a state did nothing to help. All those pro-Palestine marches contributed “precisely zero”. That’s the real lesson of this breakthrough, regardless of whether the next, “far more difficult” stage can be executed: it is “power, not posturing” that gets big deals done. Britain needs to remember that the role of a nation in foreign affairs ultimately depends on its economic prowess. “Without that we are just shouting in a room where the audience is leaving.”

🇵🇸🪧 Here in Britain, the Gaza deal should really take the wind out of the sails of the Islamists, the far left and the Greens, says Paul Goodman in The Daily Telegraph. For these groups, campaigning against Israel has become a “fanatical obsession”: it is this year’s trans rights or Extinction Rebellion or Black Lives Matter. And they need the conflict to continue to keep their supporters engaged – the deaths and displacements, the “war porn” pumped into our social media feeds. Without the “oil of public outrage”, they may well struggle to “keep their electoral machine ticking over”.