Hamas Accepts Temporary Cease-Fire Proposal - What's News

Wall Street Journal

a day ago

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Sabrina Siddiqui: Hamas accepts a temporary ceasefire after rejecting a proposal to end the war.
Anat Peled: This plan really comes with this looming Israeli threat of basically a military invasion and takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be sheltering and some Israeli hostages are believed to be held.
Sabrina Siddiqui: Plus, Home Depot says it will raise some prices due to tariffs. And a leading pediatrics group is recommending Covid shots for young children, diverging from federal health guidelines. It's Tuesday, August 19th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal covering for Alex Ossola. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Home building in the US increased last month, contradicting expectations that it would fall amid a fragile housing market. According to a report released by the Commerce Department today, housing starts, a gauge of new residential construction, rose to 1.428 million in July from an upwardly revised 1.358 million in June. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had anticipated a lower 1.3 million starts. Today's report says the housing starts were 12.9% higher than a year earlier. But residential permits, another measure of trends in housing construction, fell short of forecasts and slipped to 1.354 million from a downwardly revised 1.393 million in June. The National Association of Home Builders said the increase in housing starts occurred despite a slight decline in builder sentiment due to persistently high mortgage rates. Tariffs will soon start hitting some price tags at Home Depot. The home improvement retailer said it will raise prices on some items due to tariffs, reversing an earlier position. In an interview, Chief Financial Officer Richard McPhail said there will be some modest price movement for some categories. The company said that 50% of its products are sourced domestically and aren't subject to tariffs. Wall Street Journal reporter, Nicholas Miller, joins me now to discuss. Nicholas, the company previously said it wouldn't raise prices as a result of tariffs. What changed and what do they now anticipate the impact of tariffs to be?
Nicholas Miller: The simple answer is that just tariffs are a lot higher right now than they were in May. In May, they said they were going to try to hold prices and work with suppliers that they don't have to pass tariff costs on to consumers. But they talked today about how they'll be having some modest price increases in certain categories. They said it won't be broad based, but that certain categories, particularly the ones that are impacted by tariffs, will see some modest price increases. They did say that they're still accelerating their supply chain transition to avoid too much exposure to one country. But yeah, this kind of admission that they were going to hike prices a little bit is definitely a notable shift from last quarter.
Sabrina Siddiqui: How does Home Depot see the current market and consumer behavior?
Nicholas Miller: Home Depot mostly talked today about consumers being unwilling to undertake those larger projects. So they're saying they're still seeing demand for small projects, small renovation projects, but not big renovations. And the company said the number one reason for that was general economic uncertainty, people being unwilling to make some of those big expenditures, not knowing what the future of the economy looks like. And then the second reason they gave was high interest rates. A lot of those big renovations are funded through debt financing and that kind of thing, and whereas the smaller projects are through cash. Just because of high interest rates, it's really pretty expensive to take on debt right now. Home Depot also talked about how home equity values have really skyrocketed in the last couple of years. So theoretically that should give people a lot of the money that they can tap into to fund renovations and that kind of thing. But they're seeing customers do that at very low levels compared with history. And the company talked about potentially seeing a boost when interest rates are lowered and the housing market picks back up. And they also referenced how the tax law Trump recently passed could maybe put discretionary money in consumers pockets, but for now, they're still in wait and see mode.
Sabrina Siddiqui: Nicholas Miller is a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Nicholas, thank you.
Nicholas Miller: Thank you so much.
Sabrina Siddiqui: Stocks fell in US markets. The Nasdaq was dragged down nearly 1.5% by declines in all Magnificent Seven stocks. The S&P declined 0.6%, closing near its lows on the day, and the Dow ended the day marginally higher 0.02%. NorthWestern Energy Group and Black Hills have agreed to combine to form a large $7.8 billion regulated electric and natural gas utility company. The announcement comes at a time of climbing energy demand across the US. In a joint statement today, the two companies said that their boards approved a definitive agreement to combine in an all stock tax-free merger with a combined enterprise value of $15.4 billion. The merger will create a utility serving roughly 2.1 million customers across eight states. And Alphabet's Google has offered to change terms and conditions for developers using its Play Store in a bid to stave off a potential fine under European Union tech rules. In a blog post today, Google said it would alter developer fees for app downloads and make it easier to lead users to deals and offers outside of its own app store. Google said it would allow developers to steer users to app purchases outside of the Play Store through their own websites and introduced an alternative fee structure for those developers. But the company warned that links leading outside the Play Store can expose users to security threats. The move comes after the European Commission, the EU's executive arm and antitrust watchdog, told Google earlier this year that it believed current Play Store rules might be in breach of the bloc's relatively new rulebook designed to reign in Big Tech market power. Coming up, Hamas has accepted a proposal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza. How will Israel respond? That's after the break. Hamas has accepted a proposal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. The proposal which is similar to terms offered by Israel in July, follows a round of tense talks over the weekend in Cairo between Palestinian factions and officials from Egypt and Qatar. Israel is currently weighing whether to accept the deal and will likely give a response later this week. Anat Peled, a Wall Street Journal reporter in Tel Aviv has the story. Anat, you reported that this offer is very similar to a proposal from Israel last month. What has changed for Hamas since then?
Anat Peled: Since the last proposal, Hamas has come slightly more to Israel's position. It's softened its terms on a few issues, including agreeing to accept a lower number of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons, and also has agreed to a larger Israeli buffer zone inside Gaza as Israel wants. But it still demands an end to the war, which is something that Israel for a long time was not willing to commit to. It has vowed to fight the Hamas militant group until it's completely defeated.
Sabrina Siddiqui: What are some of the other terms that are outlined in this latest plan from Hamas?
Anat Peled: It's pretty straightforward. It's a sixty-day ceasefire where basically Israel would receive about half of the living remaining hostages, which is 10, and the bodies of deceased hostages. And then it would be an exchange for a temporary ceasefire of 60 days and Palestinian prisoners. And according to the proposal, on the first day when they go into this agreement, they would start talking and negotiating for a second phase, which would be a lasting ceasefire. So an end to the war, which is really what Hamas has been adamant about.
Sabrina Siddiqui: Based on your reporting, are these terms enough for Israel to accept the plan?
Anat Peled: We're unsure how Israel's going to respond. Israel is supposed to hand over its response to the mediators by the end of the week. It comes after Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated that he did not want any more partial deals, wanted to go for one big deal to end everything, but they have not ruled it out so far. And it is important to note that Israel is right now facing increased international pressure. So we're seeing that from many European countries that are very worried about the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including widespread hunger. And then you also have increasing domestic pressure where we're seeing about 80% of Israeli public opinion supports ending the war in exchange for the remaining hostages. And we saw some of the largest protests since the start of the war with hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets on Sunday, calling to end the war.
Sabrina Siddiqui: You mentioned the dire conditions on the ground in Gaza. What would this plan mean for the delivery of humanitarian aid and also for Israel's stated plans to take control of Gaza City?
Anat Peled: This plan really comes with this looming Israeli threat of basically a military invasion and takeover of Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be sheltering and some Israeli hostages are believed to be held. Israel's plan, as we understand it according to Israeli and Egyptian officials, is to basically move all of the population of Gaza City to Rafah, where Israel plans to establish this tent city, moving the population to an ever-shrinking territory inside Gaza because Israel says that it controls about 75% of the strips. So this would be further displacing them. We're not quite sure what it means for humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid, it's been in the spotlight recently because we have the UN aid coming in, but we also have this privatized system of aid that's run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by Israel and the US. And that's been a pretty controversial system, and Hamas has not been a fan of that. So we need to still see how that's going to play out in negotiations.
Sabrina Siddiqui: Anat Peled is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Tel Aviv. Anat, thank you.
Anat Peled: Thanks for having me.
Sabrina Siddiqui: And finally, the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending parents vaccinate their young children against Covid in a departure from current federal health leaders who have questioned the need for Covid shots for kids, and shifted the guidance. The prominent pediatrician group released its immunization guidelines today and recommended Covid shots for all children ages six months through 23 months. The group said children in that age group are particularly vulnerable to severe Covid infections and that the vaccines would protect them from serious illness. The guidance differs from that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which now recommends parents of children ages six months to 17 years old talk about the risks and benefits of the Covid vaccine with their doctors. The agency previously recommended adults and children ages six months and older get Covid vaccines, but that changed this year under the leadership of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic. A Health and Human Services spokesman, said in a statement that the Academy is "undermining national immunization policymaking with baseless political attacks." And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bienaimé with supervising producer, Michael Kosmides. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.