Asher Kaufman, University of Notre Dame

A much-anticipated Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal is set to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025 – subject to an Israeli government vote on the package scheduled for the morning of Jan. 16.

The breakthrough comes 15 months into the bloody conflict sparked by an Oct. 7 2023, attack by Hamas gunmen in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 hostages taken. In the subsequent bombing and siege of the Gaza Strip, some 45,000 Palestinians have been killed.

But why has the breakthrough happened now, and what does this mean for the long-term prospects of a more permanent peace? The Conversation turned to Asher Kaufman, an expert on Israeli history and professor of peace studies at University of Notre Dame, for answers.

What is the main content of the deal?

Not all the details have been ironed out or released. But what we do know is this:

The deal is divided into three stages. In the first stage, 33 women, children and men who are sick or over the age of 55 will be released in stages over 42 days. The hostages, thought to have been held by Hamas in its network of tunnels under Gaza since Oct. 7, include two American nationals. In total, 94 hostages remain in captivity, including 34 thought to be dead.

The Israeli military will also allow Palestinians forced to leave northern Gaza to return, although much of the area and their homes are in complete ruins.

On the 16th day of implementation, negotiations will begin regarding the next stage of the deal, which will include the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas. As part of this stage, Israel will withdraw its forces to a defensive belt that will serve as a buffer between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

In exchange for freeing the hostages, Israel will release Palestinian prisoners according to an agreed-upon ratio for each Israeli dead or living civilian or soldier hostage. In the initial wave, hundreds of Palestinian women and children currently held in Israeli prisons will be freed. Also, Israel will allow more humanitarian assistance to flow into Gaza.

The third stage of the deal will include the release of the remaining dead hostages and will focus on the reconstruction of Gaza supervised by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations. At this stage, Israel will be expected to fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

How significant is the breakthrough?

Fifteen months of war has devastated Gaza. This deal opens the possibility of ending the fighting there and could allow for the first steps toward reconstruction and stabilization in the Palestinian enclave.

It could also allow the incoming Trump administration to focus on other issues that are more central to its foreign policy agenda, such as a potential new deal with Iran and the resumption of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, connected to the creation of a new security alliance with the U.S.

For Israel, it means the possibility of an end to its longest war, which has cost a fortune, eroded its international standing and severely divided its society between supporters and opponents of the government. It could end the state of emergency that has been in effect since Oct. 7, 2023, allowing Israeli society to begin its own recovery.

What issues remain outstanding?

There are big question marks over the later stages of the deal. Important members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, have been accused of being more interested in a permanent occupation of the Gaza Strip than in the release of the hostages. As such, they will be loath to agree to any measures that would lead to a handing over of governance and security in the enclave to Palestinians.

Throughout the conflict, the Israel government has made it clear that it envisions no role for Hamas in a post-conflict Gaza. But Hamas’ main rival, the Palestinian Authority, has little credibility among Gaza’s residents. It leaves a gaping question of who will govern in Gaza.

There is also concern that if Israel was genuinely interested in full implementation of the deal, it could have reached an agreement that includes the complete withdrawal from Gaza in return for release of all hostages, rather than an agreement implemented in stages.

Why did talks succeed now, but earlier attempts fail?

This deal has been on the table at least since May 2024. But Netanyahu and his government have opposed it due mainly to their desire that Israel remain in control of Gaza.

Some of his government ministers also want to establish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and have explicitly spoken about creating the conditions for reducing the numbers of Palestinians in the strip.

Critics of Netanyahu have also suggested that the prime minister wanted to prolong the war as long as possible because it served him politically.

But the entry of Donald Trump into the equation after his election as U.S. president changed the dynamics between Israel, Hamas and the U.S.

Trump wants to be seen as a deal-maker on the global stage, and Netanyahu – a close ally of the Republican – feels inclined to help Trump on this matter. The timing of the deal allows Trump to claim a role, while also allowing Joe Biden to leave office with a foreign policy “win.”

There are also hopes in Israel that forging a deal now clears the way for the resumption of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia – a process kick-started under Trump’s first administration.

Netanyahu may be betting on a deal with Saudi Arabia to balance out his tarnished reputation at home as the Israeli leader in control when the Oct. 7 massacre occurred.

How will the deal play out in Israel’s fractious politics?

This is the big question that will determine the fate of the deal in the long term.

Its provisions contradict fundamentally the aspirations of many members in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – and they may do the best they can to sabotage it.

It is still not clear if these right-wing holdouts will exit the government or stay in the coalition under the belief that the latter phases of the deal are not going to be implemented.

What does it mean for the future of Hamas and its role in Gaza?

The agreement does not specify conditions to replace Hamas’ rule in Gaza.

Netanyahu has so far objected to any efforts to facilitate the return of the Palestinian Authority or allow any other Arab or international consortium to run civilian affairs in the strip.

Hamas, for its part, has no interest in facilitating its replacement by other governing bodies and ceding control of Gaza. But having lost key members of its leadership over the course of the war, the militant group is in a less powerful position than it was before Oct. 7.

A cynical view might be that having a weakened Hamas remain in power may actually serve Netanyahu’s interests, allowing him to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than trying to resolve it. This had been his approach before Oct. 7, and there are no indications that it has changed.

Asher Kaufman, Professor of History and Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University

Meta’s decision to change its content moderation policies by replacing centralized fact-checking teams with user-generated community labeling has stirred up a storm of reactions. But taken at face value, the changes raise the question of the effectiveness of Meta’s old policy, fact-checking, and its new one, community comments.

With billions of people worldwide accessing their services, platforms such as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have a responsibility to ensure that users are not harmed by consumer fraud, hate speech, misinformation or other online ills. Given the scale of this problem, combating online harms is a serious societal challenge. Content moderation plays a role in addressing these online harms.

Moderating content involves three steps. The first is scanning online content – typically, social media posts – to detect potentially harmful words or images. The second is assessing whether the flagged content violates the law or the platform’s terms of service. The third is intervening in some way. Interventions include removing posts, adding warning labels to posts, and diminishing how much a post can be seen or shared.

Content moderation can range from user-driven moderation models on community-based platforms such as Wikipedia to centralized content moderation models such as those used by Instagram. Research shows that both approaches are a mixed bag.

Does fact-checking work?

Meta’s previous content moderation policy relied on third-party fact-checking organizations, which brought problematic content to the attention of Meta staff. Meta’s U.S. fact-checking organizations were AFP USA, Check Your Fact, Factcheck.org, Lead Stories, PolitiFact, Science Feedback, Reuters Fact Check, TelevisaUnivision, The Dispatch and USA TODAY.

Fact-checking relies on impartial expert review. Research shows that it can reduce the effects of misinformation but is not a cure-all. Also, fact-checking’s effectiveness depends on whether users perceive the role of fact-checkers and the nature of fact-checking organizations as trustworthy.

Crowdsourced content moderation

In his announcement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted that content moderation at Meta would shift to a community notes model similar to X, formerly Twitter. X’s community notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking approach that allows users to write notes to inform others about potentially misleading posts.

Studies are mixed on the effectiveness of X-style content moderation efforts. A large-scale study found little evidence that the introduction of community notes significantly reduced engagement with misleading tweets on X. Rather, it appears that such crowd-based efforts might be too slow to effectively reduce engagement with misinformation in the early and most viral stage of its spread.

There have been some successes from quality certifications and badges on platforms. However, community-provided labels might not be effective in reducing engagement with misinformation, especially when they’re not accompanied by appropriate training about labeling for a platform’s users. Research also shows that X’s Community Notes is subject to partisan bias.

Crowdsourced initiatives such as the community-edited online reference Wikipedia depend on peer feedback and rely on having a robust system of contributors. As I have written before, a Wikipedia-style model needs strong mechanisms of community governance to ensure that individual volunteers follow consistent guidelines when they authenticate and fact-check posts. People could game the system in a coordinated manner and up-vote interesting and compelling but unverified content.

Content moderation and consumer harms

A safe and trustworthy online space is akin to a public good, but without motivated people willing to invest effort for the greater common good, the overall user experience could suffer.

Algorithms on social media platforms aim to maximize engagement. However, given that policies that encourage engagement can also result in harm, content moderation also plays a role in consumer safety and product liability.

This aspect of content moderation has implications for businesses that either use Meta for advertising or to connect with their consumers. Content moderation is also a brand safety issue because platforms have to balance their desire to keep the social media environment safer against that of greater engagement.

AI content everywhere

Content moderation is likely to be further strained by growing amounts of content generated by artificial intelligence tools. AI detection tools are flawed, and developments in generative AI are challenging people’s ability to differentiate between human-generated and AI-generated content.

In January 2023, for example, OpenAI launched a classifier that was supposed to differentiate between texts generated by humans and those generated by AI. However, the company discontinued the tool in July 2023 due to its low accuracy.

There is potential for a flood of inauthentic accounts – AI bots – that exploit algorithmic and human vulnerabilities to monetize false and harmful content. For example, they could commit fraud and manipulate opinions for economic or political gain.

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT make it easier to create large volumes of realistic-looking social media profiles and content. AI-generated content primed for engagement can also exhibit significant biases, such as race and gender. In fact, Meta faced a backlash for its own AI-generated profiles, with commentators labeling it “AI-generated slop.”

More than moderation

Regardless of the type of content moderation, the practice alone is not effective at reducing belief in misinformation or at limiting its spread.

Ultimately, research shows that a combination of fact-checking approaches in tandem with audits of platforms and partnerships with researchers and citizen activists are important in ensuring safe and trustworthy community spaces on social media.

Anjana Susarla, Professor of Information Systems, Michigan State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jay Feinman, Rutgers University

The wildfires that have devastated large parts of Los Angeles County have drawn fresh attention to the struggles many Americans face insuring their homes.

Since 2022, seven of the 12 largest insurance companies have stopped issuing new policies to homeowners in California, citing increased risks due to climate change. California isn’t alone: The same thing has happened in other vulnerable states, including Louisiana and Florida. The proportion of Americans without home insurance has risen from 5% to 12% since 2019. Meanwhile, those fortunate enough to have insurance are paying more than ever: Premiums in California, like elsewhere, have increased dramatically over the past five years.

When the private insurance market fails to provide coverage, the government often comes in to fill the gap. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program was established back in the 1960s because almost all private insurers excluded flood coverage. Meanwhile, the California FAIR Plan, which serves more than 450,000 Californians, is a typical state-created insurer of last resort. Such programs, which are available in many states, offer limited coverage to people who can’t get private insurance.

But the sheer scale of need means it’s hard for public programs to stay afloat. It’s not inconceivable that the recent wildfires could exceed the reserves and reinsurance available to the California FAIR plan. Because of the way the plan is set up, that would force other insurers – and ultimately homeowners – to make up the difference.

These are tricky problems, and – speaking as an expert in insurance – I can’t say I have answers. But I do know the right questions to ask. And that’s a crucial first step if you want to find solutions.

What is insurance for, anyway?

One of the most important questions is also the most basic: What are the goals of insurance?

Insurance is a financial product that allows people to share risk – meaning that if a catastrophe strikes any one person, they won’t have to bear the costs alone. But it’s not just about money. Even if most people don’t realize it, every form of insurance embodies values and serves public policy goals. This often requires making social, political and even moral trade-offs.

What is the problem we’re trying to solve?

The first step in solving a problem is to identify it. When it comes to insurance, this isn’t always easy. For example, “Homeowners need insurance coverage that they can’t afford in the private market” might seem like a good description of the problem. But it’s not. This is because some homes in disaster-prone areas are simply too risky to insure.

Imagine a home in a coastal area that floods over and over, for example. If you were an insurer, how much would you charge for that policy? When a house is subject to repeated losses, it makes more economic sense to buy and demolish it instead.

Defining the problem carefully also helps to clarify the values at stake. For example, one value is protecting the investments of current homeowners – particularly, say, long-time, elderly residents. But another value is pricing risk correctly, so people don’t move into dangerous developments.

Put more broadly, one value is recognizing society’s collective responsibility toward people who suffer financial distress, and another is promoting fair and efficient use of social resources. These values can be in conflict.

What does the government have to do with insurance?

Back in 1881, in his classic lectures on The Common Law, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said:

The state might conceivably make itself a mutual insurance company against accidents and distribute the burden of its citizens’ mishaps among all its members. There might be a pension for paralytics, and state aid for those who suffered in person or estate from tempest or wild beasts.

Holmes’ own position was clear: “The state does none of these things,” he wrote – and it should not. This strain of individualism has remained strong in U.S. politics: Individual liberty, personal responsibility and economic opportunity are the foundations of American life, individualists say, so each person should win or lose on their own.

Under this approach, the private insurance market bases its pooling, risk classification and pricing mostly on how much risk each policyholder presents, so that homes in wildfire-prone areas are charged higher premiums. In theory, this is both morally sound and economically efficient, since each policyholder bears the cost of their own risks. But when the private market fails – as happened with flood insurance – the government has a strong incentive to step in.

Today, as an empirical matter, Holmes’ statement couldn’t be more wrong. The state does, in fact, make itself “a mutual insurance company against accidents” and provides a “pension for paralytics,” through Medicaid, Social Security Disability Insurance and other programs. And in California, as elsewhere, the government does provide aid for those who “suffered in estate … from tempest,” through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other entities.

Since at least the New Deal, there has been broad recognition that some level of collective responsibility is essential; the only questions are where and how much. In the health insurance realm, for example, the Affordable Care Act provides subsidized health insurance for many Americans, and changing Medicare is a political third rail.

Public policy on disaster losses is situated between the two extremes of letting losses lie and having the state assume all of the burdens of those losses. Often policymakers and researchers see insurance or insurance-like plans as solutions – whether provided by a public entity or involving a mixed public-private program. FEMA, for example, operates the National Flood Insurance Program in cooperation with private insurers and also gives direct grants for mitigation of flood damage.

What should a public insurance solution look like?

Sometimes one question leads to another, and that’s the case here. In my research, I’ve identified more than a dozen questions that policymakers must answer in order to design an effective public solution to disaster insurance. Three questions are most important:

• What are the goals of the insurance?

• Who is being insured?

• How are policyholders and their risks classified?

Let’s start with the first question: What are the goals of the insurance? As I mentioned earlier, any form of insurance faces trade-offs and limits.

When an insurance solution has been adopted rather than some other form of intervention, a primary goal is to compensate the policyholder for a loss. But that’s not the only goal. For example, insurance often aims to reduce losses in addition to paying if they occur. Insurers have many ways to shape behavior, such as charging lower premiums for homeowners who keep their property free of flammable brush. Because many of these behaviors affect other people as well, they generate a social benefit. And since insurance has social benefits, how those benefits are distributed – along race, gender, class and other lines – is also important.

That leads to the second key question: Who is being insured?

Insurance involves transferring risk from an individual to a larger group of people who can share the risk. Insurance experts call this “risk pooling.” Pools that are too small will struggle because there aren’t enough people to share the burden.

In public solutions to catastrophe problems, getting more people in the pool could be especially useful in expanding coverage. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program brings many homeowners across the country into a pool, but it also excludes some, such as those who suffer damage from wind during a hurricane. In contrast, the proposed INSURE Act, introduced in the last Congress, would effectively put the entire nation in a pool to cover a variety of catastrophic risks, including flood, wildfire, earthquake and others.

Still, just because you’re in the same pool as someone else doesn’t mean you’ll be treated the same – people with the same insurance can be charged different premiums and receive different amounts of coverage.

That leads to the third question: How are policyholders and their risks classified?

If insurers treated everybody exactly the same, they would quickly go out of business. That’s why they analyze huge amounts of information about past losses, current conditions and future predictions, trying to determine the risks posed by each member. This work is done by actuaries and underwriters, but it’s not just a matter of math: Insurers classify policyholders in ways that reflect the goals and values of the insurance, which typically include balancing widespread availability, broad coverage and affordable pricing, and the social benefits the insurance generates.

One view of this process is that more precise risk classification and pricing are good. Because insurance involves risk transfer, the more accurately risks can be calculated and priced, the better the process works.

But there’s a deeper problem, which has to do with values. Sometimes accuracy in underwriting can conflict with larger social goals. With catastrophes in particular, broad coverage may be a top priority, since many people believe the state has a responsibility to protect its people. Moreover, protecting people’s investments in their homes is important, and suddenly raising the premiums of homeowners at high risk would threaten their investments. Disasters also cause communal responses – many unaffected Americans donate to the Red Cross and other nonprofits to support victims – and a strict focus on accuracy in underwriting could undermine that sense of community.

As floods, storms, wildfires and other catastrophes become increasingly common, the availability and affordability of property insurance has become a high-profile political issue. Politics involve choices. Asking better questions will help politicians – and the rest of us – make better choices.

Jay Feinman, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Rutgers University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.