Category World News

Antony Blinken, the now-current US Secretary of State, addressed a crowd at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC on January 14.

Over the last 15 months, Blinken has played a crucial role in supporting Israel’s military campaign against Gaza, a campaign that human rights organisations have described as genocidal, in which at least 47, 300 Palestinians have been killed.

The goal for Israel, as stated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was the total defeat and elimination of Hamas. However, Blinken struck a different tone in one of his final statements as secretary of state on January 14.

According to Blinken, “We believe Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.” That results in a perpetual war and an unending insurgency.

Hamas battered but not defeated

Hamas has undoubtedly been hit hard in the last 15 months, analysts and experts told Al Jazeera. It has likely lost thousands of fighters, including its military leader Yahya Sinwar, and, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), its weapons stockpile is depleted.

However, it is obvious that Hamas still maintains a presence in the Gaza Strip despite the dust being settled there.

In the ceasefire agreement with Israel, Hamas fighters have prominently featured in the handover of Israeli prisoners. Additionally, work has been resumed by members of the Hamas-run civil administration. Hamas still appears to be the only authority in Gaza.

“Hamas has an interest in creating an image of strength that is extremely orchestrated, and we should see that as a propaganda exercise”, Hugh Lovatt of the ECFR, told Al Jazeera.

Lovatt added, however, that after “over a year of fighting, the]Hamas] fighters remain very much in control of Gaza”.

Because neither Israel, the Palestinian Authority [Palestinian Authority] nor the international community will be able to impose post-conflict governance or security arrangements, Hamas is trying to show Israel that it failed to destroy it.

Many people, including Palestinians in Gaza, were caught off guard by the scenes during the captive releases.

“I was very surprised to see the number of the Qassam]Hamas’s military wing] fighters during the release of the Israeli captives”, Fathi al-Ladawi, 67, displaced from Rafah to Nuseirat in central Gaza and a father of eight, told Al Jazeera. “The scale of the strikes and bombardment, especially in northern Gaza, made us think Hamas’s human and military resources had been significantly depleted. However, what we saw demonstrated that they are still capable, perhaps even more than they were.

“]Hamas] was able to hold on to its hostages, who looked to be in good condition, and was able to negotiate and sign a ceasefire agreement with the parties that swore to annihilate it”, Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told Al Jazeera.

Hamas has also, according to Blinken’s statement, been able to recruit enough fighters to replace those it lost during the war.

It’s difficult to predict how many Hamas fighters died in the war. Hamas claims it has lost between 6, 000 and 7, 000 members from its armed and civilian wings, according to an ECFR report, based on interviews with two senior Hamas members. But, the report says, most of Hamas’s estimated 25, 000 fighters are likely still alive and in hiding.

Netanyahu claimed that 20, 000 “terrorists” had been killed as of November 2024, while Israel’s Military Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said approximately 3, 000 had been killed between October 6, 2024, and the ceasefire. According to the UN Human Rights Office, nearly 70% of the confirmed deaths occurred during this time were caused by women and children.

“Only Hamas knows how many members of their military wing, the Qassam Brigades, were killed”, Hamze Attar, a Palestinian military analyst who is from Gaza, told Al Jazeera. “Hamas did not make any announcements, but we’re seeing a number of posts where the relatives are deceiving one another in a manner that implies that they were fighting,” according to one post.

Hamas has the ability to “maintain rebellion” for a long time.

Among the few acknowledged losses are a handful of Hamas’s leaders.

On the first day of the ceasefire on January 19, Hamas’s spokesperson, known only as Abu Obeida, delivered what he claimed was a “victory speech”. He paid tribute to some of Hamas’s fallen members, including Sinwar, whose death was recorded by an Israeli drone in October, political bloc leader Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran in late July, and Saleh al-Arouri, killed in Lebanon in January 2024.

According to Attar, Abu Obeida did not list Mohammed Deif, the mysterious founder of the al-Qassam Brigades, as he claimed. Deif’s death was claimed by Israel in late July, but Hamas never publicly acknowledged it.

Among the living include the reported de facto head of Hamas in Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar, a figure Israel considers more hardline, well-trained and more of a mastermind than his late brother, Yahya, and Ezzedine Haddad, who oversees the Qassam Brigades in northern Gaza.

Israel’s stated goals also included destroying Hamas’s infrastructure, most notably its vast network of tunnels. However, according to Israeli media, Hamas’s tunnel network is still largely operational, though estimates about how much of it is still intact vary significantly. Members of the Hamas told ECFR that many of the tunnels had been repaired, preserved, and occasionally even expanded.

Israel may have significantly reduced Hamas’s arsenal of rockets. Unexploded ammunition that is still around Gaza can still be used to rebuild the improvised and primitive rockets.

Hamas recycles “unexploded Israeli rockets, bombs, and artillery shells to use as improvised explosive devices and produce new projectiles”, the ECFR report said.

Hamas has been built to take numerous blows and still be able to carry on as an organization because of its adaptability as a fighting force that it developed over the years as a response to Israel’s tactics against it.

Hamas popularity

Hamas has led the Gazan government since 2006, when it defeated Fatah in the elections, in addition to serving as a military force.

And while Hamas’s popularity has grown in the West Bank, particularly since the Hamas-led attack in Gaza on October 7, 2023, some people have voiced disapproval of the organization. Still, Hamas’s popularity has not been greatly impacted by Israel’s war on Gaza, as suggested by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research’s polls.

Palestinians in Gaza have a wide range of opinions on the group. In contrast to June 2024, Hamas’ support for Hamas in Gaza was only 35%, according to the most recent polls in September 2024.

Some have criticized Hamas for failing to anticipate Israel’s drawn-out and brutal response to the attack. Some claim that Hamas compelled them to join a conflict that the Gazan population did not ask them to. Nearly all of them have lost family, friends, and their homes.

One of their critics was 45-year-old Wael Darwish, from northern Nuseirat.

“This was a catastrophe, not a victory”, he said. “We’ve suffered the greatest disaster in history. If there’s any minor triumph, it’s because of the people’s resilience, not Hamas”.

“While I don’t deny the sacrifices of the resistance, we’re tired”, Darwish said. The resistance must take into account its members as well. We’ve shed enough blood”.

“If Hamas remains in power, I’ll leave Gaza immediately”, he continued. “Many feel the same”.

Hamas faced domestic opposition, including protests against the organization’s policies, before October 7. Some Palestinians in Gaza, however, said the last 15 months had changed their opinion of the group.

“I was happy to see the people, their numbers, and the safety of the Hamas fighters”, Fatima Shammali, 64, a mother of 11, told Al Jazeera. “Although I don’t usually support Hamas, my support for them grew during the war because they managed to counter, even slightly, the Israeli military arsenal”.

Nihal Barakat, 43, a mother of eight who was displaced from the Shati refugee camp to Nuseirat, agreed. “I expect Hamas’s popularity has increased after this war”, she said. “As for its strength, it remains intact, and we hope it is channelled for the benefit of the people”.

“It is clear that many Gazans are frustrated and angry at]Hamas]”, Lovatt said. Lovatt added that Hamas had a bad conscience about the consequences of their October 7 attack and the inaction that was “indispensable, disproportionate violent response against Gaza” was lacking.

Lovatt claimed that Hamas itself felt criticism of the organization, particularly among the group’s moderate wing. There were “a lot of criticisms of]late Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar’s actions and that of a few others who took unilateral decisions”, the analyst said, based on his interviews for the ECFR report.

According to experts, disapproval should not be interpreted as a support for Israel’s tactics or its occupation of Palestine.

“During the genocidal war on Gaza, people did not collaborate]with Israel] because they are the enemy and an occupation”, Attar, the military analyst, said. “It is not about Hamas. It is about identity, the resilience and the continuity of Palestinian people. It is not because they love Hamas, but because they love Palestine”.

The Year of the Snake officially began with the Chinese New Year celebrations and prayers.

In a bid to be among the first to place incense sticks in the stands in front of the temple’s main hall, hundreds of people gathered in the Wong Tai Sin Taoist temple in Hong Kong just before midnight.

The holiday is a significant festival that communities around the world celebrate by referring to as the Spring Festival in China, Tet in Vietnam, and Seollal in Korea. The snake, one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, follows the just-ended Year of the Dragon.

The sound of firecrackers greeted the new year outside Guan Di temple in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Wednesday, followed by lion dances to the rhythmic beat of drums and small cymbals.

The incense was poured into elaborate gold-colored pots by ethnic Chinese men who were holding them, bowing repeatedly inside the temple before sprinkling it with smoke from the burning tips.

Many Chinese who work in bigger cities&nbsp, return home&nbsp, during the eight-day national holiday in what is described as the world’s biggest annual movement of humanity.

Beijing, China’s capital, has turned into a bit of a ghost town, with many shops closed and normally crowded roads and subways emptied out.

Russians greeted, waved, and took pictures of a colorful parade that included drummers, costumed dancers, and tall dragon and snake figures as they awaited the 10-day Lunar New Year celebration in Moscow on Tuesday night.

After causing unrest with its AI model, which has capabilities that rival those of Google and OpenAI, China’s DeepSeek is questioned about whether its bold claims hold up to scrutiny.

The Hangzhou-based startup’s announcement to develop R1 for less than Silicon Valley’s most recent models immediately questioned assumptions about the country’s dominance of AI and the sky-high market valuations of its top tech companies.

Some sceptics, however, have challenged DeepSeek’s account of working on a shoestring budget, suggesting that the firm likely had access to more advanced chips and more funding than it has acknowledged.

“It’s very much an open question whether DeepSeek’s claims can be taken at face value. The AI community will be digging into them and we’ll find out”, Pedro Domingos, professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s plausible to me that they can train a model with $6m”, Domingos added.

“But it’s also quite possible that that’s just the cost of fine-tuning and post-processing models that cost more, that DeepSeek couldn’t have done it without building on more expensive models by others”.

The DeepSeek development team claimed to have used 2, 000 Nvidia H800 GPUs, a less sophisticated chip originally built to comply with US export restrictions, and had spent $5.6 million to train R1’s foundational model, V3. In a research paper released last week, they claimed to have used $5.6 million to train V3’s foundational model.

The chatbot GPT-4 was trained by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman for more than $100 million, according to analysts, who estimated that the model would require up to 25, 000 more advanced H100 GPUs.

The announcement from DeepSeek, which was founded in late 2023 by serial entrepreneur Liang Wenfeng, disproved the common belief that businesses seeking to be the pinnacle of AI must invest large sums of money in data centers and large amounts of pricey high-end chips.

Additionally, it raised questions about the effectiveness of Washington’s efforts to halt China’s AI sector by preventing the most advanced chips from exporting.

Shares of California-based Nvidia, which holds a near-monopoly on the supply of GPUs that power generative AI, on Monday plunged 17 percent, wiping nearly $593bn off the chip giant’s market value – a figure comparable with the gross domestic product (GDP) of Sweden.

While there is widespread agreement that DeepSeek’s release of R1 at least represents a significant achievement, some prominent observers have cautioned against accepting its claims for granted.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of virtual reality company Oculus VR, on Wednesday labelled DeepSeek’s claimed budget as “bogus” and accused too many “useful idiots” of falling for “Chinese propaganda”.

A Chinese hedge fund is pushing for “hide sanction evasion,” Luckey wrote in a post on X.

Because our media apparatus despises our technology companies and wants to see President Trump fail, “America is a fertile bed for psyops like this.”

In an interview with CNBC last week, Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, also cast doubt on DeepSeek’s account, saying it was his “understanding” that it had access to 50, 000 more advanced H100 chips that it could not talk about due to US export controls.

Wang’s claim was unsupported by any evidence.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, one of US President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, backed DeepSeek’s sceptics, writing “Obviously” on X under a post about Wang’s claim.

Requests for comment were not responded to by DeepSeek.

But Zihan Wang, a PhD candidate who worked on an earlier DeepSeek model, hit back at the startup’s critics, saying, “Talk is cheap”.

In response to Al Jazeera’s questions about the suggestion that DeepSeek’s claims shouldn’t be taken literally, Wang said on X, “It’s easy to criticize.”

Wang added, quoting an English translation of a Chinese idiom about people who engage in idle talk, that “it would be better if they spent more time writing the code and reproducing the DeepSeek idea themselves.”

He did not immediately respond to a question about whether he thought DeepSeek had trained R1’s foundational model using less sophisticated chips and spent less than $6 million.

In a 2023 interview with Chinese media outlet Waves, Liang said his company had stockpiled 10, 000 of Nvidia’s A100 chips – which are older than the H800 – before the administration of then-US President Joe Biden banned their export.

R1 users also point out the restrictions it has because it was founded in China, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and Taiwan’s status, where it is censored.

In a sign that the initial panic about DeepSeek’s potential impact on the US tech sector had begun to recede, Nvidia’s stock price on Tuesday recovered nearly 9 percent.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose 1.59 percent after dropping more than 3 percent the previous day.

Tim Miller, a professor specialising in AI at the University of Queensland, said it was difficult to say how much stock should be put in DeepSeek’s claims.

The model itself provides a few details about how it operates, Miller told Al Jazeera, but the costs of the main changes, which they claim don’t “show up” in the model itself as much, Miller said.

Miller claimed he had not seen any “alarm bells,” but Miller’s claims are valid. Both the research paper’s reliability and its reliability are disputed.

The breakthrough is incredible, almost in the “too good to be true” fashion. The breakdown of costs is unclear”, Miller said.

On the other hand, he said, breakthroughs do happen occasionally in computer science.

“These massive-scale models are a very recent phenomenon, so efficiencies are bound to be found”, Miller said.

“Given they knew that this would be reasonably straightforward for others to reproduce, they would have known that they would look stupid if they were b*********** everyone. A team has already made a commitment to attempting to reproduce the work.

Falling costs

Lucas Hansen, co-founder of the nonprofit CivAI, said while it was difficult to know whether DeepSeek circumvented US export controls, the startup’s&nbsp, claimed training budget referred to V3, which is roughly equivalent to OpenAI’s GPT-4, not R1 itself.

“GPT-4 finished training late 2022. Since 2022, numerous algorithmic and hardware improvements have been made, lowering the cost of training a GPT-4 class model. GPT-2 experienced a similar circumstance. At the time it was a serious undertaking to train, but now you can train it for $20 in 90 minutes”, Hansen told Al Jazeera.

“DeepSeek made R1 by taking a base model&nbsp, – in this case, V3 – and applying some clever methods to teach that base model to think more carefully”, Hansen added.

In Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, chaotic demonstrations were sparked by flamboyant embassies and piles of burning tyres to denounce the international community’s “inaction” with the conflict raging in Goma, the main city in the country’s east.

On foot or motorcycles, hundreds of angry demonstrators responding on Tuesday to the “Paralyse the City” call of a youth collective gathered in the upscale district of Gombe in the north of Kinshasa and targeted the embassies of Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, France, Belgium and the United States.

They claimed that Rwanda and Uganda were actively supporting the armed group M23, which entered Goma on Sunday after a lightning offensive in North Kivu province with the support of Rwandan troops.

On Tuesday, they had taken control of its airport after raging street battles.

The other nations were accused of diplomatic apathy by the demonstrators.

“Enough is enough, we’re going to destroy everything here. We’re going to finish with Rwanda today,” chanted one demonstrator in front of the Kinshasa-based Rwandan embassy.

Tires that had been set on fire nearby produced thick smoke that drew nearby.

The French embassy’s perimeter wall also caught fire. Graffiti on it read: “Betrayal over a long period of time … let’s end it now”.