Terrorism

IDF Northern Command head Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin met with civilian security teams in Israel’s north ahead of a possible further escalation there.

Akiva Van Koningsveld

(JNS)

Hundreds of Hamas terrorists who “lost their fighting spirit” have surrendered to Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the Gaza Strip in recent days, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant revealed on Sunday, amid ongoing preparations for an escalation with Iran-backed Hezbollah in the north.

“The deepening of military activities in Khan Yunis continues to bear fruit,” Gallant said during a visit to an IDF base in Beersheba, in reference to the southern Gaza Hamas bastion. “Two hundred terrorists have surrendered at Nasser Hospital; dozens have surrendered at the Amal Hospital.”

“This shows that they have lost their fighting spirit. Terrorists armed with RPGs, weapons, and guns… did not fight back. They understood that their options were to surrender or die,” according to Gallant.

“Hamas is left with forces in the central area of Gaza and the Rafah brigade. The only thing required for their total collapse as a military system is a decision by the IDF. There is no one here to come to their aid—no Iranians and no international assistance,” Gallant told senior officials in the military’s Southern Command.

“We will dismantle Hamas’s six remaining battalions—we have no right to stop as long as there are 134 hostages left in Gaza,” the defense minister added.

At least 32 of the hostages remaining in Hamas captivity are confirmed dead. Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and wounded thousands more during the terror group’s Oct. 7 attacks.

Last week, the IDF disclosed “credible evidence” that Hamas held at least some of the hostages it took at Nasser Hospital and that the bodies of dead captives may be located inside the Khan Yunis facility.

In a video message on Thursday, IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari revealed that special forces were conducting a “precise and limited operation” inside the hospital, with the military later stating that several suspects were arrested.

The military had contacted the hospital’s director, calling for an immediate halt to terrorist activity inside the facility and the immediate evacuation of Hamas operatives from the premises, the IDF noted.

In January, Hamas fired a rocket at Israeli soldiers from within the hospital. During the ongoing war, Israel has uncovered extensive use of medical facilities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists.

While Israel fights Hamas terrorists to the south, Hezbollah has joined the fighting by firing dozens of missiles and rockets at the Jewish state from Lebanon every day since the war began on Oct. 7.

Last week, Hezbollah launched rockets at Safed, killing one soldier and wounding eight others. The slain soldier was identified as IDF Staff Sgt. Omer Sarah Benjo, 20, from Moshav Ge’a, near Ashkelon.

Over the weekend, IDF Northern Command head Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin met with civilian security teams in the north ahead of a possible further escalation involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon and Syria.

The so-called standby squads are made up of locals, usually former military, who train together and serve as first-response teams, holding the fort until regular troops arrive. At least two kibbutzim in the western Negev were saved on Oct. 7 because of such squads.

“If we end up needing to go on the attack in the north, it will be with awesome power,” vowed Gordin. “The defense of your towns by local defense groups, both those that have been evacuated and those that have not been evacuated, is a part of our broader defense concept.”

The Israeli military has stepped up its attacks against Hezbollah by “one level out of 10” in response to last week’s deadly attack, Gallant said on Thursday, warning that jets above Beirut have been armed with “heavier bombs for more distant targets.”

“We do not want to enter into a war, but rather are interested in reaching an agreement that will allow the safe return of residents of the north,” Gallant said at the time.

Over four months after Hezbollah joined the war in support of Hamas, the International Committee of the Red Cross, tasked with monitoring compliance with international humanitarian law, on Sunday issued its first statement on “concerns for civilians in northern Israel.”

Without naming Hezbollah, the ICRC called on “all parties involved to prioritize the protection of civilians and adhere to international humanitarian law,” noting that “tens of thousands of people have had to leave their homes, and are not yet able to safely return.”

“For more than four months, civilians in northern Israel have lived with increasing levels of violence and uncertainty. We are deeply concerned about the escalating violence in this area, and the further impact this will have on civilians,” added the statement.

Attacks from the Land of the Cedars have killed six civilians and 10 IDF soldiers since the start of the war. Some 80,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes up to 6 miles from the border with Lebanon.

Image: Israeli troops during operational activities in the Gaza Strip, Feb. 18, 2024. Credit: IDF.

Sources in Ramallah said Hamas approved a plan leading to “complete reconciliation” and the Gaza-based terror group joining the PLO.

Akiva Van Koningsveld

(JNS)

The Palestinian Authority is inching closer to an agreement that would see Hamas terrorists become part of the Western-backed leadership in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Arabic media outlets reported on Tuesday.

Sources in Ramallah told Sky News Arabia that Hamas approved a three-phase plan leading to “complete reconciliation” and the Gaza-based terror group joining the Palestine Liberation Organization, which controls the P.A., under a “unified Palestinian-Arab vision.”

The Islamist group reportedly also gave its blessing to P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas’s proposal to establish a “government of technocrats” whose primary purpose would be the reconstruction of Gaza after the war prompted by Hamas’s murder of 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7.

According to Sky News, Hamas has not requested any ministerial posts at this point, but it did demand a “clear political horizon” towards establishing a Palestinian state as a condition for the unity deal.

Hamas seeks to destroy Israel in its entirety and replace it with a Palestinian-Islamic state. Article 13 of its charter states that “there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad [holy war].”

Hamas terror leader Ismail Haniyeh repeated his desire to annihilate the Jewish state early last year, saying that “all of Palestine, from the river to the sea, and from Ras al-Naquora [on the Israel-Lebanon border] to Umm al-Rashrash [Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city], is one land that is indivisible and cannot be sold or bargained.”

The 1995 Oslo II Accords with Israel state that “the nomination of any candidates, parties, or coalitions will be refused, and such nomination or registration once made will be canceled, if such candidates, parties, or coalitions… commit or advocate racism or pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful or non-democratic means.”

An aide to Abbas told The Media Line on Tuesday that there was “real progress” in the talks with Hamas and emphasized that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are “playing a critical role in advancing the efforts.”

Earlier this week, at the invitation of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Abbas traveled to Doha to discuss ways to incorporate Hamas into a P.A.-led government for Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Saudi-based Asharq News reported that Tamim agreed to relay Abbas’s proposal to Hamas following their meeting on Monday.

Hamas officials told the outlet that while it welcomes cooperation with the P.A., the terrorist group demands to be consulted on “every step,” including the members of the prospective government.

Qatar, which hosts Hamas’s leadership in Doha and has provided the terrorist group with hundreds of millions of dollars, played a prominent role in mediating the release of Israeli hostages last year.

It has previously deflected accusations of playing a double game, saying the United States requested that it open that mediation channel.

The Biden administration wants the P.A. to assume control of Gaza after the war against Hamas ends, a move that Israel vehemently rejects because of Ramallah’s overt support for terrorism.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted that an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” should ultimately govern the Strip.

During a Jan. 10 meeting in Ramallah, Blinken pressed Abbas on “administrative reforms, which, if implemented, would benefit the Palestinian people.” Sky News Arabia described the tête-à-tête as “tense” and marked by “arguments.”

On Jan. 27, Abbas’s spokesman told Al Arabiya that the P.A. is prepared to hand over the reins to Hamas after the conflict. Ramallah is “prepared to hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the [Palestinian] Authority,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.

The U.S. State Department has refused to rule out Hamas retaining power in Gaza or even joining a P.A.-led governing body that would also have jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria.

According to Palestinian polls, 89% of Palestinians support establishing a government that includes or is led by Hamas. Only around 8.5% said they favor an authority controlled exclusively by Abbas’s Fatah faction.

Image: Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas arrives to the Samaria city of Ramallah after his return from Berlin, Aug. 18, 2022. Photo by Flash90.

Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70—both from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak—are reportedly in good condition.

(JNS)

Israel freed two hostages—Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70—in an overnight mission in Rafah, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The IDF, Israel Security Agency and Israel Police worked together to free the two, who are both from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak and in good medical condition, per the IDF.

Earlier in the night, the IDF detained some 20 Hamas terrorists in the Al Amal Hospital complex in Khan Yunis, the Israeli military stated. It and the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories delivered 20 oxygen tanks to the hospital.

“Before operating inside of the hospital, IDF soldiers were briefed to adhere to international law, protecting patients, civilians and medical equipment,” the IDF stated. “The operation also entailed pre-coordination with the hospital itself. Hamas continues to embed itself in civilian areas. This includes hospitals where Gazan civilians are supposed to receive life-saving care.”

On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that he believes “that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,” according to a White House readout of the two leaders’ call.

On Friday, Netanyahu stated, “It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah. On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.”

On Thursday, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council of the White House who was recently promoted to assistant to the president, told a reporter that the United States has “seen no plans that would convince us that they [Israel] are about to or imminently going to conduct any kind of major operations in Rafah.”

“More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in and around Rafah. That’s where they were told to go. There’s a lot of displaced people there, and the Israeli military has a special obligation as they conduct operations there or anywhere else to make sure that they’re factoring in protection for innocent civilian life, particularly the civilians that were pushed into southern Gaza by operations further north—Khan Yunis and North Gaza,” Kirby said.

He added that “absent any full consideration of protecting civilians at that scale in Gaza—military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support.”

Image: The freed Israeli hostages Fernando Simon Marman, 60, left, and Louis Har, 70, from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. Source: X.

What our forces discovered in Gaza leaves no room for doubt. The connection between UNRWA and Hamas is literal, not metaphorical.

Ariel Kahana

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

You have to hand it to Hamas—if this were a tourist attraction, one couldn’t ask for a more enjoyable experience. A wild jeep ride to Gaza’s beautiful seaside. A meeting with our heroic soldiers, who have been destroying the enemy for 120 days already. Then a descent 20 meters underground, to find a buried treasure.

The prize: An unambiguous, indisputable connection between the murderous organization and the infamous “aid agency” UNRWA.

It took me only two minutes touring UNRWA’s headquarters in the heart of Gaza’s upscale Rimal neighborhood to understand that they knew everything. Just as it was impossible for Tel Avivians not to know about the city’s light rail construction, just like all Jerusalemites heard about the “secret tunnel” in the capital, it’s impossible that Gazans, and UNRWA heads in particular, didn’t know about the tunnel and server farm that was set up right under their noses. Not near, not close by, but literally right beneath them.

I saw with my own eyes the cables connecting UNRWA’s communication room on the first floor of the building to Hamas’s server room directly underneath it.

Did Thomas White, UNRWA Gaza director since the summer of 2021, not notice the trucks removing soil for years from the compound he managed? Did he not wonder who the people walking around his headquarters were? Was he not puzzled by the computers, air conditioners, servers, batteries, cement mixers, cables, tiles, steel doors and even the motorcycles that arrived in his backyard? Did he not notice the cables that very strangely ran from his communications room to some unknown destination underground? Did he never once have a doubt that made him think to report to his superiors at the United Nations?

You have to be very naive, or more likely dishonest, to answer “no” to these questions. What our forces discovered in Gaza leaves no room for doubt. The connection between UNRWA and Hamas is literal, not metaphorical.

In this case, after the Israel Defense Forces cleared the Rimal neighborhood two months ago, intelligence indicated that there was more going on here.

The tunnel was located, and careful clearing began. For several days our forces advanced meter by meter. They discovered a maze whose deciphering required great ingenuity. They also discovered the luxury conditions that the terrorists had prepared for themselves underground—from a first aid kit for emergencies to motorized scooters that would save them from having to walk bent over for 300 meters there and back, to state-of-the-art Electra air conditioners.

The air conditioning was intended not only for the people—even in winter it’s hot underground—but mainly for Hamas’s server room, located, as mentioned, beneath UNRWA’s main compound in Gaza.

We were not allowed to view the full room, but even from the little we did see, it’s clear this system would not have embarrassed a high-tech company. Columns and columns of servers, cooled by new white air conditioners. Next to it is a power facility, connected above ground.

“We are at the heart of the secret, in the server farm,” said Col. Nissim Hazan, who was brought in to command the operation to expose the tunnel. “This is the farm from which Hamas created its intelligence superiority. There are 10 server cabinets here, full of valuable information. You could only get to this place with soldiers. You can’t do this by remote control or with an aerial bomb. Above us is UNRWA’s huge building; Hamas intentionally located [the site] here so we couldn’t strike it.”

While we don’t yet know what information was on the servers, the connection to UNRWA is clear as day.

After we again sank into the mud, crawled through the tunnel, walked hunched over for hundreds of meters and emerged into daylight, the IDF APCs brought us to UNRWA’s headquarters. There, among offices, schools, kindergartens and SpongeBob Squarepants drawings, the commander of the IDF’s 401st Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, showed us the agency’s own server room.

“We’re in UNRWA’s server room. Coincidentally—I say this cynically—it’s located right above the server room you saw underground,” he said. “Notice that all the cables are ripped and disconnected; they left almost nothing, only what they managed to cut off. We’re lucky a few cables remained that they didn’t manage to cut…They took out all the DVRs and computers. Only someone who has something to hide does something like this. What kind of international humanitarian organization that only has good intentions behaves this way?”

Evening is falling and a cool breeze comes off the sea. The APCs head back to the beachfront handoff point. The brand new Netz unit—black coffee is their speciality—takes us out, toward Kibbutz Be’eri, again in armored vehicles. We speedily traverse the same route the Hamas killers raced toward our communities on that fateful October morning.

The whole way, I couldn’t stop thinking: Why did they do this? Hamas knew that one day the IDF would arrive. Hence the tangled tunnels, hence the fortified steel doors, hence a whole array of obstacles meant to delay the inevitable invasion. But if so, if you knew that in the end, Israel would defeat you anyway, why do this? What’s the logic and benefit of committing crimes against humanity that end in your own destruction?

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Israel Hayom reporter Ariel Kahana next to the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. Photo: Ariel Kahana.

Qatar received an “initial positive confirmation” from the terror group, Doha said.

(JNS)

Qatar has received an “initial positive confirmation” from the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza in response to its most recent hostages-for-ceasefire proposal, Doha’s Foreign Ministry announced on Thursday night, according to Al Jazeera.

“Israel agreed to the ceasefire proposal, and we have initial positive confirmation from Hamas,” the Qatari state-owned network cited Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari as saying.

However, a political source in Jerusalem told Ynet that Israel had not received any official update from Qatar. Israel’s War Cabinet was scheduled to meet on Thursday night at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv to discuss the recent developments in the negotiations.

Earlier this week, Jerusalem agreed to a framework for a renewed deal to secure the release of some hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, reported  The Washington Post on Tuesday. Hamas was considering the offer, according to the Post, citing officials familiar with the negotiations.

Civilians would reportedly be released over an initial six-week period, with soldiers and the bodies of dead hostages returned in subsequent stages.

Israel would agree to commute the sentences of an unspecified number of Palestinian terrorists from prison for each hostage. The agreement would also reportedly include “a temporary repositioning of Israeli troops away from high-population areas” in the Gaza Strip.

During a visit to Israel Defense Forces soldiers serving in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stressed that the ongoing military assault in the city “brings the return of the hostages closer, because Hamas only understands power.”

According to a snap poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 television on Tuesday, 50% of Israelis oppose a hostage deal that would see an extended pause in the fighting in Gaza and the release of thousands of Palestinian terrorists. Only 35% support the terms of the reported agreement, with the rest undecided.

According to official figures, 136 hostages remain in Gaza, although dozens are believed to be dead. Hamas kidnapped an estimated 240 people when it invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7. Its terrorist operatives, along with some Gaza residents, murdered 1,200 people, overwhelmingly civilians, that day, and wounded thousands.

Image: Families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip protest outside the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo by Tomer Neuberg/Flash90.