Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas in Gaza while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) 98th and 162nd divisions have been intensively preparing for upcoming operations in the Gaza Strip, focusing on the impending Rafah offensive.
While the US has pressed Israel not to attack the remaining Hamas battalions in the Rafah area of Gaza (because of the potential for mass civilian casualties), the Biden administration is now reportedly willing to support a Rafah operation provided Israel does not attack Iran, the Jerusalem Post learned from the Qatari newspaper The New Arab.
Israel and its allies observed Sunday six months since the “Black Sabbath” on October 7, when Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 people and abducted about 253 persons.
Early Sunday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulled back all its ground troops from the Gaza Strip, retaining only one brigade to maintain security along a corridor that divides the Palestinian territory. The IDF declared on Sunday that it had completed the active combat phase of the conflict for the time being, but it did not rule out the chance of launching a new offensive into Rafah, located in the far south of Gaza, in the future.
Israel’s military showed a video it said revealed hostages being taken to Gaza’s largest hospital by Hamas and a tunnel beneath the same medical facility used by “the terrorist organization.”
As the Israel Defense Forces surrounded Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital on Tuesday, the United States backed up Israel’s often-repeated statements that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists embed themselves and their infrastructure within civilian hospitals, the Times of Israel (TOI) reports.
Israel was preparing Sunday to help evacuate babies from Gaza’s largest hospital after several died but denied accusations that it deliberately attacked the facility.
Israel said that at least 50,000 Palestinians left the besieged Gaza City area Wednesday after its military opened up the main road to southern Gaza.
The United Nations pressured Israel on Monday to observe a ceasefire after Israeli forces killed a key Hamas commander in air strikes on Gaza while also facing rockets fired from Lebanon.
The president of Hungary, from where tens of thousands of Jews emigrated to Israel since World War Two, expressed concern about Hungarian Jewish hostages held by Hamas on Sunday and said Israel “has the right to defend itself.”
Three senior terrorist leaders were killed in the Gaza Strip overnight as Israel carried out reprisals for daytime rocket attacks last week that injured three foreign workers and sent Israeli citizens scurrying for shelters when their children were coming home from school.
The Israel Defense Forces struck terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night following a series of rocket attacks throughout the day, the army said in a statement.
Israeli fighter jets targeted an underground weapons facility in the central Gaza Strip in the predawn hours of Monday in response to a rocket launch from the Palestinian enclave on Saturday evening, the military said.
Israeli forces on Thursday killed nine Palestinians — including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman — in the deadliest single incident in the occupied West Bank in two decades, Palestinian officials said. Two rockets were fired from Gaza early Friday and Israel responded with airstrikes on the territory, further escalating tensions.
Palestinian militant groups are preparing for new rounds of violent conflict with Israel this year as part of their resistance to the new “fascist and racist” right-wing Israeli government, Israel National News (INN) reports.
Israel offered help after at least 21 people – including 10 children – were killed by a fire in a building in a densely populated refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, officials said.
Palestinian factions signed a reconciliation deal in Algiers on Thursday, vowing to hold elections by next October in their latest attempt to end a rift that has now lasted more than 15 years.
There are plans in the making for Egypt to take over the development of Gaza’s offshore natural gas field, a move that would stimulate the weak Palestinian economy, i24 News reports. The Gaza Marine field is believed to hold over 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, well over what is needed to supply Palestinian territories, and could therefore be a potentially lucrative source of export.
Israel has responded to Egyptian efforts to allow the Palestinian Authority to produce natural gas off the coast of Gaza, the Al-Monitor website reported on Sunday, a report confirmed by a PL executive committee member.
As Palestinians in Gaza called for violence against Jewish Israelis, Arab media announced that the recent arrival of five red heifers in Israel represents a “danger” to the Al Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel365 reports. The five cows were brought to Israel by the US-based religious group Boneh Israel for the purpose of reinstating a Torah commandment associated with the Red Heifer.