Key Takeaways

Gaza Strip
Israeli forces continued to clearing operations in Nuseirat along Wadi Gaza.  Israel Defense Forces (IDF) 401st Brigade combat engineers built two bridges for Israeli tanks to cross Wadi Gaza, a natural separation between the north and south of the Gaza Strip.

Elements of the IDF 162nd Division, including the Nahal and 401st brigades, are operating in the area to kill Palestinian fighters and destroy military infrastructure.  Israeli forces destroyed rocket launch sites.  Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian fighters in close-range engagements over the past several days of operations in the area.

Palestinian fighters claimed a single attack targeting Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.  The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah, reported that its fighters mortared Israeli forces.

Palestinian fighters did not conduct any indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel on April 14.

West Bank
The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed three shooting attacks  in and around the West Bank in retaliation for recent settler violence. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades targeted an Israeli military checkpoint, an Israeli settlement near Tulkarm, and an Israeli town on the border with the West Bank.

An Israeli Army Radio West Bank correspondent posted a flyer signed by 11 West Bank Rabbis in response to the death of a 14-year-old boy who was murdered near the Malachi HaShalom settlement on April 12.  The flyer called on Israelis to strengthen and grow settlements across the West Bank in response to the boy’s death. Palestinian media claimed that Israeli settlers have targeted Palestinians in Auja, Huwwara, Jalazoun refugee camp, Kafr Shuba, and Nabe Ghazzal.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Lebanese Hezbollah conducted at least four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel during and after the Iranian attack on Israel.

Iran
Senior Iranian military and political officials praised the alleged success of the April 13 Iranian attack against Israel.

Iranian Armed Forces General Staff (AFGS) Chief Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri warned that, if the United States supports any Israeli response to its attack, Iran will target US bases in the region.

Bagheri further specified that Iran intended to target the IDF Air Force Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert and the IDF intelligence center in Mt. Hermon during the attack against Israel. Iranian missiles caused limited damage to the Nevatim airbase, and the base remains operational.  There are no reports of any damage to the intelligence center in northern Israel.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi stated that, if Israel responds to the Iranian operation, Iran will retaliate with greater severity than its April 13 attack.  Raisi emphasized that Israel’s supporters, presumably meaning the United States, should ”appreciate” the ”responsible and propionate” nature of the Iranian April 13 operation.

IRGC Commander Maj. Gen Hossein Salami stated that Iran has adopted a new “equation” for confronting Israel following the “success” of the attack, which Iran dubbed the “True Promise” operation.  Salami warned that, should Israel attack Iran or Iranian targets abroad, Iran will retaliate by launching attacks targeting Israel directly from Iranian territory.

Israel and its partners are discussing possible responses to the Iranian attack on Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that the Iranian attack was “like a declaration of war”.

Political Negotiations
Hamas rejected a US-proposed ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoner exchange deal.

Terror group says bombs planted inside Lebanese territory detonated as soldiers crossed border; Israeli fighter jets hit Hezbollah sites in overnight strikes
By Emanuel Fabian

Four soldiers were wounded, one of them seriously, in a blast on the Lebanon border overnight, the Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning. The Lebanese Hezbollah terror group took responsibility for the explosion, saying it occurred as troops crossed the border.

The cause of the blast that wounded the soldiers in the western region of the border with Lebanon was under investigation by the military, which said in a statement that the explosion was of “unknown origin.”

The military said the incident took place during “operational activity” carried out by troops of the Golani Brigade’s reconnaissance unit and the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit.

One soldier was seriously wounded, two were listed in moderate condition, and another was lightly hurt, according to the IDF. The troops were taken by helicopter to a hospital.

Claiming the blast, Hezbollah said it placed several explosive devices adjacent to the border, inside Lebanese territory, in an area across from the northern Israeli community of Adamit.

The terror group said the bombs were detonated as the Israeli troops crossed the frontier.

Also overnight, the IDF said fighter jets struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon.

The targets included rocket launch posts, buildings used by the terror group, and other infrastructure in Seddiqine, Matmoura, Labbouneh, and Ayta ash-Shab, according to the military.

Troops also shelled areas near Ayta ash-Shab with artillery to “remove threats,” the army added.

Since October 8, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a daily basis with rockets, drones, anti-tank missiles and other means, saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there. The group is an Iranian proxy in Lebanon, and Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are backed by Iran.

Israel has threatened to go to war to force Hezbollah away from the border if it does not retreat and continues to threaten northern communities, from where some 70,000 people were evacuated to avoid the fighting.

So far, the skirmishes on the border have resulted in eight civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of 10 IDF soldiers and reservists. There have also been several attacks from Syria, without any injuries.

Hezbollah has named 274 members who have been killed by Israel during the ongoing skirmishes, mostly in Lebanon, but some also in Syria. In Lebanon, another 53 operatives from other terror groups, a Lebanese soldier, and at least 60 civilians have been killed.

Israeli fighter jets struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon overnight.

The IDF says the targets included rocket launch posts, buildings used by the terror group, and other infrastructure in Seddiqine, Matmoura, Labbouneh, and Ayta ash-Shab.

Troops also shelled areas near Ayta ash-Shab with artillery to "remove threats," the army adds.

Many Jordanians went out into the streets of Amman early Sunday morning to witness an event they had never seen in the Arab-Israeli conflict's many years – Jordanian Air Force jets downing Iranian drones on their way to attack Israel.

The kingdom's pilots are estimated to have intercepted about 20 percent of the drones that entered its airspace, totaling a few dozen, and whose destroyed remains fell on Jordanian soil.

The event is thought-provoking. Just that morning, as they have been doing for weeks, hundreds of Jordanians gathered near the Israeli embassy in Amman to protest the war in Gaza and demand that their government sever its relations with Israel.

Nine soldiers were wounded in combat during the last day– four of Gaza – according to data published by the IDF. Two soldiers wounded in Gaza are listed as in serious condition.

Riots erupt after Sydney Bishop stabbing Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was preaching at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley in Sydney's west on Monday just after 7pm when a man dressed in black walked up to the altar and stabbed him.

ISLAMIST ATTACK CONFIRMED

The first man to tackle Bishop Mari Mari Emmanuel’s attacker (and seen restraining the terrorist) confirms the Jihadi was shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ as he stabbed the priest during mass

But that hasn’t stop @Cobratate from blaming Jews for the terror attack.

The IDF and Israel Police are investigating the killing of two Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank earlier today.

In a statement, the IDF says it had received reports of a Palestinian suspect who attacked a "Jewish shepherd" near the settlement of Gitit.

"A violent confrontation developed there between Palestinians and Israeli citizens. IDF forces were dispatched to the scene and worked to disperse the confrontation," the military says.

"During the incident, two Palestinians were killed. From a preliminary investigation, it appears that [their killing] was not by IDF forces," the statement adds.

Israeli fighter jets struck a building in southern Lebanon's Mays al-Jabal where the IDF says Hezbollah operatives were gathered.

Another building used by Hezbollah was struck in Tayr Harfa, the military says.

Troops also shelled an area near Chebaa with artillery to "remove a threat," the IDF added.

Efforts in recent years to move toward a combined American-Arab-Israeli regional security architecture apparently paid some dividends this weekend.

There's more work to do, and Arab governments will want to do it quietly, but some of the events this weekend detailed in this @WSJ report underscore the promise of a combined regional architecture to detect, deter, and defeat Iranian aggression.

Great news for regional security and bad news for Tehran.

@JSchanzer discusses the aftermath of the Iranian attack against Israel.
"If they smell weakness, if they see divisions, this could be a sign of things to come for the Islamic Republic in terms of further attacks and mayhem around the Middle East."

Analysis from Behnam Ben Taleblu: “Washington and Jerusalem can help turn Tehran’s political win — breaking the taboo of striking Israel directly from Iranian territory — into a strategic defeat.

A layered attack featuring upwards of 300 projectiles to include drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles is not something that can and should be ignored.

Unless Tehran risks more than the projectiles it fires, there will be more missile and drone salvos in the Middle East.”

Key Takeaways:

Gaza Strip
The IDF Nahal Brigade continued to conduct clearing operations at the seam of the northern and central Gaza Strip to secure Israeli-built highway Route 749 and military sites.  Yhe IDF has dubbed this zone the Netzarim corridor. The Nahal Brigade killed 15 Palestinian fighters around the corridor.

The IDF activated two reserve brigades on April 14 for combat operations in the Gaza Strip.  An Israeli Army Radio journalist reported the 2nd Carmeli Brigade and 679th Armored Brigade will deploy to secure the Netzarim corridor and the temporary US-built pier in the central Gaza Strip.  The two brigades will replace elements of the 162nd Division in the Gaza Strip, enabling the division to conduct raids in other parts of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces continued to conduct raids around Nuseirat.   Elements of the IDF 162nd Division, including the Nahal and 401st brigades, are operating in the area.  The IDF Nahal Brigade destroyed buildings and military infrastructure PIJ mortared an IDF headquarters near the University of Palestine, north of Wadi Gaza.

Three Palestinian militias targeted Israeli forces in eastern Jabalia.  Israeli forces continue to operate there to clear a one-kilometer buffer zone. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, reported that its fighters mortared Israeli armor east of Jabalia cemetery.  PIJ and the Palestinian Mujahedeen movement posted videos of their fighters targeting Israeli forces with heavy mounted machine guns in eastern Jabalia.

The IDF Arabic-language spokesperson reiterated on April 15 that Palestinians cannot return to the northern Gaza Strip, calling the area “a dangerous combat zone.”

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant held a meeting to identify "necessary civilian operations" to accomplish before an IDF clearing operation into Rafah. The minister focused on the need to evacuate civilians from Rafah and increase food and medical supply transfers.

Palestinian fighters did not conduct any indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel on April 15.

West Bank
Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters in Nablus. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms and detonated IEDs

Israeli settlers attacked and killed two Palestinians in Aqraba, near Nablus.  The IDF said that the attack followed a violent confrontation between a Jewish shepherd and Palestinian.  Israeli media has reported an uptick in settler attacks in the West Bank following the murder of an Israeli boy near the Malachi Hashalom settlement.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least six attacks around the Israel-Lebanon border.  The IDF said that an explosion injured four IDF soldiers in the “border area”.  Hezbollah said that it detonated “explosive devices” targeting IDF members in Tal Ismail, Lebanon, as they crossed the border into Lebanon.

Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani met with US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington to diiscuss bilateral US–Iraqi relations.

Sudani stated that he aimed to discuss a “360-degree strategic partnership” and transition from a “military security-based relationship to a comprehensive economic, political, environmental, educational, and security partnership.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias threatened to renew its attack campaign targeting US forces in Iraq if there is a bilateral agreement between the United States and Iraq that permits US forces to remain.

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah congratulated Iran for its recent drone and missile attack on Israel and framed the attack as a success for penetrating Israeli air defense systems.

Yemen
The IDF announced the interception of two drones approaching Israel. The IDF Navy intercepted a drone approaching near Eilat from the Red Sea.  The IDF separately reported on April 15 that it intercepted a drone approaching Israeli territory “from the east. "

CENTCOM stated that the Houthis launched an anti-ship ballistic missile toward the Gulf of Aden but did not damage any vessels.

Iran
Israeli officials have emphasized the need to respond to the Iranian drone and missile attack but have not specified how or when they will do so.  Western and Israeli officials have maintained that the Iranian drone and missile attack into Israel was meant to impose a severe cost on Israel.

Three unnamed US officials stated that roughly 50 percent of the ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Israel either failed to launch or crashed before reaching their target.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held phone calls with several of his foreign counterparts.  Abdollahian spoke with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom, among others. Abdollahian claimed that the recent Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel was “legitimate self-defense” under Article 51 on the UN charter.

After years of using its terrorist proxies to strike Israelis, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei launched a direct attack Saturday against the Jewish state. More than 200 kamikaze drones, weaponized drones and ballistic and cruise missiles were fired from Iranian soil as well as from proxies in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as Israel and the United States mobilized military assets to intercept them before they struck their targets.

For Iran’s normally cautious supreme leader, this was a risky step. By crossing a red line of a direct attack against Israel from Iranian soil, he opened the door for Jerusalem to hit back hard.

Potential targets include leadership and military assets inside Iran, oil refineries, which are the lifeblood of his regime, and his rapidly expanding nuclear weapons program.

Khamenei may have thought he had little choice. In a daring April 1 operation, the Israeli Air Force killed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who played a central role in the planning and execution of Iran’s proxy Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. That savage strike killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, including more than 30 Americans, and led to the kidnapping of more than 240 hostages. The IAF killed Zahedi, another top IRGC general and five other IRGC commanders who were planning operations in an IRGC-Quds Force building adjacent to Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria.

Trained terrorists
Zahedi was a big fish. He led the IRGC’s operations out of Syria and, as the main Iranian contact with Lebanese Hezbollah, had helped arm and train Iran’s most dangerous terrorist army.

Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with the Israel Defense Forces for the past six months and possesses more than 175,000 missiles, rockets and mortars including deadly precision-guided munitions that could do devastating damage to Israeli civilian infrastructure.

Not for nothing did Israel see the killing of Zahedi as the most consequential since the Trump administration — with detailed intelligence provided by Israel’s Mossad spy agency — killed Qassem Soleimani, the feared IRGC Quds Force commander, who had waged war against the United States and Israel for decades.

Khamenei took no heed of the Friday warning from President Biden, who told the Iranians “Don’t!” when asked what his response would be to an Iranian attack. The president had dispatched US Central Command Gen. Michael Kurilla to Israel to meet with his IDF counterparts and sent a US warship up the Red Sea. None of this seemed sufficient to deter an Iranian attack though it may have mitigated its severity.

Now the Biden administration must do more by providing Israel with ballistic-missile-defense support as the two forces have practiced for decades. Washington also should provide all the military supplies the IDF needs to respond to this aggression and unwavering political support to see Israel through this critical time.

Biden’s wavering support for Israel in its war against Hamas, and the threat from dozens of Democratic members of Congress to cut off military support, surely emboldened Khamenei.

Israel is a formidable military power with extensive military assets. It has a multilayered air-defense system that can shoot down drones and cruise and ballistic missiles. But the IDF cannot only play defense. It will be under pressure to respond directly to Iranian aggression with its powerful air, naval and cyber capabilities. If not, this could normalize Iranian direct attacks against Israel. This may also be an opportunity to attack assets connected to Iran’s rapidly expanding nuclear-weapons program.

The Islamic Republic has been at war with Israel for decades. But Iran’s supreme leader now has crossed an Israeli red line that he may come to regret.

“The primary motive behind Amman downing Iranian explosive drones is Jordanian sovereignty, which the late King Hussein defended and maintained against all odds. King Abdullah understands past lessons and has similarly put national interests above populism and emotions. That Jordan’s interests align with those of Israel but not Iran is no surprise.”

19 soldiers were wounded in combat in the last 24 hours – 13 of them outside the Gaza Strip. According to data published by the IDF, one soldier wounded outside of Gaza is in serious condition and 10 others are in moderate condition.

Three wounded in explosions of two drones in northern Israel; no alarms triggered
The IDF is investigating the matter.

Reports in Lebanon: Israeli drone struck vehicle in southeast Lebanon, at least one killed
A Lebanese news agency reported that an Israeli drone struck a vehicle in southeast Lebanon. According to Al Jazeera, at least one was killed in the attack attributed to Israel.

Hezbollah says it hit the Iron Dome battery in the Upper Galilee in northern Israel

Alongside the military response to the firing of the missiles and the UAVs, I am leading a diplomatic offensive against Iran.

This morning I sent letters to 32
countries and spoke with dozens of foreign ministers and leading figures around the world calling for sanctions to be imposed on the Iranian missile project and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be declared a terrorist organization, as a way to curb and weaken Iran.

Iran must be stopped now - before it is too late.

The Air Force attacked dozens of Hamas terrorist infrastructures in central Gaza over the last day, according to the IDF spokesperson. According to the army, aircraft and fighter jets attacked Hamas military buildings, tunnels and rocket launchers. Also, a Division 162 armored force attacked and killed several terrorists who were advancing towards the soldiers, the army said

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told Vladimir Putin by telephone that Tehran's strikes on Israel were limited and that the Islamic Republic was not interested in escalating, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

President Putin expressed hope that all sides would show reasonable restraint and so prevent a fall towards a confrontation that could have "catastrophic consequences for the entire region," the Kremlin said.

It seems that the Israeli airstrike in the district of Tyre in Lebanon targeted a very prominent leader in Hezbollah militias.  Some reports mentioned his name ( Abu Jaafar Baz).  Israel is infiltrating within the ranks of Hezbollah, the #IRGC militias, and all militias in the region. Look at the daily scale of assassinations and the wide range of targets that Israel possesses.

The IDF confirms that two explosive-laden drones launched from Lebanon struck areas near Beit Hillel a short while ago.

According to media reports, three people were lightly hurt in one of the strikes.

No sirens sounded amid the attack.

The IDF says that the incident is under investigation.

The IDF says it eliminated a senior commander in Hezbollah's elite Radwan force in an airstrike in southern Lebanon earlier today.

Muhammad Shahouri, according to the IDF, was the commander of Radwan's western district rocket unit.

Shahouri was targeted while driving in the village of Kfar Dounine, adjacent to Chehabiyeh

The IDF says Shahouri was "responsible for the planning and execution of many rocket [attacks] towards the Israeli home front," from the western and central areas of southern Lebanon.

Alongside Shahouri, another Hezbollah commander, Mahmoud Fadlallah, was killed in the strike. The IDF says he was also a member of Hezbollah's rocket unit.

Key Takeaways:

Gaza Strip
Several local Palestinian sources reported that Israeli armored vehicles entered Beit Hanoun and areas east of Jabalia. The sources reported that Israeli forces ordered civilians in Beit Hanoun and areas east of Jabalia to leave.

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which is a leftist Palestinian militia aligned with Hamas in the war, mortared Israeli forces in eastern Jabalia on April 15.

The ability of Palestinian militias to continue to operate in the northern Gaza Strip is consistent with the infiltration of fighters into the area and Hamas’ efforts to reassert its governing authority following the drawdown of Israeli forces.

The IDF Nahal Brigade (162nd Division) continued operations near Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.  Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters and destroyed military infrastructure. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired rockets targeting an Israeli command and control node in southwestern Gaza City.  

The Israeli defense minister said in February 2024 that the IDF has not defeated all four Hamas battalions in the central Gaza Strip and that it intends to dismantle the two remaining battalions.CTP-ISW previously wrote Palestinian militias, including Hamas, have likely used a rear area in the central Gaza Strip to conduct attacks since mid-December.

Palestinian militias have also likely been able to infiltrate from the central strip into previously cleared areas of southern Gaza City. The IDF has conducted multiple raids in southern Gaza City since it decreased its force presence in the northern Gaza Strip in early 2024.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Hamas rejected the most recent ceasefire agreement because it thought the April 13 Iranian attack on Israel would lead to a regional conflict.

Palestinian fighters fired two rockets from the northern Gaza Strip

West Bank
Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in at least three locations across the West Bank.The IDF reported on April 16 that Israeli forces detained 23 wanted Palestinians during overnight operations in the West Bank.

Palestinian Mujahideen Movement fighters detonated an IED targeting Israeli forces in al Askar refugee camp. The militia separately targeted Israeli forces advancing into Nablus.  The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades shot at Israeli forces operating in Jenin.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
The IDF killed two Hezbollah commanders in southern Lebanon on April 16.  The IDF Air Force killed the commander of the Radwan Unit’s rocket and missile unit in Hezbollah’s Western Sector, Mohammed Hossein Metzafa Shouri.

The IDF added that Shouri oversaw the planning and execution of “many” rocket and missile attacks.

The IDF also killed a commander from Hezbollah’s “Coastal Sector,” Esmail Yousef Baz.  Baz held a rank equivalent to a brigadier general and served as a “senior” Hezbollah military official. Baz was responsible for directing rocket and anti-tank guided missile attacks into northern Israel.  Hezbollah acknowledged Baz’s death.

Lebanese Hezbollah launched one-way attack drones targeting an Iron Dome battery near Beit Hilal.  The IDF confirmed that two one-way attack drones entered Israeli airspace and exploded near Beit Hila.

Yemen
Houthi President Mahdi al Mashaat congratulated Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi for the April 13 Iranian attack targeting Israel during a phone call.

Houthi-controlled media claimed on April 16 that the United States and the United Kingdom conducted two airstrikes targeting unspecified sites in Bajil District, Hudaydah Governorate, western Yemen.

Iraq
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani continued his official visit to Washington, DC.  US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed support for transitioning to an “enduring bilateral security relationship” with Iraq.

Iran
The Washington Post reported that 17 Iranian officials visited a Russian air defense system factory in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in March 2023.

Senior Iranian officials emphasized that Iran would strike Israel again "faster and stronger" if Israel retaliates to Iran's April 13 missile and drone attack.

An anti-regime outlet posted a video of the Iranian military transporting drones, tanks, and other assorted military equipment in Tehran on April 16.  This is likely in preparation for the annual Artesh Day parade, which is held on April 18.

Political Negotiations
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Hamas rejected the most recent ceasefire agreement because it thought the April 13 Iranian attack on Israel would lead to a regional conflict.

Rectangular stains mar the asphalt. Dozens of them are scattered on an Israeli highway near the Gaza Strip where cars became death traps on October 7. More than 250 Israelis were murdered on the roads.

Along the roads near Gaza there were at least 37 separate killing sites, a number derived from the research of Yuval Harpaz and Sagi Or. The list of sites includes Re'im Junction, 51 dead; the Mefalsim area, 42; Gama Junction, 29; and Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, 26. (None of this includes the access road to the Re'im parking lot, where many of the victims at the Nova music festival were killed.)

The police believe that Hamas planned to seize the intersections as part of its plan to control the highways and prevent the army and first responders from reacting. But preparation by Israeli security forces in the area, including training only a month earlier, prevented a far greater disaster.

Also, footage from highway cameras that was recently sent to the State Comptroller's Office shows that most people who left the Gaza border area by 7:30 A.M. were rescued. That was the hour of the flight from the rave at Re'im, but for many, the highway was the most dangerous place to be.

"About 50 percent of Nova participants who were murdered had scattered for kilometers beyond the site of the festival," Harpaz.

Shortly after the start of the attack, 22-year-old Inbar, a discharged medic from the Sayeret Golani commando unit, arrived on Moshav Mabu'im at the home of his girlfriend, Yuval. He had just finished a night shift as a security guard at a pipeline company. When he arrived he saw a message from his father on the family WhatsApp group – terrorists were on the kibbutz.

Inbar drove back onto the highway; he wanted to get back to work to pick up his gun and head for the kibbutz. Yuval asked him to stay with her. As his mother describes it, "She told me that he looked into her eyes and said, 'I can't just sit around.' He cried and she screamed; she begged him not to go."

It's not clear exactly when Inbar was killed at Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, though it's known that his phone, which was later found scorched, went silent at 7:34.

At about 7:30 at Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, Hamas terrorists massacred at least 28 people including four soldiers from the 551st Battalion and six members of the police's Yamam anti-terror unit. Members of Hamas' elite Nukhba force went from car to car and shot people at point-blank range. The battle at the intersection lasted at least two hours; the bodies of nine terrorists were later found. Later in the day, after more fighting there, Israel took the intersection back, a key development.

Adam and Shani fled the Nova festival long before everyone else. Already at 6:30 A.M., as the first rockets fell, they got into their car and drove east to Be'er Sheva, where they were supposed to meet a friend who had a room for them. At 7:30 they were already in the city, but the friend wasn't there; it turned out he had hid 10 hours in the bushes near the festival and survived.

Adam was in contact with his mother, Zoya, in Ashdod the entire time. "He told me, 'Mom, don't worry, I'm driving to Ashdod,'" she says. "Later I called again and he told me, 'Mom, this isn't a good time to talk, I'm near Sderot; there are soldiers here and I don't understand what's going on. I think there are terrorists.' Then he hung up on me."

Zoya was relieved. "When I heard that there were soldiers there a stone fell from my heart. I said that they would help them and save them." But the soldiers were actually Hamas terrorists.

Zoya called again but there was no answer. Five minutes later she called Shani. "I heard heavy breathing," she says. "Then I heard, 'Zoya, they're shooting at us, soldiers are shooting at us, save us.' Then she said, 'Open your eyes, open your eyes.' That was when they shot him."

For Israelis fleeing Hamas on October 7, highways turned into death traps

Rectangular stains mar the asphalt. Dozens of them are scattered on an Israeli highway near the Gaza Strip where cars became death traps on October 7. More than 250 Israelis were murdered on the roads.

Route 232 near the Gaza border is now a well-traveled highway again, but some drivers stop on the shoulder to look at the faces smiling back at them – photos of victims of October 7.

Along the roads near Gaza there were at least 37 separate killing sites, a number derived from the research of Yuval Harpaz and Sagi Or. The list of sites includes Re'im Junction, 51 dead; the Mefalsim area, 42; Gama Junction, 29; and Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, 26. (None of this includes the access road to the Re'im parking lot, where many of the victims at the Nova music festival were killed.)

The police believe that Hamas planned to seize the intersections as part of its plan to control the highways and prevent the army and first responders from reacting. But preparation by Israeli security forces in the area, including training only a month earlier, prevented a far greater disaster.

Also, footage from highway cameras that was recently sent to the State Comptroller's Office shows that most people who left the Gaza border area by 7:30 A.M. were rescued. That was the hour of the flight from the rave at Re'im, but for many, the highway was the most dangerous place to be.

"About 50 percent of Nova participants who were murdered had scattered for kilometers beyond the site of the festival," Harpaz says, adding that the site of the murder of 65 Nova revelers is still unknown, as is that of others who went out onto the highway.

The place where Inbar Buyum died is definitely known – there's a plaque at the side of the highway. His mother Ayelet goes there often; only at the end of last month could Inbar's younger brother Omer bear to visit.

Bereavement struck twice that Saturday for the Buyum family from Kibbutz Be'eri. The father Gil, a member of the kibbutz security squad, was killed fighting the Hamas terrorists.

Shortly after the start of the attack, 22-year-old Inbar, a discharged medic from the Sayeret Golani commando unit, arrived on Moshav Mabu'im at the home of his girlfriend, Yuval. He had just finished a night shift as a security guard at a pipeline company. When he arrived he saw a message from his father on the family WhatsApp group – terrorists were on the kibbutz.

Inbar drove back onto the highway; he wanted to get back to work to pick up his gun and head for the kibbutz. Yuval asked him to stay with her. As his mother describes it, "She told me that he looked into her eyes and said, 'I can't just sit around.' He cried and she screamed; she begged him not to go."

It's not clear exactly when Inbar was killed at Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, though it's known that his phone, which was later found scorched, went silent at 7:34. That was also around the time his father was killed.

Omer, 20, is now a soldier in a course for Engineering Corps officers, but three months passed until he returned to the army. His sister, Anog, is also in uniform; she joined the army in January and is now in a course for operations officers.

"I worried about Inbar for three years until he was discharged," says Ayelet, his mother. She always wears a gold necklace with a heart pendant bearing the names of her son and husband.

"We don't know much about what happened," she says, referring to Inbar. "We know that he reached the intersection at about 7:27. He saw that there were terrorists there, he tried to turn and get out of there, and apparently they hid there and shot him. We don't know, we're only guessing."

At about 7:30 at Sha'ar Hanegev Junction, Hamas terrorists massacred at least 28 people including four soldiers from the 551st Battalion and six members of the police's Yamam anti-terror unit. Members of Hamas' elite Nukhba force went from car to car and shot people at point-blank range. The battle at the intersection lasted at least two hours; the bodies of nine terrorists were later found. Later in the day, after more fighting there, Israel took the intersection back, a key development.

Anyone who drove west toward Sha'ar Hanegev Junction that morning encountered a line of cars that from a distance looked abandoned. But actually their passengers were lying on the ground or inside the car. Blood flowed along the highway alongside broken glass.

Behind one car lay two bodies. "Here Comes the Sun" read the fresh tattoo on the back of Shani Amin, 18. The hat of Adam Ilaev, 22, was stained with blood. His face was hidden by a yellow vest placed there by the invaders.

Adam and Shani fled the Nova festival long before everyone else. Already at 6:30 A.M., as the first rockets fell, they got into their car and drove east to Be'er Sheva, where they were supposed to meet a friend who had a room for them. At 7:30 they were already in the city, but the friend wasn't there; it turned out he had hid 10 hours in the bushes near the festival and survived.

Adam was in contact with his mother, Zoya, in Ashdod the entire time. "He told me, 'Mom, don't worry, I'm driving to Ashdod,'" she says. "Later I called again and he told me, 'Mom, this isn't a good time to talk, I'm near Sderot; there are soldiers here and I don't understand what's going on. I think there are terrorists.' Then he hung up on me."

Zoya was relieved. "When I heard that there were soldiers there a stone fell from my heart. I said that they would help them and save them." But the soldiers were actually Hamas terrorists.

Zoya called again but there was no answer. Five minutes later she called Shani. "I heard heavy breathing," she says. "Then I heard, 'Zoya, they're shooting at us, soldiers are shooting at us, save us.' Then she said, 'Open your eyes, open your eyes.' That was when they shot him."

The time was 8:24, and Shani was still alive, fully conscious. She phoned her grandfather, Ami Kalfon, to have a video conversation. "Her face was full of blood," he recalls. "She said to me, 'Grandpa, they're shooting at us. Adam is dead, Adam is dead, he isn't breathing.'"

Ami was the person closest to Shani when she was a teenager; he's also the one who cheered for her at her high school graduation last summer. "How I miss her," he says, tearing up. "Every Friday I light candles for her."

Ami often visits the "Nova section" at the Ashdod cemetery, where Shani is buried alongside Adam – and their pictures are together at the memorial site at the Re'im parking lot.

"She said to me, 'Grandpa, they're shooting at us. Adam is dead, Adam is dead, he isn't breathing.'"Credit: Ilan Assayag
Back on October 7 it was hard to flee that parking lot – also because the police placed barriers in a bid to block the terrorists. The police already had a scenario planned: The infiltration from Gaza of two squads each of 15 to 50 terrorists, along with an invasion by sea and air, and an attempt to break into two kibbutzim.

But 3,000 terrorists invaded Israel. So the police set up 16 ad hoc roadblocks and 12 patrols. At Yad Mordechai Junction just north of Gaza, four members of the Border Police were brought in, as well as four soldiers, two of them women. They prevented eight Hamas motorcyclists, and behind them vans with about 20 other armed men, from crossing the intersection and heading north.

"If we had arrived at the barrier 60 seconds later, 60 terrorists would have entered deep into Israel," a senior police officer says.

Still, some roadblocks turned into a death trap for the Israelis trying to flee. The story of Nitzan Rahoum and her boyfriend Lidor Levi – both 28 years old and from the center of the country – is the story of many partygoers who were trapped on the roads.

"They left the party at 6:50 A.M.," says Aderet Alali, Nitzan's cousin. "They left Re'im to the right, and police sent them back, to the mobile shelters."

The same was true for several dozen others fleeing the party. Nitzan called her mother at about 7 A.M. and told her that she was at the festival and being shot at.

"At 7:10, she called her mother to say that the police had let them off at a shelter, and that was the last conversation," says Aderet, the cousin.

About 40 minutes of terror would pass until the terrorists attacked the mobile shelter where Nitzan was hiding. They threw hand grenades inside. Twenty-two-year-old Aner Shapira managed to toss seven back outside, as documented by a camera in one of the cars abandoned on the highway.

But before the explosion that killed Aner, Lidor, who was standing at the entrance to the shelter, tried to flee and was shot dead. He was the first in the shelter to be murdered. Nitzan was inside the shelter. She was four months pregnant.

"She was like a sister to me," Aderet says in tears, adding that in the week or so before our interview, Nitzan would have given birth. "Nobody knew she was at that party; I saw her the previous Friday. For six days we knew nothing about her, we thought that maybe she had been kidnapped. We found out about her death on our own; to this day the government hasn't told us anything about how it happened."

The section of highway next to the site of the party at Re'im is the bloodiest. Fifty-one people were murdered in mobile shelters, 33 at or near Tel Gama Junction, including the commander of the police station in the city of Rahat, Jayar Davidov. Three were murdered on the road between the party area and the mobile shelters, and over 170 on the festival grounds. Seventeen police officers who protected the partygoers were killed.

Until October 7, Vitali Logvinchenko, 34, and his father-in-law Oleg Lifshitz, 60, considered themselves survivors. Vitali immigrated from the city of Kherson a moment before Russia invaded Ukraine. Oleg remained there to take care of his elderly parents but was arrested by the Russians, held for about a week and tortured.

He came to Israel only after the Ukrainian army liberated Kherson. Here the entire family reunited, including several members who aren't Jewish and joined as refugees.

For the Simhat Torah holiday, which began the evening of Friday October 6, Vitali and Oleg planned a weekend of fishing. Vitali's wife Lilya, a ballroom dancing teacher, had left for a competition in London, and on Thursday, Vitali drove their 5-year-old son from Ashkelon to Ashdod, where his parents and sister live.

On Saturday before dawn Vitali and Oleg were already on the banks of the reservoir next to Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha. As far as is known, the place isn't meant for fishing, but that never stopped Vitali, Oleg and a few of their friends. Vitali's sister Katya was with her little nephew camping at Ashkelon National Park.

When the rocket barrage began, Vitali phoned Katya and told her that he and Oleg were leaving to pick up her and their nephew at the park. At about 6:40, Katya says, Vitali sent a friend footage from the car; he and Oleg were driving down a dirt road.

"Let's get out of here, there's no reason to stand here," he tells Oleg in Russian to the sight and sound of rockets in the background. Later he sent the friend his location on Route 232 near where it meets Route 242, across from central Gaza. In one of Hamas' videos from that morning, Vitali's car is seen standing empty next to the intersection.

"At 7:05 I called him and there was no answer," Katya says. Four days later the family was informed that Oleg's body had been found. Vitali's body was identified a week later. To this day the family doesn't know where the bodies were found.

During all those days Vitali's young son stayed with relatives, and his mother couldn't return to Israel from abroad. "He really misses his father," Katya says. "But he doesn't cry because he doesn't understand."

It was around 5:30 A.M. when Tarafi Abu Rashad's wife woke him. She was in her ninth month of pregnancy and told him she was having labor pains. They got in the car and started driving toward Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva. His brother, Bilal, remained in his tent on the grounds of the Re'im base.

"On the way, the missiles started, but I said I'll get my wife to Soroka and it will be safe there," Tarafi recalls.

But he soon realized that this wasn't an ordinary barrage. "I saw missiles from Zikim to Kerem Shalom," he said. "I told myself it can't be, the situation is dangerous. I realized that I had to go back and pick up my brother."

After that, they headed for Soroka once again. His wife was in the back seat, and his brother sat beside him.

At Magen Junction, Tarafi saw two vehicles, but didn't notice that around 10 terrorists were in the back. "I blinked my lights at the car," he said. "I saw that there was some kind of carpet in the truck, which was weird. Suddenly, one of them moved the carpet and I saw a machine gun. Suddenly, one of them began shooting at the car."

Tarafi stopped on the side of the road, convinced that they were about to die. But the two trucks kept driving. What a relief.

"Suddenly, my wife said to me, 'I'm bleeding from my stomach, a bullet hit me.' I heard this, I hit reverse and I don't know how the car drove, by God. There was a bullet in the back tire."

He raced toward Soroka, but along the way, near Patish Junction, he stopped to change the tire, which no longer had enough air. He also called an ambulance to take his wife. But then, more terrorists arrived. They shot at anything that moved, he said, and one bullet grazed Bilal's neck.

"Anyone who passed on the road was shot," he said. "I called for an ambulance, I said people were wounded. And they said, 'what is this, a Bedouin dispute?'"

Eventually, the ambulance did arrive and took the three to Soroka's maternity ward. "Some time later, the doctor told me that my wife was healthy, thank God, but not the girl. The bullets hit her; they entered through a leg."

The baby girl was born alive, and the doctors immediately began fighting to save her. But at around 10 P.M., she was pronounced dead. She lived long enough to be named Na'amna.

She was the youngest victim of October 7. Just 14 hours old when she died.

While preparing for this interview, I found an item from 2005 in which you explained the differences between the teeth of prisoners who are affiliated with Fatah and those who are members of Hamas.

The teeth of Fatah inmates are in poor condition, whereas Hamas prisoners maintain hygiene and purity. Theirs is a religious way of life. Ascetic. With rigid discipline. They pray five times a day, don't touch sweets, don't smoke. There's no such thing as smoking in Hamas. You see a 50-year-old prisoner who is entirely free of any signs of illness. No tooth decay. I'd say, "You're Hamas?" They would say, "Yes, how did you know?" "By the teeth," I replied. A very basic insight. Everything has meaning – it's the same with regard to their way of life, for example. At 9 P.M., there is a total lights-out in the prison's Hamas wings; in the Fatah wings they watch television all night.

...when I first started out at the service, thousands of prisoners had already been released as part of the Oslo Accords framework. Who was still incarcerated? Around 800 inmates. There was the really hard-core element of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and another 200 Fatah prisoners with "blood on their hands."

When I came to Nafha Prison ..the whole Hamas leadership was imprisoned there...behavior I saw at Nafha [among security prisoners] was very unusual.  The discipline there was at an insane level. There's a leadership, and they decide everything. There's no such thing as a prisoner who does whatever he pleases.

In the 1990s, there was still no separation in the prisons between Hamas and Fatah members.

Until 2007 the two organizations had a joint leadership, with an orderly distribution of tasks. I would look around and grasp that not only was this "business" being managed like a military organization in every respect – they had simply copied their models from the outside, with the same complex structure involved in electing the leaders, the same positions, only behind bars. There was the head of the Hamas political bureau – in prison.

Hamas-Gaza is very influenced by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Hamas-West Bank is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. They're more pragmatic.They are people with political ambitions, with an ideological backbone.

The Fatah prisoners of that period were actually the founders of the organization; they had been incarcerated since the 1980s. They were people with a solid ideology. The same goes for the Hamas inmates: They were the ones who established Hamas, which in that period was already the Hamas responsible for suicide attacks.

Hamas, which was no longer the organization that dealt with issues of charity, widows and orphans.

It wasn't the socially oriented organization, as it were, that Israel aspired to cultivate in the 1980s as the entity that would pose a threat to Fatah. It was already a military organization then. The thing with Hamas is that they have always been a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood.

[Hamas] set themselves Islamist goals: to annihilate the State of Israel, to liberate sacred Muslim lands. The Israelis just didn't get it: For them, Hamas and Fatah were the same thing.

Fatah talked about the 1967 borders, about the occupation, about the Palestinian people...Hamas inmates would say, "There's neither 1967 nor 1948. There are no borders and there is nothing to talk about. You are on Waqf land, Muslim sacred ground, and you have no place here."

After Hamas' terrifying takeover of the Gaza Strip, after the Fatah people saw their people being thrown out of buildings.

Fatah people didn't grasp what was about to happen. From their perspective, Hamas were their brothers in the resistance. They thought they were confronting Israel together; they never imagined that Hamas was capable of massacring their people.

Until Hamas did just that – something we're familiar with.

We [Israelis] were taken by surprise by the horrific disaster of October 7. I'm certain that in Fatah they weren't surprised. They'd already seen it happening – they'd already seen how people were thrown off the roof, without a drop of mercy. How they [Hamas] tied Fatah activists, still alive, to cars and dragged them through the streets until they died.

After these events, the penny dropped for Fatah. Their leaders in prison came to us [at the prison service] and said, "If you don't get them out of our cells – now – we will slaughter them all." Many inmates, whose families and friends had been massacred, wanted revenge. Fatah grasped that Hamas had a different agenda.

Islamist – not nationalist. That rift continues to this day. We also saw it in Fatah's behavior in the West Bank. They understood that they would not [be able to] crush Hamas there, that the same things would recur. They understood that their great enemy was Hamas, not Israel. They changed course. I'm telling you that when I spoke with significant Fatah leaders at that time, in prison, they told me, "Hamas will do to you what they did to us. You're cultivating Hamas, injecting money into Gaza, humiliating Fatah, but in the end they will do to you what they did to us."

The first encounter [with Sinwar] eas when I was still a dentist. By 2004, when the intelligence picture had become clearer to me, I already saw him differently. I saw his dominance as Hamas' leader in Gaza, and the bitter rivalry between Hamas-West Bank and Hamas-Gaza. Hamas-Gaza is very much influenced by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Hamas-West Bank is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. The latter live together with King Abdullah and [in the past with] King Hussein. They are more pragmatic.

What form did the differences between them take? How did you see them in real time?

Israel was ready to release only prisoners who had been arrested before the Al-Aqsa intifada – in other words, anyone taken into custody after 2000 was not included in the list of those who would be freed. But how does a Hamasnik from Gaza think, and not just Sinwar, by the way? "No. I want it all." There's no pragmatism. He wants the major Hamas prisoners to be freed – like Abdullah Barghouti, the explosives engineer behind the Sbarro, Café Hillel, Moment and Apropos bombings [restaurants and cafés in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv attacked by terrorists], who received 10 life sentences. Or Abbas al-Sayed, who was responsible for the terrorist attack in the Park Hotel [in Netanya, in 2002, in which 30 people were killed]

Sinwar himself was released in the Shalit deal: He had murdered Palestinians [suspected of collaborating with Israel], not Jews, so he did not technically have "blood on his hands."

That was a decision I could understand at the moral level – but when it came to the level of danger? It was a sign of total ignorance. He is 10 times as dangerous as anyone with "blood on his hands." Sinwar, Tawfiq Abu Naim, Rawhi Mushtaha – they don't have [Israeli] blood on their hands, and they are Hamas' leaders today.

We would like to think that a person who has been away from his turf for 22 years loses his influence. But it's simply not true. That's exactly the point we're missing. They don't disappear in prison. It's not like some criminal inmate who comes out after 20 years and has no one to talk to.

It's in the security facilities that those who want to be leaders shape their leadership. In prison they interact with the ranking figures, with those the organization views as people of stature.

Prison as a leadership institute.

Think of Sinwar, who leaves prison after orchestrating the arrangements for the [Shalit] deal, having established his status as leader, while others in the leadership, [Ismail] Haniyeh and [Mahmoud] al-Zahar, had never seen the inside of a prison.

Compared to them he's a hero...I was also against the release of [Saleh] Al-Arouri [a senior Hamas figure who was freed in 2007 and killed in an IDF drone attack in Lebanon last January]. I argued with the Shin Bet, I told them not to deport him, that he would not sit quietly. That he would send out octopus tentacles everywhere and operate the organization from afar. That is of course what happened and what he did – and with the help of the group he gathered around him in prison, to boot.

I saw a person whose authority was heeded by thousands of Hamas prisoners in jail, whose word was law. He had amazing abilities of persuasion. He didn't use force, just his personality. He could make a room go silent simply with a glance. He was so charismatic, far more charismatic than Sinwar.

Hebron prisoners are different from Nablus prisoners. We saw that also when we arranged encounters between them, deliberately. Things exploded. All-out wars broke out between them.

Tell me, what did you feel about them? You've described here calmly, how you manipulated them, played with their minds. What were they to you? Did you hate them?

People who engage in hatred are weak. Hatred is not a modus operandi.

And you hated them?

I was afraid of them.

Even when you sat with them, one on one? Was that frightening?

...there were were prisoners in whose eyes you could truly see burning hatred. In their gaze. I felt that I hated them too. Look, I also saw how the Hamas leaders abused other prisoners. Their faith is so strong that they say, "In the name of the faith, this is what we need to do. It doesn't matter if they have little children or a wife." It's crazy, because why is he in prison in the first place? He was arrested because he did something on their behalf.

There's no compassion, no feelings, no sentiments. Everyone is an object. There was a high-ranking Hamasnik in prison whom Sinwar suspected of collaboration. When he got out, they hanged that person in the city square and brought his 9-year-old son to watch.

Whole families in Nir Oz were erased. Slaughtered. Burned. It was a holocaust. To tell you I was surprised by the atrocities? Regrettably, no. I know this enemy. Personally. Sinwar could not surprise me. My only surprise was that the IDF, the security forces and the government of Israel allowed this holocaust to take place on Israeli soil.

...the prisoners who were supposed to be released were brought to Ketziot, and it was decided to have them sign a form in which they'd commit to not returning to terrorism.  Mushtaha and Sinwar said, "We're not signing, and no one else is signing." From that moment no one signed, but we released them all the same.

I was with the prisoners to be released ...They were happy. Euphoric. "We beat you," they said.

What did you tell them?

They think differently from us. I said to Sinwar, "Tell me, is it worth it for 10,000 innocent people to die, in order to free 100 prisoners?" The reply was, "Even 100,000 is worth it." Their notion of time is different, and the price in blood they are ready to pay in order to achieve their goal is different. Because each person who dies is a shahid [martyr]. It's warfare in the name of God.

I had a conversation with Abbas al-Sayed. I asked, "Why didn't you go on a suicide mission yourself? Why do you send others?" He said, "Everyone has a role. I am in charge."

Do you think Sinwar is willing to die?

He is. Definitely. That's the difference between him and the Hamas leaders who were released in the Shalit deal, and are living decadent lives in Turkey or Qatar. They forgot their people. Sinwar is not like that. He's an ascetic. Since establishing the shock committees in Gaza [the Al-Majad organization, whose aim was to liquidate collaborators and violators of religious law], he hasn't changed. Today he feels like Saladin, because he succeeded in doing what no Arab leader before him did. He sees himself as playing a central role in the realization of the Islamist ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood. He thinks he has entered the annals of history. And he really doesn't care if 200,000 people are killed and not a single house remains complete in Gaza. The main thing is the goal, the greater idea.

A Muslim theocracy under the aegis of Qatari money...We effectively allowed Qatar to finance the idea.

I know how [Sinwar] thinks. Look, when the first [hostage release] deal was implemented, I was invited to sit in the TV studios and accompany the broadcast of the release [as a commentator]. I refused to do that, because I didn't want to say on air what I really thought. Sinwar went for the first deal, because he had an interest in it. t

[Sinwar] was apprehensive of the pressure Qatar was wielding on him, under U.S. pressure – an insane steamroller to get him to release the women and children. The moment that interest was gone, the deal was over.

'I asked Sinwar, is it worth 10,000 Gazans dying? He said, even 100,000 is worth it'
As head of the Intelligence Division of the Israel Prison Service, Yuval Bitton knew Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar – whose organization murdered Bitton's nephew on Oct. 7 – up close

Please introduce yourself.

I'm the father of three and I give public lectures on Hamas. Two years ago I retired from the Israel Prison Service, where I started out in 1996, as a dentist.

And you finished there as head of the service's Intelligence Division.

I attended a course for intelligence officers and served as such at Ketziot Prison [southwest of Be'er Sheva] and then moved up the ladder until I reached the top of the pyramid.

While preparing for this interview, I found an item from 2005 in which you explained the differences between the teeth of prisoners who are affiliated with Fatah and those who are members of Hamas.

The teeth of Fatah inmates are in poor condition, whereas Hamas prisoners maintain hygiene and purity. Theirs is a religious way of life. Ascetic. With rigid discipline. They pray five times a day, don't touch sweets, don't smoke. There's no such thing as smoking in Hamas. You see a 50-year-old prisoner who is entirely free of any signs of illness. No tooth decay. I'd say, "You're Hamas?" They would say, "Yes, how did you know?" "By the teeth," I replied. A very basic insight. Everything has meaning – it's the same with regard to their way of life, for example. At 9 P.M., there is a total lights-out in the prison's Hamas wings; in the Fatah wings they watch television all night.

At that time you were an inquisitive dentist, with good diagnostic skills. How did you end up as an intelligence officer?

There was an intelligence officer I knew who hung out a lot in the clinic, which is a supposedly safe place for prisoners. They feel free to talk there, because their organizations aren't monitoring or eavesdropping on them. He saw that I was talking to them all the time, and I also talked with him about all kinds of insight that I had about them. He realized that I could be a platform for recruiting sources and suggested that I join the prisons service intelligence division.

You know, when I first started out at the service, thousands of prisoners had already been released as part of the Oslo Accords framework. Who was still incarcerated? Around 800 inmates. There was the really hard-core element of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and another 200 Fatah prisoners with "blood on their hands." When I came to Nafha Prison [in the Negev], as a dentist, the whole Hamas leadership was imprisoned there: [Yahya] Sinwar; his right-hand man Rawhi Mushtaha; Tawfiq Abu Naim, the head of the security branches; Ali al-Amoudi, Hamas' communications director and manager of Sinwar's office. And because I'd worked twice a week at a prison for criminals too, I understood that the behavior I saw at Nafha [among security prisoners] was very unusual.

In what way?

The discipline there was at an insane level. There's a leadership, and they decide everything. There's no such thing as a prisoner who does whatever he pleases.

In the 1990s, there was still no separation in the prisons between Hamas and Fatah members.

Until 2007 the two organizations had a joint leadership, with an orderly distribution of tasks. I would look around and grasp that not only was this "business" being managed like a military organization in every respect – they had simply copied their models from the outside, with the same complex structure involved in electing the leaders, the same positions, only behind bars. There was the head of the Hamas political bureau – in prison. I was fascinated.

A kind of microcosm of the organization in jail. A ship in a bottle. But there are hierarchies and organizations [among inmates] in all detention facilities.

True, but among criminal prisoners, I saw completely different behavior. Back then, there were no crime families with so-called soldiers and an economic infrastructure. There were prominent prisoners, like Herzl Avitan, for example, but there were no gangs per se. The inmates in a security prison are also a different breed. They are not rapists and thieves.

"Hamas-Gaza is very influenced by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Hamas-West Bank is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. They're more pragmatic."

They are people with political ambitions, with an ideological backbone.

The Fatah prisoners of that period were actually the founders of the organization; they had been incarcerated since the 1980s. They were people with a solid ideology. The same goes for the Hamas inmates: They were the ones who established Hamas, which in that period was already the Hamas responsible for suicide attacks.

Hamas, which was no longer the organization that dealt with issues of charity, widows and orphans.

It wasn't the socially oriented organization, as it were, that Israel aspired to cultivate in the 1980s as the entity that would pose a threat to Fatah. It was already a military organization then. The thing with Hamas is that they have always been a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood. They set themselves Islamist goals: to annihilate the State of Israel, to liberate sacred Muslim lands. The Israelis just didn't get it: For them, Hamas and Fatah were the same thing.

I'd like for us to avoid the wisdom of hindsight, if possible. Do you stand behind what you are saying? That you, as a prison dentist, thought that Hamas was a danger to Israel's very existence as much as 30 years ago?

I stand behind that. So, yes, already back then. As a dentist. Fatah talked about the 1967 borders, about the occupation, about the Palestinian people. To me, the Hamas inmates would say, "There's neither 1967 nor 1948. There are no borders and there is nothing to talk about. You are on Waqf land, Muslim sacred ground, and you have no place here." When I became an intelligence officer, I made use of the insight about Hamas and Fatah being from two different worlds. That wasn't understood on the outside until 2007.

After Hamas' terrifying takeover of the Gaza Strip, after the Fatah people saw their people being thrown out of buildings.

Fatah people didn't grasp what was about to happen. From their perspective, Hamas were their brothers in the resistance. They thought they were confronting Israel together; they never imagined that Hamas was capable of massacring their people.

Until Hamas did just that – something we're familiar with.

We [Israelis] were taken by surprise by the horrific disaster of October 7. I'm certain that in Fatah they weren't surprised. They'd already seen it happening – they'd already seen how people were thrown off the roof, without a drop of mercy. How they [Hamas] tied Fatah activists, still alive, to cars and dragged them through the streets until they died. From Hamas' point of view, members of Fatah are not their brothers. So what if they are Muslims too? They are an obstacle on the road to achieving the goal: a sharia state.

After these events, the penny dropped for Fatah. Their leaders in prison came to us [at the prison service] and said, "If you don't get them out of our cells – now – we will slaughter them all." Many inmates, whose families and friends had been massacred, wanted revenge. Fatah grasped that Hamas had a different agenda.

An Islamist agenda.

Islamist – not nationalist. That rift continues to this day. We also saw it in Fatah's behavior in the West Bank. They understood that they would not [be able to] crush Hamas there, that the same things would recur. They understood that their great enemy was Hamas, not Israel. They changed course. I'm telling you that when I spoke with significant Fatah leaders at that time, in prison, they told me, "Hamas will do to you what they did to us. You're cultivating Hamas, injecting money into Gaza, humiliating Fatah, but in the end they will do to you what they did to us."

You spent many hours with Sinwar. Tell me about your relationship with him. When did you first meet him?

We spent many hours indeed. The first encounter was when I was still a dentist. By 2004, when the intelligence picture had become clearer to me, I already saw him differently. I saw his dominance as Hamas' leader in Gaza, and the bitter rivalry between Hamas-West Bank and Hamas-Gaza. Hamas-Gaza is very much influenced by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt; Hamas-West Bank is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. The latter live together with King Abdullah and [in the past with] King Hussein. They are more pragmatic.

What form did the differences between them take? How did you see them in real time?

For example, when I tried to help advance the Shalit deal [in 2011, for the return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted by Hamas to Gaza in 2006, in exchange for 1,026 Palestinian prisoners] from inside the prison. Israel was ready to release only prisoners who had been arrested before the Al-Aqsa intifada – in other words, anyone taken into custody after 2000 was not included in the list of those who would be freed. But how does a Hamasnik from Gaza think, and not just Sinwar, by the way? "No. I want it all." There's no pragmatism. He wants the major Hamas prisoners to be freed – like Abdullah Barghouti, the explosives engineer behind the Sbarro, Café Hillel, Moment and Apropos bombings [restaurants and cafés in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv attacked by terrorists], who received 10 life sentences. Or Abbas al-Sayed, who was responsible for the terrorist attack in the Park Hotel [in Netanya, in 2002, in which 30 people were killed.

Sinwar himself was released in the Shalit deal: He had murdered Palestinians [suspected of collaborating with Israel], not Jews, so he did not technically have "blood on his hands."

That was a decision I could understand at the moral level – but when it came to the level of danger? It was a sign of total ignorance. He is 10 times as dangerous as anyone with "blood on his hands." Sinwar, Tawfiq Abu Naim, Rawhi Mushtaha – they don't have [Israeli] blood on their hands, and they are Hamas' leaders today.

At the time, did you object to Sinwar's release?

Of course.

What did you say, and to whom?

You have to understand: The Shin Bet [security service] didn't even ask the prison service; they didn't include the service. I was on the team of Haggai Hadas [the Shalit deal negotiating team], so I could make my views known there, but there was no discussion in which prison service representatives participated actively in deciding on the names [of those to be released]. I don't understand why. Sinwar had been held in Israel since 1988. Who knew what had happened and was still happening with him until his release, what he was up to? Only the prison service knew.

So, you just sat home and were silent? Didn't you try to raise a ruckus? To approach political decision makers?

I couldn't get to them – they do not engage with prison service personnel. I did what I could where I could, with Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet. I was also a relatively junior figure then. That's what frustrates me most today. I'm certain that if I had been the head of the Intelligence Division then, I simply would not have allowed Sinwar's release to happen. I made my voice heard, but it simply had no effect. MI and the IDF do not monitor prisoners they took into custody 22 years earlier. That's not their job. They deal with what is happening on the ground. The thing is that releasing such prisoners affects the operations of MI and the Shin Bet on the ground.

And they don't know that? They must.

We would like to think that a person who has been away from his turf for 22 years loses his influence. But it's simply not true. That's exactly the point we're missing. They don't disappear in prison. It's not like some criminal inmate who comes out after 20 years and has no one to talk to. It's in the security facilities that those who want to be leaders shape their leadership. In prison they interact with the ranking figures, with those the organization views as people of stature.

Prison as a leadership institute.

Totally. And another critical matter that we, as Israelis, miss, is that from their point of view, those who paid the price of a prison term have added value.

And the longer the term, the higher the value.

Of course. Think of Sinwar, who leaves prison after orchestrating the arrangements for the [Shalit] deal, having established his status as leader, while others in the leadership, [Ismail] Haniyeh and [Mahmoud] al-Zahar, had never seen the inside of a prison. Compared to them he's a hero. By the way, I was also against the release of [Saleh] Al-Arouri [a senior Hamas figure who was freed in 2007 and killed in an IDF drone attack in Lebanon last January]. I argued with the Shin Bet, I told them not to deport him, that he would not sit quietly. That he would send out octopus tentacles everywhere and operate the organization from afar. That is of course what happened and what he did – and with the help of the group he gathered around him in prison, to boot. You really don't have to be especially smart to see this.

What did you see in Arouri?

I saw a person whose authority was heeded by thousands of Hamas prisoners in jail, whose word was law. He had amazing abilities of persuasion. He didn't use force, just his personality. He could make a room go silent simply with a glance. He was so charismatic, far more charismatic than Sinwar.

Look…

I'll rephrase. Did his charisma work on you as well?

No. Because I knew very well what lurked behind that charisma. Tenacity of idea. Of purpose. When I concluded my tenure as head of the Intelligence Division, they [the Hamas prisoners] were happy to see me go, they knew that I was a threat to them, simply because I knew them. I'll give you an example. In 2010, Sinwar wanted to get two inmates who had been placed in solitary confinement out. He decided that he would organize a hunger strike of 1,600 prisoners, along with terrorist attacks and he would set the entire West Bank ablaze. I set an ambush for him. I brought in two Hamas leaders from the West Bank – not part of his Gazan group. They told him, "No, for two prisoners we will not launch a war like that with the prison service. Who do you think you are? You don't decide things on your own." I created friction. A confrontation. Head-to-head.

In other words, you actually generated intelligence? Actively, I mean. You created a reality.

Prison intelligence is the only sort of intelligence that is preventive. That is, you are actually also shaping the intelligence picture, because you control them [the prisoners]. You decide where they will be and what they will do. They [Palestinians] are very tribal. For example, Fatah prisoners from Hebron will be loyal to a leader from Hebron. It's the same with Nablus, Ramallah, Tul Karm, etc. And among all these groups, there are also cultural and psychological differences.

Not only between Hamas and Fatah, but within the organizations themselves.

Yes. Hebron prisoners are different from Nablus prisoners. We saw that also when we arranged encounters between them, deliberately. Things exploded. All-out wars broke out between them. Power struggles like that are excellent for us. They help intelligence personnel, because each side wants you with on their side. We got to a situation where Fatah inmates themselves asked to be separated from the Hamas prisoners. I stood aside and was pleased. They lashed out at one another, but stopped attacking the warders. That was good for me. Let them mess with themselves and not with us. That's the power of divide and rule, but to do it, you need to know them in depth. I did the same with the famous hunger strike of Marwan Barghouti.

The so-called Tortit strike [the hunger strike launched by the Fatah leader in 2017, during which he was filmed eating a chocolate snack bar].

You know what he said when he launched that hunger strike? "I'm going to dismantle Bitton's kingdoms now."

What does "Bitton's kingdoms" mean?

The prisoners cooperated with me. When he declared the strike, he had an agreement that everyone would join in: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Popular Front. I made it very clear to those organizations what would happen if they joined. The Fatah prisoners had to be dismantled from within, so I spoke with their leaders. I told them that for 20 years Barghouti hadn't done a thing for the Palestinian people, and now too all he wanted was to put something over on them, to play at being Nelson Mandela. They also did not join the strike – [those from] Hebron, Nablus, Tul Karm, Jenin. He ended up with 600 prisoners, out of 3,600. He kept up the strike for 42 days, and all that time I worked from the inside, including with inmates who had gone on strike with him. The Tortit story is only one aspect of the mind games there. Why did I give him a Tortit bar, of all things?

Because of the color of its wrapping? Hamas green?

Correct.

Really?

Yes. When he ended the strike silently [in secret], the first time, he ate some sort of cake or bread, and had water. I later told my people to give him chocolate. He pretended to be on a hunger strike, those who were with him were almost dying, and he's eating chocolate. I wanted everyone to see that he was eating chocolate.

'Burning hatred'

Tell me, what did you feel about them? You've described here calmly, how you manipulated them, played with their minds. What were they to you? Did you hate them?

People who engage in hatred are weak. Hatred is not a modus operandi.

And you hated them?

I was afraid of them.

Even when you sat with them, one on one? Was that frightening?

In intelligence, you're supposed to put your emotions aside. But yes, there were prisoners in whose eyes you could truly see burning hatred. In their gaze. I felt that I hated them too. Look, I also saw how the Hamas leaders abused other prisoners. Their faith is so strong that they say, "In the name of the faith, this is what we need to do. It doesn't matter if they have little children or a wife." It's crazy, because why is he in prison in the first place? He was arrested because he did something on their behalf. For the movement.

It's a psychopathic viewpoint. There's no compassion, no feelings, no sentiments. Everyone is an object. A pawn.

Absolutely. There was a high-ranking Hamasnik in prison whom Sinwar suspected of collaboration. When he got out, they hanged that person in the city square and brought his 9-year-old son to watch. Is there anything crueler than that? Sinwar himself, too – after all, we saved him. After he collapsed in prison [he was suffering from a brain tumor], we took him to a hospital right away. Israeli physicians fought for his life. Was there a scrap of gratitude? No such thing.

You were present when he was freed?

Of course.

Do you remember that day?

It was pretty traumatic. All the prisoners who were supposed to be released were brought to Ketziot, and it was decided to have them sign a form in which they'd commit to not returning to terrorism. The junior-ranking prisoners signed – what did they care? But Mushtaha and Sinwar said, "We're not signing, and no one else is signing." From that moment no one signed, but we released them all the same. That amounted to caving in. So from that they understood that they could make Israel fold.

What difference would it have made? Would Sinwar say to himself, "No, that's it. I promised Israel. I'll become an accountant"?

Of course not. But then why give them a document to sign at all? If we're going to release him, you know, even if he doesn't sign. Why give him that power?

What else do you remember from that day? Where were you? What did you talk about?

I was with them, I walked around with them – they were on a high. Ketziot is an open-air facility. That particular wing is surrounded by a wall and there's netting above it but you see the sky. The prisoners who had arrived there to be freed hadn't seen the sky for 20 years. In the prisons they had come from, they'd spend the entire day in their cells, maybe going out for an hour or two. Suddenly they see the horizon. They're happy. Euphoric. "We beat you," they said.

What did you tell them?

I felt a twinge in my heart, because I knew the price was steep. And I said, "We are defeating you, not the opposite. Because we are more ethical than you. We are ready to pay this price for a single soldier. You would not have been willing to pay that price if the situation were reversed. We are willing to do it, because we have values and morality – but don't interpret that as weakness." By the way, I truly believe that.

What happened as they left? Did they sing? Applaud?

They didn't dare. They knew that as along as they were still being held by the Shin Bet, they couldn't do that. Only when they had been driven a distance away, I saw them opening windows and making the victory sign. Look, during all those years they would tell me, "We will be freed," and I would say, "There's no way," in order to suppress their motivation. And yet now they were finally being freed, as they had believed. They think differently from us. When Gilad Shalit was abducted, Israel entered the Gaza Strip, eliminated a few hundred terrorists and destroyed buildings; of course, another few thousand civilians paid the price.

I said to Sinwar, "Tell me, is it worth it for 10,000 innocent people to die, in order to free 100 prisoners?" The reply was, "Even 100,000 is worth it." Their notion of time is different, and the price in blood they are ready to pay in order to achieve their goal is different. Because each person who dies is a shahid [martyr]. It's warfare in the name of God.

Are they themselves willing to die?

Not all of them. For example, I had a conversation with Abbas al-Sayed. I asked, "Why didn't you go on a suicide mission yourself? Why do you send others?" He said, "Everyone has a role. I am in charge."

Do you think Sinwar is willing to die?

He is. Definitely. That's the difference between him and the Hamas leaders who were released in the Shalit deal, and are living decadent lives in Turkey or Qatar. They forgot their people. Sinwar is not like that. He's an ascetic. Since establishing the shock committees in Gaza [the Al-Majad organization, whose aim was to liquidate collaborators and violators of religious law], he hasn't changed. Today he feels like Saladin, because he succeeded in doing what no Arab leader before him did. He sees himself as playing a central role in the realization of the Islamist ambitions of the Muslim Brotherhood. He thinks he has entered the annals of history. And he really doesn't care if 200,000 people are killed and not a single house remains complete in Gaza. The main thing is the goal, the greater idea.

A Muslim theocracy under the aegis of Qatari money.

Yes. Qatar is the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar is the great idea. We effectively allowed Qatar to finance the idea.

Not "we." I didn't transfer suitcases of cash to Hamas, and I assume you didn't either.

Then whoever did the transfer, and whoever thought up the concept of allowing the Qataris to enter Gaza and pay Hamas and prop it up. I can tell you that one of the top figures in the Hamas leadership, whose name I will not mention, told me, "How is that you're letting Qatar underwrite Hamas? Underwrite Gaza? Why don't you go to Egypt or even Turkey or the United Arab Emirates? Qatar, of all countries? You don't have a clue."

The events of October 7 also hit you personally. Your nephew Tamir Adar was abducted and then found to have been murdered by Hamas.

Tamir, my sister's son, who was 38, grew up and was educated on [Kibbutz] Nir Oz to love the country. In his heroism, Tamir went out to defend his family, his community and the country. He didn't hesitate. He, and his four comrades in the emergency defense squad, fought alone against hundreds of terrorists, and prevented a far larger disaster. [Tamir's grandmother, Yaffa Adar, was among the hostages released in November.] Whole families in Nir Oz were erased. Slaughtered. Burned. It was a holocaust. To tell you I was surprised by the atrocities? Regrettably, no. I know this enemy. Personally. Sinwar could not surprise me. My only surprise was that the IDF, the security forces and the government of Israel allowed this holocaust to take place on Israeli soil.

Sinwar couldn't surprise you?

I don't think so. I know how he thinks. Look, when the first [hostage release] deal was implemented, I was invited to sit in the TV studios and accompany the broadcast of the release [as a commentator]. I refused to do that, because I didn't want to say on air what I really thought. Sinwar went for the first deal, because he had an interest in it. He was apprehensive of the pressure Qatar was wielding on him, under U.S. pressure – an insane steamroller to get him to release the women and children. The moment that interest was gone, the deal was over.

My sister viewed that deal as a preface to future deals, she was euphoric, she thought it was only the beginning. That she would quickly get her son back. I was sure that it was the first and last deal, that her son would not return. But I couldn't say that. I couldn't look my sister in the eye.

During the period when Tamir was considered a hostage, until you learned that he had been murdered [in January], did you try to exploit your acquaintanceship with people in Hamas? To convey messages?

I didn't try. There's no point. It's impossible to speak to the heart of people like them. I'm certain that Sinwar knows that Tamir was my nephew. One-hundred percent. Well, so what? I have no expectations of him. He owes me nothing. Those responsible for bringing back Tamir and the other hostages are the government of Israel and the person who heads it.

I have done some research on the true numbers in Gaza.

Originally, the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry published that 32,000 Gazan Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces. Of these, they claimed that 78% were women and children, and none were combatants or members of Hamas. Israel countered that 12,000 Palestinians they killed were combatants and/or members of Hamas. That leaves 20,000 Gazan Palestinian non-combatants as having been killed by Israel.

A little over a week ago, Hamas announced that over 11,000 people originally reported killed by Israeli forces couldn’t be accounted for – meaning, and this is the consensus in the global community, they were never killed. This means that 21,000 Palestinians were killed, 12,000 of whom were terrorists. That leaves 9,000 Gazan Palestinian non-combatants as having been killed by Israel.

Here’s an odd fact no one seems to be reporting. In the normal course of life, 4,000 people would’ve died over the past six months in Gaza. Hamas reports ALL deaths in Gaza as war related and killed by Israel, even those of natural means. That leaves 5,000 Gazan Palestinian non-combatants as having been killed by Israel.

Another factor not being counted is the number of Gazan Palestinians killed by Hamas rockets falling short and killing their own people. It’ll be impossible to ever calculate how many people were killed in this way, but it won’t be a small number of victims.

It is my conclusion that less than 5,000 Palestinian Gazans have been killed by force in this war; some by Israeli forces, and some by Hamas forces.

The IDF's 91st "Galilee" Regional Division has wrapped up a "large-scale" drill in northern Israel, simulating attack and defense scenarios, the military says.

The army says the drill is part of "accelerating the IDF's readiness for defense and a strong attack in the northern arena."

The scenarios included "dealing with complex terrain, difficult weather conditions and mass casualty incidents," the military says.

The drill also involved the Israeli Air Force, Israel Police, and rescue authorities.

The exercise comes amid daily attacks by the Hezbollah terror group on northern Israel amid the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has warned it can no longer tolerate Hezbollah's presence along its border following the October 7 atrocities, and has warned that should a diplomatic solution not be reached, it will turn to military action to push Hezbollah northward.

The Israeli military says it has wrapped up a pinpoint operation against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in northern Gaza's Beit Hanoun, aimed at detaining members of the terror groups.

In a statement, the IDF says troops, led by the Gaza Divison's Northern Brigade, raided two school buildings in Beit Hanoun, following intelligence that Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives were gathered there and were "using the civilians sheltering there as a human shield."

Before the troops entered the buildings they called on the civilians to evacuate, the IDF says.

"The troops arrested a number of terrorists from the terrorist organizations in a targeted and precise manner while avoiding harming the civilian population," the statement says.

Several "terrorists who tried to harm the forces" were killed amid the raid, the IDF adds.

Participating in the raid were the Paratroopers Brigade's 890th Battlion, the Kfir Brigade's Netzah Yehuda Battalion, combat engineers, tank forces, the Air Force's elite Shaldag unit, the Military Intelligence Directorate's Unit 504, and the Shin Bet security agency.

The IDF says 14 soldiers were wounded in the Hezbollah drone and missile attack on Arab al-Aramshe earlier today.

Six troops were seriously wounded, two are listed in moderate condition, and another six are lightly hurt, the military says.

In all, 18 people were taken to Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya for treatment.

Fighter jets also hit buildings used by Hezbollah and other infrastructure in Naqoura and Yarine, the army adds.

Key Takeaways:

Gaza Strip
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported Israeli forces led by the Northern Brigade (Gaza Division) conducted raids targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) sites in Beit Hanoun.  Targets were identified during intelligence during interrogation of Palestinian fighters,

Palestinian militias conducted attacks in the northern Gaza Strip.  The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed that its fighters conducted 14 mortar and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks in Beit Hanoun.  

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in the central Gaza Strip.  The 401st and Nahal brigades (162nd Division) are operating near Wadi Gaza.  The Air Force struck a Palestinian fighter in the central Gaza Strip.  The 215th Artillery Brigade and IDF Air Force cooperated to destroy several rocket launchers.

The IDF Air Force struck over 40 targets in the Gaza Strip, including explosively rigged buildings, observation posts, and underground military infrastructure.

Palestinian sources claimed. Israeli forces are in eastern Deir al Balah.  Hamas and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades claimed separate RPG and anti-tank guided missile attacks targeting Israeli forces.

Palestinian fighters fired a single rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip.

West Bank
Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters in at least three locations across the West Bank.

Three Palestinian militias—PIJ, the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and Jundullah—claimed separate attacks targeting Israeli forces around Tubas.  The PIJ detonated an IED targeting an IDF bulldozer.  Jundallah has claimed two previous attacks in Tubas since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Israeli forces detained six wanted Palestinians during overnight operations. bIsraeli police separately detained a Palestinian man in Jerusalem on suspicion of planning to conduct a stabbing attack.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Lebanese Hezbollah conducted at least nine attacks from southern Lebanon.  One of these attacks was a complex drone and anti-tank guided missile attack that injured 18 Israelis, including 14 IDF soldiers, in Arab al Aramsha along the Israel-Lebanon border.

The drone Hezbollah used bears visual similarities to an Iranian-made Adabil-2.  The IDF conducted airstrikes targeting Hezbollah air defense sites near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, in retaliation for the Hezbollah drone strike in Arab al Aramsha.

Yemen
CENTOM reported that it destroyed two drones in Houthi-controlled Yemen.  Houthi-controlled media claimed the United States and United Kingdom conducted two airstrikes targeting unspecified sites in Bajil District.

Iran
A small demonstration occurred outside the Jordanian embassy in Tehran, protesting the Jordanian support in intercepting the recent Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel. CTP-ISW has previously assessed that Iran and its Axis of Resistance have adopted a more confrontational strategy vis-a-vis Jordan in recent months.

Senior Iranian political and military officials reiterated their threats that Iran would respond “severely” if Israel retaliates for the recent Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel

Syria
The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran ordered IRGC personnel to evacuate military sites across Syria in anticipation of possible Israeli strikes.

Iraq
An adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, Subhan al Mullah Jiyad, claimed that the US-Iraqi Higher Military Commission has “set a schedule” for the withdrawal of the US-led international coalition from Iraq.

Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah issued a statement criticizing Saudi Arabia amid rising tensions between the Axis of Resistance and the kingdom.  Kataib Hezbollah accused Saudi Arabia of supporting the US agenda in the Middle East.

Border Police officers detained a Palestinian man allegedly affiliated with the Islamic State jihadist movement, who planned to carry out a terror attack in "the immediate time-frame."

The suspect was nabbed in the West Bank town of Beitunia, close to Ramallah, following intelligence provided by the Shin Bet, police say.

Police say the suspect attempted to flee when they reached his home, and was arrested as he tried to grab the gun of one of the officers.

He was handed over to the Shin Bet for further interrogation.

The head of interrogations in Hamas's internal security in northern Gaza's Beit Hanoun was killed in an airstrike this week, the military and Shin Bet announce.

Yousef Sabat also served as an officer in the intelligence division of Hamas's military wing, in its Beit Hanoun Battalion, according the IDF.

"This elimination significantly damages the organization's investigations department," the joint statement says.

In a separate recent incident, the IDF says it carried out an airstrike on a vehicle with at least 10 gunmen in it, killing them. It says the strike followed "accurate intelligence" on the operatives.

Overnight, fighter jets struck a mortar launcher in Gaza City's Rimal neighborhood, used to launch projectiles at troops operating in the Gaza Strip, the IDF says.

Also over the past day, the Air Force struck dozens more targets across Gaza. The military says the sites included observation posts, buildings used by Hamas, operatives, and other infrastructure.

Originally Posted By writerdeluxe2006:

JUST IN: Israel's finance minister says retaliatory strikes should 'rock Tehran so everyone there will realise they shouldn’t mess with us'.

The Spectator Index  (@spectatorindex) April 18, 2024

The IDF reported that a reservist is in critical condition and four others are seriously wounded by the anti-tank missiles and drones launched toward the village of Arab al-Aramshe, in northern Israel. 18 people were wounded in total, including 13 reservists, two security squad members and three civilians. The army is investigating why the launches were not intercepted.

Internal Israeli documents obtained by the New York Times reveal that the assassination of top Iranian general Mohammad Reza Zahedi (also known as Hassan Mahadawi) in Damascus had been planned for about two months.

The Times reported that according to American and Israeli officials, Israel had miscalculated the strength of Iran's response, expecting only small scale attacks by proxies or Iran itself.

The Israeli war cabinet approved the operation to carry out the Damascus strike on March 22, a week before, according to documents viewed by The Times. The U.S. was only updated on Israel's plans "mere moments" before.

The U.S. secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, spoke directly with Israel's defense minister Yoav Gallant on April 3, American officials told The Times. He reportedly complained that the attack had put U.S. troops in danger, and that the lack of warning from Israel gave them no time to prepare.

A satellite image taken on Sunday morning shows the damage caused by a ballistic missile that hit a strategic air base in Israel's south after Iran launched its first-ever direct assault on the country, which also included drones and cruise missiles.

The photo, taken by Planet Labs hours after Iran's attack against Israel, shows damage to a taxiway in the southern part of the Nevatim Air Base, near the transport squadron and its C-130s.

"There were a total of four hits," IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari said, "One landed near a runway, two in open areas and one near a building that is still under construction, causing minor damage to it. The base functioned throughout the attack," he added.

An Egyptian source told London-based Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the U.S. agreed to the Israeli plan for a military operation in Rafah in exchange for a limited response against Iran.

Israel is unlikely to carry out a strike on Iran until after Passover, a senior U.S. official told ABC News, although that could always change.

The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other leadership are still on a high state of alert, with some in safe houses and underground facilities, the official said.

Three Israeli sources also told ABC News that Israel prepared for and then aborted retaliatory strikes on at least two nights this week. According to them, the war cabinet has been present with a number of different options, including attacking Iranian proxies not on Iranian soil, or a potential cyberattack.

The killing of Mohammad Srour, 57, who was sanctioned by the U.S., was like something out of an international spy thriller. Pistols equipped with silencers and gloves were found in a bucket of water and chemicals at the scene, apparently intended to remove fingerprints and other evidence, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said in an interview with The Associated Press. Thousand of dollars in cash were left scattered around Srour's body, as if to dispel any speculation that robbery was the motive.

"Lebanese security agencies have suspicion or accusations that Mossad was behind this operation," Mawlawi said, referring to the Israeli spy agency. "The way the crime was carried out led to this suspicion."

He provided no specific evidence for his allegations. Mawlawi said the investigation is still ongoing and once it's over the results will be made public and referred to judicial authorities.

The Israeli prime minister's office, which oversees Mossad, did not immediately respond to a request for comment

Hezbollah targeted the Mount Meron air traffic control base in an anti-tank guided missile attack yesterday. A video published by the terror group shows a missile striking a radar system atop the mountain in northern Israel. The IDF said there were no injuries in the attack.

Israeli fighter jets struck a Hezbollah cell in southern Lebanon earlier today, after they were spotted by troops of the Golani Brigade, the IDF says.

The IDF says the Golani troops, using a drone, identified several Hezbollah operatives entering a building in the town of Blida and called in the strike.

The Defense Ministry and IDF say they have seized a total of NIS 29 million ($7.6 million) in cash in the Gaza Strip, and "forfeited" it to the Bank of Israel.

The cash was seized from Hamas strongholds and homes of terror operatives, during the IDF's ground operations in Gaza.

The Israeli military says it has wrapped up a pinpoint raid against Hamas in the central Gaza Strip, during which troops destroyed more than 100 sites belonging to terror groups, killed some 40 operatives, and expanded the army’s east-west corridor.

The operation, carried out by the 401st Armored Brigade and other troops under the 162nd Division on the outskirts of the Nuseirat camp, was aimed at clearing the area of Hamas operatives, destroying its infrastructure, including a tunnel network that allowed passage from Nuseirat to Gaza City, and expanding the Netzarim corridor.

The corridor, built around a road south of Gaza City and north of Nuseirat, enables the IDF to carry out raids in northern and central Gaza while allowing Israel to control access to the north for Palestinians seeking to return after fleeing south.

Amid the operation near Nuseirat, the IDF said it destroyed two rocket manufacturing plants, one belonging to Hamas and the other to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, among around 100 sites.

The military says it also demolished 17 tunnel shafts, part of at least five separate underground networks. Rockets and launchers were also discovered and destroyed during the operation.

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was taken to a police station near Jerusalem and investigated. 'This is an illegal arrest whose purpose is to intimidate any critical voices in the Israeli academy,' her attorneys said.

A Palestinian academic at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, who raised doubts about sexual assault incidents involving Hamas terrorists on October 7, was arrested by the Israel Police.

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was brought to a police station near Jerusalem and is suspected of incitement to terror, violence, and racism. Her attorneys added that the police confiscated a mobile phone, a computer documents and books of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish from her apartment.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian was suspended from teaching early in March following pressure from students, right-wing activists and politicians, for comments she made in an interview on the "Makdisi Street" podcast.

The university reinstated her after she clarified that she does not doubt that sexual assaults took place during Hamas' attack.

In a segment on the podcast devoted to October 7, Shalhoub-Kevorkian said that "The creation of stories, the exaggeration, were done in order to portray the Palestinians as terrible… Sexual violence is a thing that happens, and I oppose it… If a woman says she was raped, I believe her. But we're not seeing [after October 7] a woman who came out and said what happened to her."

This is an illegal arrest whose purpose is to intimidate and harm any critical voices in the Israeli academy," said her attorneys Mahajana and Hassan Jabarin.

"Behind the police's agenda is a racist and inciting minister. The more important question is whether the State Prosecutor approved this type of investigation and arrest." Israel's State Prosecutor's Office said in response that they have indeed approved the investigation.

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir praised the arrest, saying he "congratulates" for detaining the "professor who incited against the State of Israel."

According to him, the apprehension "sends the significant message that those who incite against Israel will not be able to hide under such titles or roles."

Arab-Israeli lawmaker Ahmad Tibi responded said that "the settlers who murdered two Palestinians aren't being investigated; the rabbis who incite to murder Arabs are embraced."

"Those who paved the way for this investigation are the shameful and cowardly administration of the Hebrew University," he added.

Translation from Arabic:  Iranian media: Anti-aircraft guns shoot down flying objects in several Iranian regions #العربية_عاجل

It would be poetic if:

Israeli F-35s that Iran tried to attack at Nevatim Air Force base over the weekend just fired from a great distance.

These Israeli missiles penetrated air defenses that perhaps even failed to activate.

The missiles struck Iranian fighter jets on the runway at an Iranian air base.

Message: our air defenses work, yours don’t. Our fighter jets work, yours don’t. Next time we will destroy even more valuable assets.

Iran has no plan for immediate retaliation against Israel, a senior Iranian official said Friday, as officials in Jerusalem indicated that an alleged drone attack on a city south of Tehran was meant to send a signal rather than cause damage.

The official also cast doubt on whether Israel was behind the attack in Isfahan, despite comments from some Israeli politicians practically accepting responsibility.

Together with a subdued response from official Iranian media organs, the senior official’s comments indicated that Tehran may be uninterested in risking war to make good on threats that it would attack Israel should it retaliate for a weekend missile and drone attack, and was seeking a way to avoid being held to the bellicose promises.

“The foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed,” the Iranian official said on condition of anonymity. “We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more toward infiltration than attack.”

They added that Iran has no plan to strike back immediately over the attack.

In most official comments and news reports, there was no mention of Israel and state television carried analysts and pundits who appeared dismissive about the scale.

Shortly after midnight, “three drones were observed in the sky over Isfahan. The air defense system became active and destroyed these drones in the sky,” Iranian state TV said.

Senior army commander Siavosh Mihandoust was quoted by state TV as saying air defense systems had targeted a “suspicious object.” He said there had been no damage from the attack.

An analyst told state TV that mini drones flown by “infiltrators from inside Iran” had been shot down by air defenses in Isfahan.

In Israel, authorities were officially mum, but a number of politicians and former officials spoke out about the strike.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a hardliner who had pushed for a forceful response to Iran’s early Sunday attack, tweeted the single word “lame!”

A Channel 12 report claimed officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle slammed Ben Gvir for damaging Israel’s national security, saying the far-right minister “was and remains childish and irrelevant to any discussion.”

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid also slammed Ben Gvir.

“Never has a cabinet minister so badly hurt the country’s security, image and international standing,” wrote Lapid on X. “In an unforgivable, one-word tweet Ben Gvir managed to make Israel into a laughing stock, disgracing it from Tehran to Washington.”

According to the Washington Post, citing an Israeli official, the strike had been intended to signal to Iran that Israel has the ability to reach Iran with its weapons.

“It’s important Iran understand that when it acts against us, we have the ability to strike any point and we can do enormous damage – we have a capable air force and the US on our side,” former national security adviser Eyal Hulata told Army Radio.

The Israeli response was thought to have been tempered by international pressure to make sure that the reply did not further escalate tensions.

“Nobody wants war with Iran right now,” Netanyahu confidant Natan Eshel was quoted saying by journalist Ben Caspit. “We proved to them that we can infiltrate and strike within their borders and they weren’t able to inside ours. The messages are more important than the grandstanding. We currently have more important tasks both in Gaza and Lebanon.”

Like fellow firebrand Ben Gvir, Likud MK Tally Gotliv also appeared to spill the beans over the attack.

In a post on X, she said early Friday was “a morning to proudly hold our head up high. Israel is a strong and powerful country.” She added a prayer for the return of Israel’s “power of deterrence.”

Some politicians expressed annoyance at the comments, despite several unnamed Israeli and US officials telling foreign press outlets that Israel was behind the attack.

Israel has for years operated under a strategy of plausible deniability regarding its attacks on Iranian interests in Syria, declining to take responsibility or speak publicly about specific sorties and giving Iran and its proxies an out to avoid retaliation.

The strategy has limits though. Israel has not taken responsibility for a strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus on April 1 that killed several members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, including a top officer. Nonetheless, Iran responded Sunday night by lobbing over 300 cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and armed drones at Israel.

Nearly the whole barrage was shot down by Israel, with help from the US, UK, France and Jordan. A small Israeli girl who was the only victim in the attack was badly injured by falling shrapnel; the targeted Nevatim air base also suffered light damage, according to Israeli officials.

“It’s good for us that the Iranians are telling this narrative, that it was drones, birds, just a field outside of Isfahan,” Zvika Haimovitch, a former commander of the IDF air defense array, told Channel 12. He said both countries were allowing each other “room for cover and denial,” which would enable the situation to de-escalate.

“It’s too early to say that it’s over,” former national security adviser Ephraim Halevy told Army Radio. “But there’s a difference between the Iranian attack and the Israeli response which is intended to send a message and not result in widespread and significant [damage].”

Translation:Commander of the Iranian Army's ground force: The Zionist entity must know that if it commits a mistake, it will be punished more harshly

Key Takeaways:

Gaza Strip
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Air Force struck Palestinian fighters and military infrastructure in the northern Strip.  The Air Force struck a militia mortar position in Rimal neighborhood in western Gaza City that Palestinian fighters used to shell Israeli forces.  The IDF Air Force killed a Hamas operative in the groups’ internal security apparatus in Beit Hanoun.

The Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry's Internal Security Forces in the Gaza Strip employs fighters from the Hamas military wing. CTP-ISW assessed on March 25 that a small number of Palestinian fighters have likely infiltrated Beit Hanoun.  Israeli forces recently conducted raids targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) sites in the area.

Hamas and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, conducted separate mortar attacks targeting Israeli forces near the Netzarim corridor in eastern Gaza City, where Israeli forces have constructed a highway to support military operations.  Hamas fighters detonated two explosively-rigged tunnels and mines targeting Israeli infantry and vehicles in Mughraqa in southern Gaza City.

The National Resistance Brigades and al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades conducted a combined mortar attack targeting a military site in the central Gaza Strip along the Israeli-Gaza Strip border in on April 18.

The IDF concluded a week-long operation targeting Palestinian fighters and military infrastructure near Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces killed over 40 Palestinian fighters and destroyed over 100 military infrastructure sites during the operation, including tunnels and Hamas and PIJ rocket production sites.

Israeli forces raided a militia headquarters that was designed to deny Israeli forces access to the central Gaza Strip by crossing Wadi Gaza. The IDF said that the Nuseirat operation expanded the Netzarim corridor. The IDF is withdrawing the Nahal Brigade from the Gaza Strip to prepare it for future operations, including in Rafah and the central Gaza Strip. A reserve brigade will backfill the IDF Nahal Brigade in the corridor.

The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades mortared Israeli forces in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The IDF and the Shin Bet coordinated with the 215th Artillery Brigade (162nd Division) to strike ten Palestinian fighters inside in the Gaza Strip.  

PIJ conducted two rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip targeting southern Israel on April 18.

West Bank
Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least two locations in the West Bank. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades engaged Israeli forces with small arms and detonated an improvised explosive device in the Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm on April 18.  

Palestinian media reported that Lions‘ Den fighters targeted Israeli forces with small arms at an Israeli checkpoint in Nablus.  The Lions’ Den—a West Bank militia based in Nablus that has built a large social media following—had not claimed an attack targeting Israeli forces since October 23, 2023 and had been inactive on Telegram.

Pro-Hamas media published several references to the Lions‘ Den on April 13 amid reports of Israeli settlers committing acts of violence in at least eight Palestinian towns in the northern West Bank.

Israeli police detained a Palestinian reportedly affiliated with ISIS during an overnight operation near Ramallah. The reportedly ISIS-affiliated Palestinian had planned to carry out an unspecified attack “in the immediate future.”  

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank increased in 2023 to their highest level since the United Nations (UN) began recording data in 2006.  The UN documented over 700 Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank between October 7, 2023, and April 3, 2024.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least nine attacks from southern Lebanon. Hezbollah published a video on April 18 showing Hezbollah fighters launching an anti-tank guided missile that destroyed an IDF counter-battery radar on Mount Meron.

The IDF base on Mount Meron hosts air traffic control, radar, surveillance, communication, and jamming facilities.  Counter-battery radars detect incoming indirect fire to ascertain the indirect fire’s point of origin. This information allows friendly forces to then engage the enemy artillery battery. Hezbollah’s first attack targeting Meron on January 6 damaged the bases’ radar domes.  Hezbollah has attacked Meron seven times in 2024.

Hezbollah has conducted several attacks targeting Israeli defenses along the northern Israeli border, including air defense sites, likely to degrade Israeli defenses.

Yemen
Houthi leader Abdulmalik al Houthi claimed that the Houthi attacks on commercial shipping have extended “from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean.”

Bloomberg reported the IRGC intelligence gathering ship, the Behshad, left the Red Sea on April 4 to return to Iran.  The Behshad is expected to reach Iran’s Bandar Abbas port on April 18. The Behshad provides the Houthi movement with real-time intelligence, enabling them to target ships that have gone silent.

Political Negotiations
Hamas Deputy Political Bureau head Musa Abu Marzouk said that Hamas will not withdraw from ceasefire negotiations or drop its maximalist demands, which include a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Iraq
The Iraqi government and private sector signed 14 memoranda of understanding (MOU), primarily in energy and finance, with US companies.

Several Palestinian gunmen were killed and four troops were wounded during a counter-terrorism raid in the West Bank's Nur Shams refugee camp, close to Tulkarem, the military says.

The IDF says troops and Border Police officers raided Nur Shams overnight, during which several wanted Palestinian were detained, explosive devices were discovered, and several gunmen were killed in clashes throughout the morning.

According to Palestinian media, one person was killed and two others were wounded.

A soldier of the LOTAR unit and an officer of the Marom Brigade were moderately injured, and two soldiers of the Kfir Brigade's Haruv reconnaissance unit were lightly hurt amid the operation, the IDF says.

The commander of the Tulkarm Battalion of the #IslamicJihad was killed along with 4 other terrorists

Abu Shuja al-Jaber, the commander of the Tulkarm Battalion of the Islamic Jihad, was killed during the operation of our forces in Noor al-Shams

The activity of our forces there has been going on for over 18 hours, during which time terrorists fired at our forces and fired explosives at them - the Palestinians report 5 killed.

Israeli fighter jets launched three missiles at an air defense radar site near Isfahan in the overnight strike in Iran, ABC News reports, citing a US official.

The official says that the missiles were fired from outside of Iran. This may correlate with shrapnel found in Iraq this morning, thought to be part of a two-stage standoff munition, although this remains unconfirmed.

According to the report, the strike was "very limited." It says that according to an initial assessment, the strike took out the radar site, but the assessment has not yet been completed.

Iraqi militias (Iraqi Resistance) issue a statement claiming responsibility for targeting Ovda Air Base wich is under the control of Israel.

Of course, these militias operate within a strategy of destabilizing the region in coordination with the IRGC, Houthi militias, and Hezbollah militias!

I say this early on, I won't be surprised if we see the return of Israeli airstrikes in Iraqi territory.

Press coverage: Occupation forces fire flare bombs into the sky of Tulkarm camp, coinciding with the ongoing military operation in Nour Shams camp.

Urgent| Red Crescent: Losing contact with our crews inside Nour Shams camp after two ambulances entered to deal with injuries more than 30 minutes ago, and coordination is underway with the Red Cross.

BAGHDAD — A huge blast rocks a military base used by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces to the south of Baghdad, two PMF and two security sources tell Reuters.

The two security sources say the blast was a result of an unknown airstrike, which happened around midnight.

The two PMF sources point out the strikes did not lead to casualties but caused material damage. However, an Iraqi interior ministry source quoted by AFP says the “bombing” killed one person and wounded eight others.

Sources in the PMF, also known as the Hashed al-Shaabi, say the strikes targeted a headquarters of the Iran-backed grouping of militias at the Kalso military base, near the town of Iskandariya around 50 kilometers south of Baghdad.

One said killed in ‘bombing’ of Iraqi military base used by pro-Iran militias

Translation--Urgent: Unidentified aircraft are crushing bases, camps and weapons stores belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard militias in Iraq now

Key Takeaways:

Gaza Strip
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Air Force struck military infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip.  The 215th Artillery Brigade (162nd Division) and IDF Air Force struck rocket launchers and a weapons depot in Beit Lahia.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) launched two rocket salvos at Ashkelon.

Palestinian militias conducted several indirect fire attacks on the northern Gaza Strip.  The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades mortared Israeli vehicles southeast of the Zaytoun neighborhood in southeastern Gaza City.  PIJ fired rockets targeting Israeli forces and Israeli positions east and southeast of Gaza City.

Israeli forces are conducting raids in southeastern Gaza City to secure the Netzarim corridor,

The Nahal Brigade (162nd Division) killed several Palestinian fighters in the central Gaza Strip on April 19.  The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular leftist Palestinian group fighting alongside Hamas in the war, fired rockets targeting Israeli forces in the east of the central Gaza Strip.

The IDF Air Force struck approximately 25 military targets to support IDF ground forces operating in the Gaza Strip on April 19.  The targets included military buildings, observation posts, and rocket launchers.

PIJ launched a second salvo of rockets from the Gaza Strip targeting Ashkelon in southern Israel

West Bank
Israeli forces engaged fighters from several Palestinian militias, including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), during an operation in the Nour Shams Refugee Camp, Tulkarm.

The IDF reported three Israeli soldiers sustained injuries during clashes with Palestinian fighters who used small arms and improvised explosive devices (IED).  Palestinian sources reported that Israeli forces killed at least five Palestinians, including a senior commander in PIJ’s Tulkarm Battalion.

Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least four locations in the West Bank including multiple engagements in Nour Shams refugee camp.  The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fired small arms targeting Israeli forces near an Israeli settlement north of Hebron.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights
Lebanese Hezbollah conducted at least seven attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.  Hezbollah targeted Israeli surveillance equipment in three attacks using unspecified weapons.

The IDF 869th Combat Intelligence Battalion (91st Division) identified Hezbollah fighters in Aita al Shaab, southern Lebanon, and directed an airstrike targeting them.[56] Hezbollah announced that one of its fighters died but did not provide further details.

Iraq
Waad al Sadiq Secretary General Mohammad al Tamimi criticized the Shia Coordination Framework for supporting Iraqi President Mohammed Shia al Sudani’s visit to Washington, DC.

Iran (Detailed discussion on Israeli strike on Iran in spoiler below)
Israel conducted retaliatory airstrikes targeting an Artesh Air Force base in Esfahan City, Esfahan Province, Iran, in response to Iran’s April 13 drone and missile attack targeting Israel.

An online shipping tracker confirmed that the IRGC intelligence gathering ship, the Behshad, returned to Bandar Abbas port, Hormozgan province, Iran, on April 18.  Bloomberg reported on April 18 that the Behshad left the Red Sea on April 4 to return to Iran.  The Behshad provides the Houthi movement with real-time intelligence, enabling them to target ships that have turned off transponders.

Syria
Israel likely conducted airstrikes targeting Syrian Arab Army (SAA) air defenses and other positions in Daraa Province.

Political Negotiations
Unspecified US and Saudi officials told the Wall Street Journal that the United States is attempting to negotiate a deal in which Israel would recognize Palestinian statehood in exchange for diplomatic recognition from Saudi Arabia.

Exclusive |
DUBAI—Hamas’s political leadership is looking to move from its current base in Qatar, as U.S. legislators build pressure on the Gulf state to deliver on cease-fire negotiations that look likely to fail.

If Hamas left Qatar, the move could upend delicate talks to free dozens of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza and likely make it more difficult for Israel and the U.S. to pass messages to a group designated by Washington as a terrorist organization. Hamas leaders have lived in Doha, the Qatari capital, since 2012 in an arrangement supported by the U.S.

Arab officials said that in recent days the group has contacted at least two countries in the region asking if they would be open to the idea of its political leaders relocating to their capitals. Oman is one of the countries that was contacted, one Arab official said. Omani officials didn’t respond to a request for comment. Arab officials said Hamas believes the slow-moving hostage negotiations could last for months, putting the group’s close ties to Qatar and its presence in Doha at risk.

“The talks have already stalled again with barely any signs or prospects for them to resume any time soon, and distrust is rising between Hamas and the negotiators,” said an Arab mediator familiar with the situation.

In recent weeks, mediators from Qatar and Egypt have pressured Hamas representatives to get the group to soften its conditions. At times, Hamas leadership received threats of expulsion if it failed to agree to a deal releasing hostages.

“The possibility of the talks being upended entirely is very real,” said another Arab mediator.

Qatar, a Persian Gulf monarchy the size of Connecticut, has long worked to end Gaza wars and boost aid to Palestinians, building trust with the combatants and familiarity with their negotiating tactics. In the past six months, it has brought those relationships to bear on one of the world’s thorniest diplomatic crises, demonstrating its value as a U.S. ally while raising its profile as the Middle East’s indispensable mediator.

But Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, recently said the Gulf state was reassessing its role as mediator between Israel and Hamas. He cited what he said was unfair criticism of Qatar’s efforts to end the war in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said pressure should be applied on Qatar, which played a significant role in mediating November’s truce and prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel.

“There are limits to this role and limits to the ability to which we can contribute to these negotiations in a constructive way,” the Qatari leader said at a news conference. “The state of Qatar will make the appropriate decision at the right time.”

Never before has Qatar’s decadelong relationship with Hamas, which is committed to violent resistance to Israeli occupation, come under such scrutiny. The attacks on Oct. 7, when Gaza militants, according to Israeli authorities, killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped over 200 others, have raised suggestions in Israel that Qatar might have been partly responsible because of its ties with Hamas.

Some U.S. lawmakers and Israeli politicians have for months called on the White House to force Qatar to cut ties with Hamas and face punitive action for what they say amounts to support for terrorism.

Qatari and U.S. officials deny the terrorism allegations. They say Qatar has coordinated with Israel on its previous engagements with Hamas, and Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, has praised its recent diplomacy following the Oct. 7 attacks.

The officials say Hamas political leaders are in Doha at Washington’s request and would otherwise end up in a location where it is harder for Western officials to communicate with them, such as Iran or Syria. Qatar’s ability to engage with Hamas is crucial, since U.S. and European officials are prevented from contacting them directly by their governments’ classification of the group as a terrorist organization.

Israel and Hamas remain far apart on issues such as when Israeli forces would leave Gaza and how many Palestinians forced from their homes by Israeli evacuation orders will be able to return, the officials said. Hamas has also said it is unsure whether it could produce 40 Israeli civilian captives as part of a U.S.-backed cease-fire proposal. That stance has complicated talks toward a possible cease-fire in the six-month-old war that has left much of Gaza in ruins, according to Arab officials familiar with the negotiations.

Health officials in Gaza say more than 33,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed there since the start of the war, without distinguishing between civilians and militants.

Israel and Hamas have rejected various proposals made through Egypt and Qatar following the end of the last cease-fire on Nov. 30, though they have previously largely agreed on a framework that includes several phases and a potential long-term cease-fire.

Qatar’s ability to maintain ties with Hamas—as it does with other radical groups such as the Taliban and states including Iran and Venezuela—reflects a difficult balancing act in a world in which the U.S. increasingly demands that its friends take unequivocal stances with it and against an array of enemies. This hereditary monarchy hosts one of America’s largest foreign military bases.

Pressure from U.S. legislators has been building on Qatar to extract more concessions from Hamas or sever ties with the organization.

Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Budd (R., N.C.) introduced a bill to consider terminating Qatar’s status as a major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally unless it expelled all Hamas members or agreed to extradite them to the U.S. The status, which opens the door to more military exercises, joint operations and potential arms sales, was granted by President Biden in 2022 after Qatar helped facilitate the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan.

“Failure to take action against Hamas is beginning to look like tacit support for a foreign terrorist organization designated by the United States,” Budd said in a statement.

The Qatari Embassy in Washington called the bill disappointing and unhelpful. “Especially in this delicate moment in our region, it is reckless to undermine the partnerships that America and its allies have built carefully over decades,” it said in a statement.

Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objected to the bill, saying that while it is uncomfortable for an ally to have a relationship with Hamas, kicking its leaders out of Doha would guarantee that the hostages are never released because there would be no alternative negotiating channel. He said the bill would endanger U.S. interests in the Middle East, predicting that such a move would have an impact on America’s base in Qatar and the Gulf state’s purchases of U.S. arms.

“They are an imperfect ally,” Murphy said. “This is a repressive regime with a bad history on human rights and worker rights, but they are a critical ally.”

He said Qatar hosted Hamas after a request from the U.S. in 2012, later sent money to Hamas at Israel’s request and helped negotiate cease-fires over the past decade.

Israeli officials have for months been lobbying Egypt, which communicates directly with Hamas’s military wing and often with its political leadership, to take a bigger role in hostage talks, citing concern that Qatar wasn’t putting enough pressure on Hamas in Doha.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D., Md.), the former Democratic leader in the House, said in recent days that Qatar should pressure Hamas to release the hostages by cutting off funding to the group or kicking its political leaders out of Doha. “If Qatar fails to apply this pressure, the United States must re-evaluate its relationship with Qatar,” he said in a statement.

The Qatari Embassy in Washington responded by saying Doha is “only a mediator” and that Israel and Hamas are entirely responsible for reaching an agreement. It said that Qatar is frustrated by the slow progress of the talks and is tempted to walk away from them, but that it isn’t giving up on freeing the hostages.

A U.S. official said the Qataris have been clear that when the U.S. wants to have a conversation about ending Hamas’s presence in Doha, Qatar would be ready “to do what’s best” for the bilateral relationship.

Many Israelis fear Qatar’s relationship with Hamas could thwart attempts to destroy the group. Some say that Qatar’s humanitarian aid helps Hamas, even if unintentionally, by freeing the group to spend its money on militant activities.

The Qataris say Hamas trusts them because they have no direct stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their backing of other Islamist groups during the Arab Spring uprisings bolstered credibility with Hamas, according to regional analysts, while Doha-based Al Jazeera television provides sympathetic coverage of the Palestinian cause and amplifies the group’s messaging.

A Qatari negotiator, Abdullah Al Sulaiti, helped coordinate the Gaza war’s November truce. Photo: Imad Creidi/Reuters
A U.S. official said earlier this year that Qatar has used its relationship and ability to speak with Hamas to urge the group toward a reasonable position to advance the negotiations with Israel but that the split between Hamas’s political leadership in Doha and military leadership in Gaza made it difficult to achieve results.

“Our priority is the hostages, especially the American hostages, and we understand that to gain their freedom, it’s important that Qatar be able to have a conversation with Hamas,” said the official. “I don’t think that anyone believes there’s a future for Hamas in Doha. The Qataris understand and are not clamoring for Hamas to stay or be there.”

The IDF has been carrying out a counter-terrorism operation in the West Bank's Nur Shams refugee camp for more than 40 hours now, the military says.

Amid the raid near Tulkarem, at least 10 gunmen have been killed and eight wanted Palestinians have been detained, according to the IDF.

The IDF says the troops also discovered and destroyed a bomb-making lab, and seized firearms, including assault rifles.

Eight soldiers and a Border Police officer have been wounded so far amid the operation. They are listed in light and moderate conditions.

Last night, the IDF says it struck sites in northern Gaza's Beit Hanoun following rocket fire from the area at the southern city of Sderot.

The targets included an underground rocket launcher, the military says.

According to the IDF, several rockets were fired at Sderot, although only one managed to cross the border. It was then shot down by the Iron Dome.

Dozens more targets in the Gaza Strip were hit by Israeli fighter jets and drones over the past day, including gunmen and buildings used by terror groups, the IDF adds.

One member of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces was killed and eight wounded in an explosion at its command post on the Kalso military base 50 km (30 miles) south of Baghdad, a military statement said on Saturday.

There were no drones or fighter jets detected in the airspace of the Babylon area before or during the blast, the military confirmed in a statement.

The Israeli Army said that security forces killed ten Palestinian militants in the area of the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank city of Tul Karm. Furthermore, the army said that eight Palestinians were arrested as part of the operation and weapons including rifles and pistols were confiscated. Eight soldiers and one Border Police officer were wounded in the operation, which began on Thursday.

The condition of the seven-year-old girl seriously wounded in the Iranian missile attack has improved, Soroka Hospital in southern Israel announced.

The Bedouin girl had been wounded in her head by shrapnel that hit her home.

Soroka Hospital said that she is breathing on her own, but her condition is still serious.

In response to the meeting between Turkish president Erdogan and Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, Israel's foreign minister Israel Katz wrote on X: "The Muslim Brotherhood: rape, murder, desecration of corpses and burning babies. Erdogan, shame on you!"

The tweet was also posted on his account in Turkish.

The Saudi Al-Arabiya TV network reported that three Hezbollah operatives were killed in an Israeli strike in Jebbayn, southern Lebanon.

The Palestinian Authority is reconsidering its bilateral relations with the U.S. after it vetoed a security council vote on a Palestinian bid for full UN membership, according to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz joins a growing chorus of criticism by Israeli politicians over the Biden administration’s reported decision to sanction the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda battalion for alleged rights abuses.

Gantz calls the infantry unit “an inseparable part of the Israel Defense Forces,” adding that it’s “subject to military law and is responsible for operating in full compliance with international law.”

“The State of Israel has a strong, independent judicial system that evaluates meticulously any claim of a violation or deviation from IDF orders and code of conduct, and will continue to do so,” the former IDF chief of staff writes in an English post on X.

Gantz adds: “I have a great appreciation for our American friends, but the decision to impose sanctions on an IDF unit and its soldiers sets a dangerous precedent and conveys the wrong message to our shared enemies during war time.”

“I intend on acting to have this decision changed.”

The ‘Netzah Yehuda’ battalion is an inseparable part of the Israel Defense Forces. It is subject to military law and is responsible for operating in full compliance with International law.

The State of Israel has a strong, independent judicial system that evaluates meticulously…

Iran’s Khamenei tells troops to ‘learn enemy’s tactics’ after tit-for-tat attacks

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told the country’s armed forces to “learn the enemy’s tactics” while praising them for launching hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, almost all of which failed to reach their targets.

“How many missiles were launched and how many of them hit their target is not the primary question, what really matters is that Iran demonstrated its will-power during that operation,” Khamenei said on Sunday during a meeting with brass from Iran’s various armed forces, according to state media.

Tehran openly targeted Israel for the first time on April 13 with more than 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and armed drones in what it said was retaliation for Israel’s suspected deadly bombing of its embassy compound in Damascus on April 1.

The Israel Defense Forces said 99 percent of the incoming munitions were intercepted by air defense systems that operated in cooperation with the US, British, French and Jordanian forces across the region. A handful of missiles that made it through the defensive shield caused only minor damage on an airbase. A young girl from Israel’s Bedouin community was seriously injured by shrapnel from one intercepted missile.

Khamenei thanked the officers for carrying out the attack, saying they had raised Iran’s profile in the international community.

He also urged them to “ceaselessly pursue military innovation and learn the enemy’s tactics.”

Israel’s retaliatory strike early Friday reportedly destroyed a Russian-made S-300 air defense radar system meant to protect the covert Natanz nuclear site in central Iran.

Tehran has played down the incident, describing it as a failed assault using three “toy” quadcopters. It has said it had no plans for retaliation, a response that appeared gauged towards averting region-wide war.

An image aired by an Iranian opposition news outlet Sunday appeared to show significant damage to the radar system outside Isfahan.

According to a report in The New York Times, the strike used a high-tech munition able to elude Iran’s air defenses, and had been used to send Tehran a message showing Israel’s capabilities.

Israel has not officially commented on the strike, in line with its strategy of ambiguity regarding actions abroad, meant to give those it attacks maneuverability to avoid pressure to retaliate.

The clash between Israel and Iran came against the background of the ongoing war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip that began with its October 7 cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

The next day, Iran-backed Hezbollah began attacking along Israel’s northern border in what has become near-daily rocket attacks on towns and communities in the area.

Israel has responded with strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure in Lebanon, and allegedly, related targets in Syria, which is also an ally of Iran and Hezbollah and hosts their forces on its territory.

■ The IDF reported that two Palestinians were killed after one tried to stab soldiers and the other shot at the soldiers at the Bet Einun Junction near Hebron.

■ Sabah Haniyeh, the sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of Hamas' political bureau, was charged of inciting and sympathizing with a terror group.

■ Israel's military police are investigating the death of a Red Crescent ambulance driver, who was shot on Saturday during a confrontation between settlers and Palestinians while evacuating people from the conflict area in the village of Al-Sawiya, south of Nablus.

■ A house in Kibbutz Merav in northern Israel was hit by gunfire after several rounds were fired from the direction of the Palestinian village of Jalbun. No one was hurt in the incident. As Israeli forces searched for suspects in Jalbun, a bomb was thrown at the soldiers, but there were no casualties.

■ The IDF reported that two launches fell in Shlomi, in northern Israel, and that there were no casualties.

■ An Israeli was lightly wounded by an explosive device that was set off as he kicked down a Palestinian flag near the Malachei HaShalom outpost in the West Bank.

■ The head of Hamas' political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, said Israel refuses to accept Turkey and Russia as guarantors of an agreement between the Israelis and Hamas – something Hamas insists on.

■ The Iran International website, affiliated with the exiled Iranian opposition, published satellite images showing the damage caused to Iran's air defense radar in the Israel-attributed strike on Friday on Isfahan.