Lesson of the Strike That Killed Soleimani

The Iranians are rational. They can be deterred if the U.S. has the will to use force when necessary.
By Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. (Gen. McKenzie, a retired U.S. Marine general, served as commander of U.S. Central Command, 2019-22. He is executive director of the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida)

Four years ago this week, at the direction of the president, forces under my command struck and killed Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. He was arriving there to coordinate attacks on our embassy and coalition targets across the region. Our successful strike threw Tehran’s plan into disarray. The Iranian response—a barrage of missiles against Al Asad air base in western Iraq—was largely a punch that landed against air. The attack was designed to kill Americans, but commanders on the ground ensured there were no fatalities. I don’t minimize the injuries our forces absorbed in that attack, but it could have been much worse. The Iranians subsequently backed down.

Here is the lesson: The Iranians’ strategic decision-making is rational. Its leaders understand the threat of violence and its application. It takes will and capability to establish and maintain deterrence. We were able to reset deterrence as a result of this violent couplet. The Iranians have always feared our capabilities, but before January 2020, they doubted our will. The bombing of the memorial ceremony for Soleimani in Iran on Wednesday that killed dozens of civilians isn’t an example of deterrence but likely internal factions struggling for power.

After exchanging fire with the U.S. four years ago, Iran continued to pursue its long-term trifecta of strategic objectives: preserving the theocratic regime in Tehran, destroying Israel, and ejecting the U.S. from the Middle East. The mullahs’ actions, however, were muted and hidden behind proxies, from the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hamas in Gaza and Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria. The Iranians remembered the result of a straightforward confrontation with the U.S.

Regrettably, the U.S. hasn’t remembered this lesson and the importance of matching demonstrable will with our capabilities. Even before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Iranian forces were launching missile and drone strikes on our bases across the region, acting through proxies that gave them a measure of deniability. Our response has consistently been tentative, overly signaled and unfocused.

Iranian leaders work with Lenin’s dictum that “you probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.” Tehran and its proxies are pressing their attacks because they haven’t confronted steel. The ability to stop such probing generally depends on a swift and violent counterattack. Delaying and equivocating usually means the response needed to re-establish deterrence has to be much larger than it would have been if it had been applied in a timely manner. As a military officer, I have observed such hesitancy and lack of strategic clarity across several presidential administrations. In 2019, an early and sharp response to Iranian provocation might have ended the escalatory spiral well before the U.S. had to strike Soleimani and accept the possibility of theater war.

There is another issue at stake. If avoiding escalation is the highest U.S. priority, then it is only logical to withdraw our forces from the region. That would ensure attacks on our bases don’t continue but ultimately endanger the future of the Mideast. Language that describes avoiding escalation as our highest priority is, therefore, inaccurate and dangerous. It sends an unhelpful signal to our adversaries as well as our friends and allies.

A case in point is Houthi activity in and around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. In the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy of the U.S. we emphasize the importance of free passage through such global choke points. Protecting this principle, and our strategic priority, is more important than avoiding escalation. Taking strong action against the Houthis isn’t likely to lead to theaterwide escalation. Iran is waging a hidden-hand war from Yemen because it is cheap and because there are few consequences for Tehran. A forceful response against the Houthis, designed to make them feel the pain of continuing their irresponsible behavior, wouldn’t ineluctably lead to a large-scale Iranian response. Pursuing this approach is especially consequential: The Chinese are watching to see how we respond to a threat involving a narrow strait.

Unfortunately, it is the U.S. that is being deterred, not Iran and its proxies. To reset deterrence, we must apply violence that Tehran understands. Paradoxically, if done earlier, this violence could have been of a far smaller and more measured scale. Indecision has placed us in this position. There is a way forward but it requires the U.S. to set aside the fear of escalation and act according to the priorities of our strategic documents and concepts. Iranians understand steel. They also understand mush. It is time to choose.

Israel’s talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms U.S.

“We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Friday, “but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.”

U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government’s failure to prevent Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which killed an estimated 1,200 people and resulted in some 240 hostages being taken to Gaza.

In private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that it will be difficult for Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza, according to two people familiar with those findings. A spokesperson for the DIA did not offer comment.

More than a dozen administration officials and diplomats spoke to The Washington Post for this report, some on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive military situation between Israel and Lebanon.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken left late Thursday to the Middle East for the fourth time since Israel launched its war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 cross-border Hamas attack. The trip comes amid fears of a wider war in the region.

Hezbollah, a longtime U.S. adversary with well-trained fighters and tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, wants to avoid a major escalation, according to U.S. officials, who say the group’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, is seeking to steer clear of a wider war. In a speech on Friday, Nasrallah vowed a response to Israeli aggression, while hinting that he might be open to negotiations on border demarcation with Israel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Israel on Monday where he will discuss specific steps to “avoid escalation,” his spokesman, Matt Miller said before boarding a plane to the Middle East.

“It is in no one’s interest — not Israel’s, not the region’s, not the world’s — for this conflict to spread beyond Gaza,” Miller said. But that view is not uniformly held within Israel’s government.

Since Hamas’s October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah, U.S. officials said. That prospect has faced sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran, which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict — an eventuality that could compel the United States to respond militarily on Israel’s behalf.

Officials fear that a full-scale conflict between Israel and Lebanon would surpass the bloodshed of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war on account of Hezbollah’s substantially larger arsenal of long-range and precision weaponry. “The number of casualties in Lebanon could be anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 and entail a massive evacuation of all of northern Israel,” said Bilal Saab, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank.

Hezbollah may strike deeper into Israel than before, hitting sensitive targets like petrochemical plants and nuclear reactors, and Iran may activate militias across the region. “I don’t think it would be limited to these two antagonists,” he said.

The threat of a wider conflict continued to grow Saturday as Hezbollah launched about 40 rockets into Israel in response to its suspected assassination of senior Hamas leader Saleh Arouri and six others in an airstrike in suburban Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, days earlier.

In recent weeks, Israel’s regular shootouts with Hezbollah along the border have grown more aggressive, drawing private rebukes from Washington, said U.S. officials.

According to U.S. intelligence reviewed by The Post, the IDF has hit the positions of the U.S.-funded and trained Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) more than 34 times since Oct. 7, officials familiar with the matter said.

The United States views the LAF as the principal defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty and a key counterweight to the influence of Iran-backed Hezbollah.

On Dec. 5, four rounds of Israeli tank fire resulted in the killing of one LAF soldier and the injury of three others. On Dec. 8, Israeli artillery fire containing white phosphorous hit LAF facilities, injuring an LAF soldier who inhaled the noxious fumes. On Nov. 4, Israeli fire against an LAF position at Sarda left a “large hole in a LAF structure,” according to the U.S. intelligence. Some details of these attacks were reported previously by CNN.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the Israeli strikes, but the White House National Security Council confirmed that Washington has conveyed to Israel that attacks on LAF and Lebanese civilians are “completely unacceptable.”

A National Security Council official said the Biden administration has been “very direct and tough” with the Israelis on the issue and has said Lebanese Armed Forces injuries and fatalities are not acceptable.

The official also said a priority was maintaining the credibility of the Lebanese Armed Forces and that the international community should be doing everything it can to bolster and support them, as they would be a vital component of any “day after” scenario in Lebanon in which Hezbollah is weakened and poses less of a threat to Israel.

The official emphasized, though, that Hezbollah is a “legitimate threat” to Israel and said the Jewish state has a right to defend itself.

An Israeli official told The Post that Israel does not deliberately target LAF positions and blamed Hezbollah for ratcheting up tensions.

“Hezbollah began firing into Israeli territory, unprovoked, on October 8th and has continued to do so on a daily basis, firing thousands of projectiles. Israel was forced to respond in self-defense,” the official said.

“As a result of Hezbollah’s aggression, tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to leave their homes. The state of Israel will not return to the prewar status quo in which Hezbollah poses a direct and immediate military threat to its security along the Israel-Lebanon border,” the official added.

When Israeli officials first floated the idea of attacking Hezbollah during the opening days of the Gaza conflict, U.S. officials immediately raised objections, said a senior administration official.

Israeli officials initially were convinced that the Lebanese militant group was behind the Hamas incursion and had received bad intelligence that a Hezbollah attack was imminent in the days after Oct. 7, according to two senior U.S. officials. There were deep fears in Israel that the government would miss the signs of another violent assault.

Biden was on the phone up to three times a day, the senior administration official said, in part working to dissuade Israel from attacking Hezbollah — a move that would have resulted in “all hell breaking loose,” the official said. The Israelis’ deep fears about the threat influenced Biden’s decision to fly to Tel Aviv less than two weeks after the Hamas attack, according one of the senior officials.

The risk that Israel might launch an ambitious attack on Hezbollah has never gone away, said White House and State Department officials, but there has been broader concern about an escalation in recent weeks, particularly as Israel announced the temporary withdrawal of several thousand troops from Gaza on Jan. 1 — a decision that could open up resources for a military operation in the north.

“They have a freer hand to escalate,” said a U.S. official.

Another U.S. official said that the forces Israel withdrew from Gaza could be deployed to the north after sufficient time to rest and prepare for another wave of combat. But Israel’s air force is also overworked, having conducted constant strikes since the war began in October, said the official, explaining the Defense Intelligence Agency’s assessment that an escalation in Lebanon would spread Israeli forces thin.

Pilots are tired, and airplanes have to be maintained and refitted, the official said. They would face more dangerous missions in Lebanon than in Gaza, where Hamas has little in the way of antiaircraft defenses to shoot down attacking planes.

On Thursday, Biden sent special envoy Amos Hochstein to Israel to work on an agreement to reduce tensions at the Lebanese-Israeli border. The near-term goal is to develop a process to start negotiating a land demarcation agreement that could delineate where and how the two sides deploy forces along the border in an effort to stabilize the situation.

U.S. and French officials are in discussions with the Lebanese government over a proposal that would have the Lebanese government take control of part of the Lebanon-Israel border, rather than Hezbollah, to help assuage Israeli concerns, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

The White House declined to detail the plan.

“We continue to explore and exhaust all diplomatic options with our Israeli and Lebanese partners,” said the National Security Council official. “Getting Israeli and Lebanese citizens back into their homes, living in peace and security is of the utmost importance to the United States.”

U.S. officials concede that Hezbollah is unlikely to agree to a border deal while scores of Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or injured as a result of Israel’s military campaign there.

Within the administration, there are differing perceptions about Netanyahu’s interest in a negotiated resolution to the Hezbollah conflict. One senior U.S. official said the Israeli leader’s pledge to create a “fundamental change” to address the border fighting with Hezbollah is mere bluster aimed at extracting concessions from the Lebanese group. Others said that if the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict.

“The political logic for Netanyahu is to rebound after the historic failure of Oct. 7 and have some kind of success to show to the Israeli public,” said Saab, the Lebanon expert. “I’m not sure going after Hezbollah is the right way to do it because that campaign will be far more challenging than the one in Gaza.”

When asked if political incentives are driving Netanyahu’s military ambitions, a senior Israeli government official said only that “the prime minister will continue to take the necessary steps to secure Israel and its future.”

Before flying to Jordan, Blinken said reducing tensions at the border “is something that we’re very actively working on.”

“It’s clearly a strongly shared interest” among countries in the region, he said.

Abutaleb and Harris reported from Washington.

Israel admits Hezbollah strike caused extensive damage to strategic airbase
The Hezbollah missiles were fired at the Meron base in northern Israel. While the Iron Dome system can intercept rocket fire, Israel has no system to intercept the anti-tank missiles used by Hezbollah

The Hezbollah missile attack on Mt. Meron on Saturday morning hit a strategic Israeli airbase. The IDF admitted on Sunday that the strikes caused damage to the facility and that it is investigating the incident.

A video released by Hezbollah shows a large number of missile impacts on the base, which serves as the Israeli Air Force's northern air control unit. Hezbollah knew precisely what is based there, and the video describes its role in great detail. Much information about the base is openly available online, and the organization has hit the facility in previous rounds. The organization has targeted the base in the beginning of the current campaign in the north as well. Since then, the IDF has made certain preparations ahead of further potential strikes to the facility.

According to Hezbollah's announcement, dozens of missiles of various types were fired at the base from the village of Yaroun in Lebanon, which is located two kilometers north of the border with Israel. The distance from Yaroun to Mt. Meron is 9.5 kilometers (5.9 miles).

The Hezbollah video shows the high-trajectory firing of dozens of missiles or rockets from Lebanese territory. Hezbollah documented the impacts at Meron, and the video shows a number of rockets or missiles falling in the woodland lower on the mountainside.

However, the video also shows a number of direct hits of what appear to be anti-tank guided missiles on the military facility itself, including the domes shielding the radars that give Israel an aerial picture of the entire northern theater, deep into Lebanon.

A Hezbollah anti-tank missile hit an IDF observation and communication post on the Lebanese border
Open gallery view A Hezbollah anti-tank missile hit an IDF observation and communication post on the Lebanese border
Unlike the high-trajectory fire of rockets or missiles, which can be intercepted by Iron Dome – at short ranges of up to several dozen kilometers – and David's Sling ("Magic Wand") at distances of up to 300 kilometers – Israel air defense systems have no ability to intercept anti-tank missiles, which are fired directly and fly to their target at low altitude.

An advanced system called "TROPHY" is installed on IDF armored vehicles and provides, as proven thus far in the Gaza Strip, much active protection to forces in tanks and armored personnel carriers, but it cannot protect large stationary facilities.

Since the start of the war, Hezbollah has been using anti-tank missiles also against stationary military facilities – including structures, antennae, and communications systems along the Lebanon border, which cannot be protected by "TROPHY."

Hezbollah's older anti-tank missiles – like the Sager, the Tau (or Tufan, in its Iranian version) and even the older generation Kornet, have a maximal effective range of up to 5 km. But Hezbollah is equipped with the more advanced anti-tank missiles as well, including the Kornet-EM, the maximum effective range of which is estimated at 10 kilometers (6.21 miles), precisely the distance from which the missiles were launched at the Meron base on Saturday.

Although there is no system that could have intercepted the anti-tank missiles en route to impact Mt. Meron, it is unclear why the IDF failed to surround the sensitive installations with fences, as it has installed along the northern border. Such fences could have sustained the impact of the anti-tank missiles, triggering the explosion of their warheads, and preventing most, if not all, the damage to the facilities themselves.

On Saturday, the Israeli Air Force put the "Sky Dew" ("Tal Shamaim") system into use, following a year and half of it being inoperable due to technical malfunction. The system is supposed to provide Israel with long-range, early warning of aerial threats upon its territory. The radar, mounted on an aerostat in the north of the country, is supposed to warn of the launch of cruise missiles and low-altitude drones held by Iranian forces and pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

Boobytraps and explosions in the hunt for Hamas tunnels

Israeli soldiers in the Shejaiya area have come under fire while clearing the sophisticated network of Hamas tunnels, one of which was found to be drawing electricity from a school directly overhead

The underground explosion, just before noon, could barely be heard, muffled by tons of earth covering the suspected Hamas tunnel.

On the surface in Gaza City the detonation of thousands of kilograms of explosives felt like a small earthquake. Even the heavy tanks securing the Israeli operational perimeter bounced from the shock. The effect on the buildings remaining nearby, however, was barely discernible.

Most of the buildings in Shujaiya, the eastern neighbourhood of what was once the most populous city of the Palestinian territory, only a few hundred metres from the border with Israel, have been flattened or left standing as empty shells.

Three months ago 100,000 people lived in this dense suburb. Nearly all of them have been forced to flee south. Not a civilian could be seen when The Times visited, as Israel said that it had concluded big combat operations in the north of the territory.

This was one of the staging areas for the October 7 attack on the kibbutzim of Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz, through breaches in the border fence. It was also the scene of a pitched battle back in 2014, the last time Israel entered Gaza searching for Hamas tunnels.

As the Israeli convoys drive into Shujaiya, three months after the latest conflict started, they use the same route they took a decade before. From the deserted kibbutz, through the fence, it takes five minutes in a Humvee.

Much of eastern Shujaiya and other parts of Gaza City now resemble a moonscape. The main features are craters and the ground is covered by a thick layer of soft white dust.

The bombing of the north was done in three stages. First came the airstrikes, in the early weeks, then the ground offensive as armoured columns swept in, engaging with the Shujaiya Battalion, one of Hamas’s most formidable fighting groups.

After the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced that it had “dismantled” all 12 Hamas battalions in Gaza City, a methodical search-and-destroy operation began for the main tunnels under the neighbourhoods, especially tunnels such those in Shujaiya that lead towards the border. This third stage, IDF generals say, may take months.

Hamas engaged in fierce fighting as Israel’s military moves to central Gaza

The unit in charge of eastern Shujaiya is the 11th Brigade, made up of battalions of reservists, most of them graduates of the elite Egoz commando unit, and a tank battalion, whose crews are also reservists.

They were called up from their civilian lives on October 7, and have been in uniform for three months now. The brigade commanding officer, Colonel Nadav, says he does not know how long his troops will have to remain in the sector.

“It can be frustrating not knowing when you’re going home to your family, but our mission here is to degrade as much as possible of the Hamas infrastructure and the longer we stay, the more work gets done,” Nadav said. “The first thing my soldiers see when they come in is the empty Kibbutz Nahal Oz. Our work here is to ensure that the kibbutnizks can go home to Nahal Oz in peace.”

Most of the Hamas Shujaiya battalion had been destroyed or fled during the earlier battles, before the brigade was deployed here, but pockets of resistance remain.

“Most of the terrorists here no longer have commanders,” Nadav said. But they still have strongholds in the surrounding buildings. “You understand you’re in a war zone when you go through the buildings and find flats in which Kalashnikovs, grenades, IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and observation posts have all been prepared so the Hamas fighters can walk around pretending to be civilians until they get there.”

The buildings still standing in Shujaiya are also being used by the Israeli units as temporary headquarters and barracks. Residential blocks have been transformed into military outposts with guard posts, operations centres and lookout posts.

The IDF says it has mostly completed its ground offensive in northern Gaza, although pockets of militants continue the fight

In one of them, a machine-gunner, Ohad, who is a scouts organiser in his civilian life and joined the battalion only a few weeks ago, described being at the Nova music festival on October 7, which was attacked by Hamas. He survived by hiding with 16 other people in a clump of thorn bushes, where they could hear the killing going on around them.

“I needed time. First to go to the funeral and shiva [mourning period] of one of my best friends who was murdered there,” Ohad said. “Then the IDF told me to wait a bit more, but I couldn’t have stayed home while the rest of the unit was fighting in Gaza.”

The brigade is now trying to chart and destroy the tunnel network extending eastwards. Lieutenant-Colonel Hanan is commander of the one of the commando battalions that has been in charge of securing the shafts leading to one section of the tunnel.

“When we started investigating the first one, we came under missile attack,” he said. “The next one was booby-trapped with an explosive device, which luckily fell and detonated under us.”

The shaft was next to the home of a senior commander in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a rival militant organisation to Hamas. But the locations of the tunnels have led Israeli intelligence to believe that the two organisations may have been sharing their networks.

“We located the main shafts next to a big school building,” said the tank battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Ido, who is chief executive a of technology company in civilian life. “Driving over the school’s football field in my tank was like an arrow though my heart.

“I’ve been going to football since I was four and it felt sacrilegious. But there’s no other way to fight here. What can we do when rockets were fired from this neighbourhood and even the school’s electricity is being used for the tunnel?”

Even as the Israeli military said it had concluded most combat operations in the north of Gaza, Daniel Hagari, the IDF spokesman, said that scattered fighting was to be expected, along with rockets launched sporadically towards Israel. He said that Hamas militants “without a framework and without commanders” were still present.

Hagari said that Israeli forces would act differently in the south than in northern Gaza. He said that urban refugee camps being targeted by the military were packed with gunmen and that “an underground city of sprawling tunnels” had been discovered underneath Khan Yunis.

According to reports, among those killed on Sunday were two Palestinian journalists, including the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, a veteran Al Jazeera correspondent who had lost his wife, two other children and a grandson — and was nearly killed himself — earlier in the war. Dahdouh has continued to report on the fighting between Israel and Hamas despite the toll on his family.

Back in Shujaiya, with the mapping over and the area around the tunnel shafts cleared, the battalion begins the demolition operation. Some tunnels and shafts are usually destroyed by sappers using land-mines or demolished by armoured bulldozers.

This one needed a much larger quantity of explosives trucked in. After the perimeter had been secured, the demolition team finished the job. For Israel, however, the war goes on. Echoing Israeli political leaders, Hagari said the fighting “will continue throughout 2024”.

Israel Plans for Next Phase of Gaza War, Defense Minister Says

TEL AVIV—Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said the scale and severity of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas deeply shook Israelis’ sense of security and profoundly altered the way they view the world around them.

“October 7 was the bloodiest day for Jewish people since 1945,” Gallant, a general-turned-politician, told The Wall Street Journal. “The world needs to understand. This is different.”

More than 1,200 people were killed after hundreds of Hamas fighters poured across the border from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel in a raid that included terrorist attacks on a music festival and small agricultural communities. More than 200 others were kidnapped. Scores are still being held hostage.

The gravity of the threat, Gallant said, underlies the ferocity of Israel’s response and its determination not only to destroy Iran-backed Hamas, but also to act with enough force to deter other potential adversaries allied with Tehran, including Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.

In wide-ranging comments, Gallant staunchly defended Israel’s conduct of the war, which is entering its fourth month, and offered a stark assessment of the dangers he said his country is facing, signaling a potentially lengthy conflict in Gaza and an enduring shift in Israel’s defense posture.

“My basic view: We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy,” Gallant said. “Iran is building up military power around Israel in order to use it.”

Ahead of a visit to Israel by Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the U.S., which has urged Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties, Gallant indicated Israeli forces would be shifting from what he called the “intense maneuvering phase of the war” toward “different types of special operations.”

But, he cautioned, the next chapter in the conflict “will last for a longer time” and he stressed that Israel wouldn’t abandon its goals of destroying Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and others, as a fighting force, ending its control of Gaza and freeing the remaining hostages.

Gallant—who was briefly fired and then reinstated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after he warned that upheaval over a controversial judicial-overhaul plan pushed by the government posed risks to national security—has tried to stake out a middle ground on the war and its aftermath.

The defense minister is one of three members of Israel’s war cabinet, along with Netanyahu and National Unity party head Benny Gantz.

After calls last week by far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition for a return of Jewish settlers to Gaza and Israeli occupation of the strip, Gallant’s office outlined a postwar vision of Palestinian self-governance coupled with freedom for the Israeli military to act against security threats.

As Gallant sees it, a multinational task force led by the U.S., with European and Middle Eastern partners, should oversee the “rehabilitation” of Gaza.

Gazan authorities said more than 22,000 people have been killed in the war. The number doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Swaths of the enclave have been destroyed in the fighting, which has also precipitated a humanitarian crisis, with severe shortages of food and medicine.

All of that has drawn criticism from aid organizations and foreign capitals, which have called on Israel to do more to protect civilians and ensure access to aid and healthcare.

“We’re close to the next phase in the north, including Gaza City,” where Israeli troops have largely established control, at least above ground, Gallant said. Israeli officers said they are still working to destroy a large network of underground tunnels used by Hamas fighters.

As the fight—now centered on Khan Younis—moves south, Israel’s military will be operating on an extremely crowded battlefield. Most of the strip’s 2.2 million people are now jammed into the southern end of the enclave, raising the risk of higher civilian losses in fighting there.

“We need to take into consideration the huge number of civilians,” Gallant said, adding that military tactics would need to adjust. “It will take some time,” Gallant said. “But we aren’t going to give up.”

Israeli officials said the shift to lower-intensity operations would be gradual and would happen at different times in different parts of Gaza.

Israeli officers said the most delicate phase of fighting would likely be around Rafah, a Gaza city on the enclave’s border with Israel that is now packed with people displaced by fighting elsewhere. They said Hamas militants also were sheltering there and were being resupplied via tunnels from Egypt.

Israel is in talks with Egypt over control of a critical corridor along the border that Israel said has been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and people. Israel said its destruction is critical to demilitarizing Gaza.

Israeli officials also said they consider improving flows of humanitarian assistance to be central to the war effort. The worse the situation becomes for civilians, the more public pressure Israel’s allies put on it to end the fighting.

“We see humanitarian aid as a strategic necessity,” said one Israeli official. “It will let us go after terrorists and separate them from civilians.”

Gallant said his other immediate concern is Israel’s northern border, where large numbers of Israeli soldiers have been deployed in case of conflict with Hezbollah. Tens of thousands of Israeli civilians have evacuated from their homes in the north of the country.

The U.S. and others have been engaged in shuttle diplomacy aimed at striking a deal between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel wants all Hezbollah forces to be pulled back from border areas.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday there would be a military response to a suspected Israeli strike that killed Hamas leader Salah al-Arouri in Beirut last week.

“The priority isn’t to get into a war” with Hezbollah, Gallant said. But, he said, “Eighty-thousand people need to be able to go back to their homes safely.” If no agreement is negotiated to make that possible, he said, Israel wouldn’t shrink from military action.

“We are willing to sacrifice,” he said. “They see what is happening in Gaza. They know we can copy-paste to Beirut,” the Lebanese capital.

Gallant said Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault represented a major failure of deterrence. He said intelligence indicates that Hamas leaders didn’t expect Israel would mount a large-scale ground operation in response.

“They didn’t take it seriously, even when we first went in,” Gallant said. He said Israel’s ultimate aim is to persuade its enemies that any future attack would provoke ruinous consequences.

“Should Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran be allowed to decide how we live our lives here in Israel?” Gallant asked. “This is something we don’t accept.”

On Gaza civilian evacuation road, IDF uncovers largest Hamas rocket factory to date

BUREIJ, Gaza Strip — Along and beneath the Gaza Strip’s main north-south highway, the Israel Defense Forces on Monday revealed where the Hamas terror group manufactured its long-range rockets that have been used to attack Israeli cities in recent years.

Troops of the 188th Armored Brigade and Golani Infantry Brigade operating in the Bureij camp of central Gaza in recent weeks discovered what the IDF has described as a “terror stronghold of weapons production.”

According to the IDF, the Hamas sites along a kilometer and a half (1 mile) of Salah a-Din road in Bureij, represent the largest rocket manufacturing plant found so far in the Strip.

Media outlets, including The Times of Israel, were given a tour of several of the facilities on Monday, from an underground rocket engine production lab to a warehouse where the body tube of the projectiles were built, to a storage facility.

All of the sites were located within the vicinity of Salah a-Din, which had been used in the early stages of the war as a humanitarian route for Palestinians to flee from northern Gaza to its south.

Col. Or Vollozinsky, the commander of the 188th Brigade, said the area was “a chain of terror factories… on the main road, and under the homes of civilians.”


Around a dozen tunnel entrances were found in the area, along with the headquarters of Hamas’s al-Bureij Battalion, which Vollozinsky’s forces recently captured.

Inside a seemingly unusual building in the area, the soldiers found what appeared to be a waiting area with couches and a bathroom, and in the next room was a staircase leading down into a tunnel.

Inside the tunnel, which goes down some 20 meters, forces found a large chemicals lab used to manufacture explosives and rocket engines, according to Vollozinsky.
Col. Or Vollozinsky, the commander of the 188th Brigade, shows reporters the entrance to an underground Hamas rocket fuel lab in central Gaza’s Bureij, January 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
Pointing to a bag containing a chemical used by Hamas to manufacture rocket fuel, Vollozinsky said troops found hundreds of similar bags inside the underground lab, where Hamas made “a lot of explosives for the rockets for flight into Israel.”

He said that the underground lab also led to the other tunnels they had discovered in the area, and that the site was likely built over several years. “To build such a factory takes a lot of time, [Hamas] managed to maintain this achievement for a long time,” Vollozinsky said.

Asked whether the IDF had intelligence of the site before the ground operation, Vollozinsky told The Times of Israel that forces had information about the general area, but not the exact location.

“To find the tunnels, you need to do a bit of work, but we are experienced after three months, and we know where to look. We got information on a strategic Hamas factory in the area,” he said.

The next site journalists were allowed to tour was a warehouse with several lathes and other heavy machinery, used by Hamas to build the long-range rockets, as well as other munitions, including mortars and explosive devices.

Inside the warehouse was yet another tunnel shaft, this one much deeper and with an elevator. According to the IDF, the tunnel connected to a large underground network, which was used by Hamas to distribute its weapons to all areas of the Gaza Strip.

The last site the IDF allowed reporters to view was an above-ground and underground long-range rocket depot, where the fully built projectiles had been stored.

Numerous rockets, with ranges of 120 kilometers (75 miles) — enough to reach all of central Israel — were found stacked inside the structure.

A Hamas long-range rockets depot in central Gaza’s Bureij, January 8, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
Adjacent to the rockets was an unusually large tunnel entrance, which military officials explained was to enable the massive rockets to be stored beneath the ground.

The commander of the Golani Brigade, Col. Yair Palai, whose forces were involved in uncovering the Hamas rocket production facilities, said the IDF was already in the process of demolishing all of the sites.

“You can see here the importance of the [ground] maneuver,” Palai said. “This is something you need to reach, to enter, understand what is going on, and blow it up completely, make sure nothing is left — not a rocket that can reach Kfar Aza, and not a rocket that can reach Tel Aviv or any other place.”

Palai said there still may be rocket fire on Israel even as troops defeat Hamas battalions, “but us arriving here, dealing with these lathes, weapons factories, and destroying them is critically important.”

Saudi Arabia ready to back US air strikes on Houthi rebels

A Yemeni child holds a knife next to a portrait of the Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi during a Gaza solidarity march this month

Monday January 08 2024, 7.20pm GMT, The Times
Saudi Arabia is among a number of Middle Eastern countries telling the West they back strikes against the Houthis in Yemen whose attacks on shipping in the Red Sea have diminished commercial traffic in the vital waterway.

Any action against the rebels in Yemen would coincide with attempts by the United States to prevent the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas spreading to the rest of the region. The Palestinian group’s allies in Lebanon, Iran and Iraq have targeted Israel as well as US bases in the area and shipping in the Red Sea.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, is visiting the region this week in the hope of containing the war. The simmering conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is in danger of flaring up, with the heavily armed, Iranian-backed militia firing a barrage of rockets at an Israeli base on Saturday and a senior Hezbollah commander dying in an airstrike, apparently by Israel, on Monday.

Hezbollah fought a short but bloody war with Israel in 2006 and has fired rockets into northern Israel since the Gaza war began in October. It says it is not interested in a full-scale conflict but regional officials fear the limited clashes could spread. Israel has warned that it will take action if Hezbollah continues its attacks.

Blinken, on a stop in the United Arab Emirates before travelling to Saudi Arabia, “emphasised the importance of preventing further spread of the conflict”, according to an American summary of the meeting. Saudi state media reported that he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in al-Ula, north of Jeddah, on Monday, with the Saudi leader pushing again for an end to the war in Gaza.

The Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, who control swathes of the country including the capital Sanaa, claim they are targeting only ships with links to Israel, increasing their popularity in the region. They are also in the midst of US and UN-brokered negotiations with Saudi Arabia to end a long-running war that has devastated the country.

Saudi Arabia fears that military action threatened by the US and Britain against the Houthis could upset the talks but has come around to the view that taking no action would make the rebels even more intransigent in negotiations.

Before the war in Gaza, Saudi Arabia had been in talks with the US to normalise relations with Israel, in return for US security guarantees and Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. It has since led Arab efforts to push for an end to the war. The kingdom has also been intent on extricating itself from the eight-year Yemen war while de-escalating regional rivalries as it focuses on plans to turn itself into a finance and tourism hub.

“The day after the Houthis get away with this, they’re going into any negotiation process even more emboldened,” said a source familiar with the talks. He suggested that attempts to cajole the Houthis into stopping their attacks on shipping, including promises of more aid to Yemen, had yielded no results. “How can you talk them out of it? They’re winning hard from this and believe in it. They’ve gained popularity in the region,” the source added.

The rebels, who have been armed by Iran, have commandeered one ship and targeted others with drones and missiles. The attacks have forced international companies including the container shipping giant Maersk to avoid the passageway to the Suez Canal altogether, denting Egypt’s revenues.

The US, Britain, France and several other countries have warned the Houthis to stop their attacks or face military action. Action is also supported by Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Saudi Arabia has been in a more delicate position, given its talks with the Houthis. It does not want its airspace used for any strikes that could target leaders or military installations and equipment, according to sources.

Although a truce in Yemen has held since 2021, the Houthis, who had previously targeted oil installations in Saudi Arabia, have continued to engage in cross-border fire. “The Houthis are testing their limits by the shootings, so I think the Saudis would like to see them get a bloody nose,” said Raiman al-Hamdani, a Yemeni researcher and analyst. “But they wouldn’t try to be involved in that.”

Blinken is also tasked with finding a way to allow more aid into Gaza and boosting reconstruction efforts once the war is over. Much of the Palestinian territory has been destroyed or damaged in the three-month war that was triggered by the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7 in which 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were massacred and more than 240 carried off as hostages, among them a nine-month-old baby. More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israeli offensive.

Arab governments, though not supportive of the Hamas militants, have been pushing the US to pressure Israel into ending the war, which has inflamed public opinion in the region. In Jordan, King Abdullah urged Blinken to press for an immediate ceasefire, warning of the war’s “catastrophic repercussions”, the royal court said in a statement.

A Dutch national sabotaged Iran's nuclear program in 2008, new investigation reveals

Stuxnet, the malware that incapacitated Iran's nuclear program, was thought to have been unleashed by an Iranian engineer. A landmark new report reveals it was a Dutch national – in concert with the Mossad and CIA

A Dutch engineer has been named as the individual responsible for unleashing the notorious Stuxnet malware in Iran's nuclear weapons program in 2008, as part of a joint secret Israeli-American mission.

According to an investigation recently published by prominent Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, Erik Van Sabban was recruited to the mission as early as 2005.

According to the newspaper, Sabban was selected due to his technical background, contacts in the region, and connection to Iran. The fact that he was married to an Iranian woman, whose family still lived in the country, made him ideal for the job.

In 2008, the then 36-year-old engineer breached an Iranian nuclear facility and unleashed the Stuxnet malware, effectively incapacitating the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Sabban is believed to have left Iran immediately after completing his mission.

Sabban died two weeks later in a motorcycle crash in Dubai, where he was living at the time. Volkskrant journalists concluded, after speaking with people present at the accident scene, that there were no indications of foul play.

The Volkskrant article also reveals new details about who exactly was aware of Sabban's role and to what extent. While Dutch intelligence services knew they were participating in the sabotage of the Iranian nuclear program, they did not know their agent was bringing in the Stuxnet malware.

Even more strikingly, the Dutch government and the political committees, which are typically kept abreast of the Netherlands' general intelligence and military intelligence's actions, appear to have had no knowledge of the operation whatsoever.

The new revelations are expected to spark political controversy in the Netherlands. After the report came out, several parliamentarians demanded clarification about the operation, including why the government and parliament did not know about it.

"I think a prime minister should be informed because of the possible geopolitical implications," said Wim Kuijken, a former senior Dutch official speaking to British newspaper The Times.

In 2010, it was reported that the Stuxnet malicious computer worm was meant to sabotage the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, where the centrifuge operational capacity had dropped by 30 percent the year before.

Haaretz security analyst Yossi Melman wrote at the time that according to foreign sources, Stuxnet was considered one of the major achievements of former Mossad head Meir Dagan.

Hezbollah's precision precedent: Sniping at Israeli homes using antitank missiles
Hezbollah is believed to be the first to use precise antitank missiles to target civilian structures. Dozens of Israeli buildings have taken direct hits - and now even towns that were not evacuated are within firing range

A Hezbollah anti-tank missile hitting homes in northern Israel, in response to 'attacks on civilian communities' in southern Lebanon.

On Sunday, shortly before darkness fell, a hotel in Metula took a direct hit from an antitank missile fired by Hezbollah. Of the dozens of antitank missiles fired at the town since the start of the war, this was the 12th building that took a direct hit. The picture is similar in Manara: In the 30 antitank missiles fired at the kibbutz, 10 buildings, including the dining hall kitchen, have taken a direct hit.

Since October 7, Hezbollah has fired mortars and rockets, as well as incessant artillery, at IDF outposts and border communities. But what particularly stands out in the current round of fighting is the high proportion of antitank missiles fired from Lebanon. Hezbollah's use of this precision weapon, especially against civilian targets, is unprecedented in Israel and perhaps the world.

One hundred twenty of Metula's 600 houses have taken perimeter damage. It is not clear how many of them have been damaged by other means, or even by shock waves from IDF artillery. "We don't know for certain, because we haven't yet gone there. The whole area is within range," says local council head David Azoulay. Eighty of the 155 homes in Kibbutz Manara have been damaged by shrapnel and shock waves, according to community manager Yochai Wolfin.

The list of communities hit by antitank missiles and the damage to civilian infrastructure is long and spreads along the entire length of the Lebanese border. Haaretz has obtained figures indicating that scores of homes, public buildings, chicken coops, businesses and vehicles have been hit by this fire in the moshavim Avivim, Dovev, Zar'it and Shtula, and the kibbutzim Misgav Am and Sasa, and other communities.

The range of the antitank missiles fired from Lebanon at civilian targets in the Galilee Panhandle, which borders the Golan Heights, now comes to Moshav Beit Hillel, located four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the border; and Kibbutz Kfar Szold in the Hula Valley, six kilometers from the border, whose residents have not been evacuated.

"Hezbollah is one of the leading organizations in the world to use antitank missiles against non-military targets," says Dotan Rochman, the security officer of the Upper Galilee Regional Authority, where communities have taken direct hits. "The great change that is now happening is that the organization is using this as a sniping weapon. We taught them that it's possible to fire missiles from an Apache through a building window, so they are now firing antitank missiles through a window from a distance of nine kilometers."

Hezbollah has exploited these sniper capabilities not just to damage civilian infrastructure, but also to injure people. Since the start of the war, four civilians have been killed by direct antitank missile fire. In Moshav Shtula, a construction worker was killed; near Kibbutz Yiftach, a water tanker driver was killed going to an outpost in the area; near Moshav Dovev, an Israel Electric Corporation worker was killed; and near Matat, a farmer from Netu'ah was killed while working his land.

Hezbollah previously used antitank missiles, including the Kornet, in the Second Lebanon War and subsequently in local firefights. These weapons, which were originally developed to penetrate armored vehicles, are fairly precise, and also relatively expensive, and their use was mainly limited to the battlefield or against border targets. Since the start of the fighting in the north, Hezbollah has fired them against IDF forces operating from border communities.

Dr. Yehoshua Kalisky, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, says that the manner of their current use by Hezbollah is unprecedented in the world. "This is massive use, daily, against civilians, soldiers, vehicles, chicken coops and houses in the north. Against anything that moves, or does not move, and there is no defense against it." The world is familiar with the pounding of cities in war, such as what Russia did to Bakhmut in Ukraine, but those cities were hit by heavy artillery and bombs. The current case – use of antitank missiles – is different.

Although the Trophy system has been proven to provide tanks and APCs with effective defense against antitank missiles in Gaza, the IDF has no means to intercept these missiles when they are fired at squads of soldiers, vehicles and buildings along Israel's northern border. Since the outbreak of the war, Hezbollah's extensive antitank missile fire has killed two soldiers, seriously wounded at least five and lightly wounded many others.

The precision fire enables Hezbollah to keep the fire below the threshold of war – a threshold that, at the moment, Israel also hesitates to cross – while succeeding in imposing terror far more effectively than in similar cases in which hundreds of rockets were fired. "It is a fact that tens of thousands of people cannot go back to their homes," says Kalisky.

The element of fear definitely plays a key role here. To date, the state has evacuated at its own initiative 50,000 Israelis from communities located within 3.5 kilometers of the border. But the weekend strike on an air traffic control base on Mount Meron revealed that Hezbollah also has antitank missiles with a 10-kilometer range, which puts more communities within a direct-line-of-sight from Lebanon – including Sde Nehemia and Kfar Blum in the Hula Valley, and Rehaniya, Kerem Ben Zimra and Jish in the mountains – into firing range, and they have not been evacuated yet.

The Iron Dome system provides warnings, albeit brief, of high-trajectory rocket and mortar fire, and intercepts most fire to settled areas. But antitank missiles are fired by direct sight on a flat trajectory. Their time in the air is fairly long – at least 30 seconds at these ranges – but Israel has no countermeasure that would give residents even five seconds' warning to seek shelter, or intercept incoming missiles to a community.

"When we asked why Kfar Szold was not evacuated, army sources told us that antitank missiles only have a range of five kilometers. But Hezbollah has already reached longer ranges and this concept has collapsed in front of our eyes," says Pnina Eisenberg Borstein, the kibbutz community director. "Last Saturday, an antitank missile was fired at Givat Ha'em nearby – and the threat has materialized. There is already a crisis of confidence since October 7. So when we see that the army's basic assumption is breached, it definitely does not ease our anxiety."

"Hezbollah exploits our weakness in the best possible way. It has no aircraft, artillery or tanks, so it tries to operate creatively," adds Kalisky, as the precision attack on the air traffic control base testifies. Nonetheless, he says that it is possible to deal with laser and radar-guided antitank missiles too, including by electromagnetic jamming or smoke screens to blind them.

Following the targeted fire, the IDF frequently blocks roads near the border, fearing antitank fire against civilian vehicles. "This is a precision and lethal threat that we cannot live with," says Avner Eliyahu, a member of the Shtula moshav committee. Antitank missiles have hit six chicken coops and homes in the moshav. "We have a guesthouse in which we invested millions, and which has suffered immense damage even before it opened," says Itzik Ben Moha, chairman of the Zar'it moshav committee. "Even though I am a member of the preparedness squad, I have not gone near it; it's 150 meters from the border. I was born and raised here, I've undergone wars and military operations, but I can't remember anything like this. This is fire intended to cause damage and destruction the likes of which I cannot remember."

"We're playing Russian roulette here with the men who come to work in the chicken coops," says Jacqueline Yekuti of Moshav Dovev. "There is no siren for antitank missiles, and unlike rockets, they are directed at a specific target. We were born, raised, and grew up here, we've invested in and worked the land, but today, we can't go near it."

IDF probe finds tank shelling caused blast that led to deaths of 6 combat engineers
9 January 2024, 9:17 pm 31

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday released details of its initial probe of a deadly blast in the central Gaza Strip a day prior, in which six combat engineers were killed and several others were wounded.

The reservists were killed when explosives intended for demolishing a Hamas tunnel in Bureij detonated prematurely.

According to the IDF’s initial probe of the blast, the early explosion of the tunnel system was caused by a tank shelling.

Combat engineers had been preparing the tunnel for demolition, rigging the underground passages with explosives.

Half an hour before the detonation was supposed to be carried out, a tank stationed near the detonating cord fired shells at a nearby building after identifying suspicious movement.

According to the probe, one of the shells hit an electricity pole, and the blast somehow activated the detonating cord, leading to the premature massive explosion of the tunnel system while the combat engineers were still working on preparing it for demolition.

Further details surrounding the circumstances of how the tank shelling set off the detonator cord were still under investigation.

Several others were injured, some seriously, in the explosion.

Among those hurt in the incident was entertainer Idan Amedi, a popular singer and actor on the hit TV show “Fauda,” who was airlifted to a hospital Monday and was not in life-threatening danger, his father said.

The blast occurred close to where officers were leading reporters, including this writer, on a tour of a Hamas rocket manufacturing plant.

This writer heard and saw a large blast rip through the air, and captured the moment in the photo at the top of this article.

As the IDF began to escort the reporters out of the Strip, medical dispatches were heard over the radio, with commanders declaring a mass casualty incident.

Three other soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip on Monday, raising the toll in Israel’s ground offensive against Hamas to 185.

Israel launched its offensive after thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 240 victims hostage, over half of whom remain in captivity in Gaza.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says over 23,000 people have been killed in the fighting, though these figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 8,500 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

IDF brass said to warn political leaders that West Bank on brink of violent eruption

Security chiefs have warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times in recent days that the West Bank is on the brink of a major eruption in violence, Israeli television reported Monday.

According to Channel 12 news, the warnings were relayed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and other senior military commanders, who said Israel risked a new front in the West Bank amid the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and ongoing clashes on the northern border with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

Besides Netanyahu, the report said the other members of the war cabinet — Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Minister Benny Gantz — were also warned of the prospect of major unrest in the West Bank.

The heightened concern comes on the heels of Israel’s withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that belong to the PA in addition to refusing to allow some 150,000 Palestinian workers return to their jobs in Israel and the settlements, the report said, noting Netanyahu’s refusal to hold security cabinet votes to reverse both decisions, given pressure from his far-right coalition partners.

“We may end up with a third Intifada [in the West Bank] because of the discontent resulting from the economic difficulty and lack of entry of workers to Israel,” the IDF commanders were quoted as saying.

The network added that the military’s assessment was shared by the Shin Bet security service.

Also Monday, the Axios news site reported that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed rebuffed a request from Netanyahu for Abu Dhabi to pay unemployment benefits to the Palestinian workers who Israel has refused to allow to return to their jobs since the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group’s onslaught on October 7.

“Ask Zelensky for money,” bin Zayed reportedly told Netanyahu, sarcastically suggesting that the Ukrainian president could foot the bill with all of the international support Kyiv has been getting since Russia’s invasion.

“The notion that Arab countries will come in to rebuild and pay the bill for what’s currently happening is wishful thinking,” an Emirati official told Axios.

MBZ couldn’t believe Netanyahu thought the UAE would be willing to pay for a problem that was created due to Israel’s decision not to allow the workers in, a source familiar with the matter told the news site.

The reports came a day after an East Jerusalem Palestinian man was killed and a woman seriously wounded in a shooting near Ramallah, in what appeared to be the first deadly terror attack in the West Bank since November, though there have been several attempted attacks in that period. On December 31, two guards were injured in a stabbing at the entrance to the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, during which the assailant managed to grab a semi-automatic rifle.

It was also the latest of a series of incidents outside the northern quadrant of the West Bank, where much of the violence has been concentrated in recent years. Army raids have largely focused on Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem, where they have attempted to uproot terror movements that had gained footholds.

Hamas planned Oct. 7 from before 2014, with final decision made by 5 leaders – report

The October 7 onslaught began with 70 terrorists who carried out a surprise assault at several points along the border of the Gaza Strip, according to sources close to the leadership of Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades military wing.

The sources told the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in a report published Wednesday that the terrorists involved in the devastating attack were selected from among hundreds of elite commandos from all over Gaza, and underwent training for a number of years, along with continuous testing to gauge their skills.

Some 1,200 people were slaughtered and around 240 others dragged to Gaza as hostages — mainly civilians — when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel on October 7, rampaging through communities and army bases in the south.

The London-based newspaper said that plans for the devastating assault on Israeli towns close to the Gaza border began years earlier — prior to Operation Protective Edge in 2014 — but major efforts to train and prepare were frozen with the outbreak of fighting and stayed on hold for a year at that point.

After another military conflict, Operation Guardian of the Walls, in May 2021, Hamas decided to implement the plan.

The Saudi-owned newspaper said that the terror group was so determined to keep details of the plan under wraps to prevent potential leaks to Israeli intelligence that even many of the battalion commanders weren’t told what was happening. The terrorists recruited for the operation were not told what they were training for, and were made to swear an oath of secrecy.

The report said that the final decision launching the assault was made by just five senior members of Hamas — Gaza military leader Yahya Sinwar, armed-wing commander Muhammad Deif, Muhammed Sinwar (brother of the Hamas leader), senior member of Hamas politburo and Sinwar confidant Rawhi Mushtaha, and Ayman Nofal, a member of the terror group’s General Military Council and the head of its military wing’s Central Gaza Brigade, who was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza in October.

Ayman Siam, the head of Hamas’s rocket firing array — also killed in an Israeli strike in October — was told to prepare to launch hundreds of rockets to coincide with the start of the assault.

Sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that those responsible for the preparations told the lower-level commanders three days before the assault that the “equipment” had been put in place for the start of the attack, without telling them when it was to be launched. Meetings were then held with commanders of the regional brigades, and tasks were assigned without telling them when and where exactly the plan was to be implemented.

On October 6, the five top leaders decided that the onslaught was to take place the next day.

The decision was made due to a combination of factors, including the fact that the border area was relatively quiet, and it was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah.

The report said that it was only at this stage that many Hamas leaders inside and outside Gaza were briefed on the upcoming operation, and told to go into hiding in line with the terror group’s usual security procedures during times of conflict.

The sources said that while top Hamas terrorists politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy, Saleh Al-Arouri (killed in an alleged Israeli strike in Beirut earlier this month), had known about the existence of a plan for an “exceptional attack,” they were not given precise details or the timing.

The report said the two were only informed a few hours in advance that the assault was to take place, at the same time the other Hamas officials were informed.

Sources told the newspaper that at midnight on October 6/7, the field commanders received instructions to begin preparations and to move gunmen into position for the onslaught to be launched at dawn.

The terrorists detonated explosive devices that were specially prepared to blow up openings in the border fence at previously identified weak points. At the same time, other terrorists crossed the border using hang gliders, and still others  launched a naval assault.

The terror group’s initial plan had been to carry out a “major qualitative attack” in which a number of Israel Defense Forces soldiers would be taken captive, the newspaper reported.

However, the sources said that Hamas was surprised by the ease with which it toppled the Israeli military’s defenses in the area surrounding the border, meaning that it was able to quickly kill, wound and kidnap a large number of soldiers.

An hour and a half after the start of the assault, Hamas decided to send further elite forces across the border to give support to the terrorists already inside the border towns.

After that, the coordinator of the armed wings of the Al-Qassam Brigade notified further groups that they could join the operation, assigning specific tasks to each faction.

Hamas commanders ordered the terrorists to keep the Israeli forces engaged as much as possible to allow the kidnapping of more hostages to Gaza.

Over half of the hostages still remain in captivity in the Strip.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says over 23,000 people have been killed in the war sparked by the onslaught, though these figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 8,500 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7, and that it seeks to minimize civilian casualties.

Houthi rebels who attacked British ship trained at elite Iranian academy

The findings demonstrate Tehran's direct involvement in widening the conflict in the Middle East

Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles at a British Navy ship in the Red Sea, trained at an elite Iranian naval academy.

Some 200 mercenaries, who control swathes of Yemen, were sent to the leading naval institution in Iran to receive instruction from Revolutionary Guard officials, The Telegraph can reveal.

Details of the training, gathered by intelligence sources in Iran, demonstrate Tehran’s direct involvement in widening the conflict in the Middle East.

On Wednesday, Britain was considering retaliatory strikes on land targets in Yemen, The Telegraph understands.

UK and US naval forces shot down missiles and drones in the Red Sea on Tuesday night, believed to be fired by the Houthis in support of Hamas.

At least one missile directly targeted a Royal Navy battleship for the first time, prompting a threat of retaliation by Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “This cannot continue and we won’t allow it to continue so watch this space.”

British and US sources said Western officials were drawing up options for a retaliatory attack, including hitting Houthi rebel positions in Yemen.

Houthi rebels declared war on Israel shortly after the Oct 7 Hamas attacks. They are believed to be backed and armed by Iran.

A group of 200 travelled to the Khameini Academy of Naval Sciences and Technology in Ziba Kenar on the Caspian coastline, sources inside Iran told The Telegraph. The claim was verified by multiple defence sources.

A section is dedicated to the six-month training course for foreign mercenaries under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s (IRGC) Quds Force, including the Houthis.

The academy was established in 2013 and within four years, all IRGC naval training, including that of Iran’s proxies, was transferred there. The first course for Houthis in naval science and technology was launched in January 2020, and the Houthis were housed separately from other students, who were barred from interacting with them in order to prevent intelligence leaks.

Farur Island, a small, uninhabited island in the middle of the Persian Gulf controlled by the IRGC Navy, is also used for training Iran’s mercenaries.

An international coalition has launched patrols in the Red Sea to protect merchant vessels, and warned on Jan 3 that “Houthis will bear the responsibility for the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, or the free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways”.

Tuesday’s attack, which targeted HMS Diamond among other ships, appeared to cross the coalition’s red lines. Mr Shapps hinted at retaliation but the Ministry of Defence would not be drawn on details.

The militant group has claimed that the ships targeted so far were linked to Israel.

Sources in Iran said Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, has taken a personal role in the Red Sea blockade in November, supporting the further provision of weapons and equipment to the Houthis.

The world’s largest shipping firms are continuing to divert shipments away from the Red Sea and instead around the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa, adding thousands of miles to journeys, and threatening to drive up prices of goods across the world.

Iran deems the attacks the most effective tactic for the escalation of the Gaza war against its arch enemy, Israel, according to information from inside the IRGC.

Tehran maintains it had no hand in the Hamas attacks and had no prior knowledge of its taking place, despite Hamas leaders meeting with top Iranian officials in Tehran and Beirut in the months leading up to it.

A cross-party statement from the UK parliament has called to proscribe the IRGC as a terrorist entity, but until now, the Government has resisted, despite warnings in November from Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, who revealed that there had been at least 10 IRGC plots foiled on UK soil between January and November last year.

Mr Shapps said it was thought that HMS Diamond had been deliberately targeted by the Iranian-backed rebel group in its latest missile and drone barrage in the region.

“My understanding is that both the ship itself potentially was targeted ... but also that there’s a generalised attack on all shipping (in the region),” Mr Shapps told reporters.

He said there was no doubt that Iran was guiding the Houthis on the attacks, dozens of which have been carried out in the region since mid-November.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council scheduled a resolution that would condemn and demand an immediate halt to attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on merchant and commercial vessels in the Red Sea area.

The US draft resolution says at least two dozen Houthi attacks impede global commerce “and undermine navigational rights and freedoms as well as regional peace and security.”

Robert Wood, the US’s deputy ambassador at the UN said: “We’re hoping that it will pass. I don’t know how ... one security council member is going to vote.”

Mr Wood was referring to Russia, which raised questions last week about the impact of a resolution on peace efforts in Yemen and the spread of the Israel-Hamas war. It could abstain or veto the resolution.

It comes as Germany resumed arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, starting with a shipment of air-to-air missiles for Eurofighter jets.

The move is likely to bolster efforts to contain the Houthis, which Saudi Arabia has been at war with in recent years.

The German federal security council has approved the transfer of 150 IRIS-T missiles to Riyadh according to government documents.

It comes after a similar announcement by Germany earlier this week in which the government said it will no longer block a British proposal to sell additional Eurofighter jets to the Saudis. The Eurofighter project is a joint venture between Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The twin announcements are a major shift in policy for Germany, which imposed a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi leadership and a Washington Post columnist.

Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince, became a global pariah over the murder, which he was accused of ordering himself, though he vehemently denies those claims.

Berlin has become a staunch ally of Israel, which in turn is seeking a normalisation treaty with Saudi Arabia, and recently struck a €4 billion (£3.4 billion) deal to purchase Israel’s Arrow 3 air defence system to defend Europe’s skies.

Britain is also seeking to host the Crown Prince on an official visit to London in the near future. The Saudi de facto ruler had been due to visit London last Autumn, but the trip was delayed due to Germany’s resistance to the Eurofighter sale, an obstacle which has now been removed.

IDF: Hamas used over 6,000 tons of concrete, 1,800 tons of steel for Gaza tunnels

Hamas used more than 6,000 tons of concrete and 1,800 tons of steel for the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels it built beneath the Gaza Strip, the IDF said Thursday, citing new intelligence.

It also revealed new video footage of a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis where it believes hostages were previously held by the terror group.

The IDF said information recovered by troops in Gaza, along with the hundreds of underground passages that have been investigated so far, indicated that Hamas invested tens of millions of dollars in its tunnels project.

“The Hamas terror organization chose to invest these precious resources in building a terror infrastructure used to harm Israeli citizens and IDF forces, while cynically exploiting the civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said.

Amid the ground operation in Gaza, now nearing its 100th day, the IDF has been operating to demolish Hamas’s main tunnel networks.

War erupted between Israel and Hamas after the terror group’s October 7 massacres, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages of all ages — mostly civilians.

Vowing to destroy the terror group, Israel launched a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry has said killed over 23,000 people since. These figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 8,500 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Several hostages freed in a ceasefire deal in late November described being held inside tunnels, which Hamas has laid throughout the Gaza Strip and which Israel says have long been used to smuggle weapons and fighters throughout the enclave.

The tunnel seen in the footage released by the IDF on Thursday was located by the Commando Brigade, the elite Yahalom combat engineering unit and other special forces, and connects to a wide underground network.

“After investigating the tunnel, it can be said that there were Israeli hostages in it,” the IDF said.

It is believed that 132 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during the late November truce.

Four hostages were released prior to that, and one was rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military. The Israel Defense Forces has confirmed the deaths of 25 of those still held by Hamas, citing new intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza.

Israel also believes that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is hiding in a tunnel somewhere in Khan Younis.

On Wednesday, the military took journalists from international outlets to see the tunnel, and said that so far in the Khan Younis area, troops have uncovered more than 300 tunnel shafts leading to major Hamas tunnels in the area. More than 100 tunnels have so far been destroyed or rendered inoperable.

The city, Gaza’s second-largest, has become the focus of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in recent weeks. On Wednesday’s tour for journalists, no residents appeared to be in the area. Israel has ordered residents to evacuate portions of the city as it proceeds with the offensive.

Visiting the border with southern Gaza on Thursday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant indicated that Israel was still in full fighting mode in Khan Younis.

“There are a great many troops inside, west of here, operating within Khan Younis in a very, very impressive manner, above ground and below,” he said, while visiting an area across from the southeastern Gaza town of Khuza’a, on the outskirts of Khan Younis.

He said that there is no more justified war than the one being waged by Israel against Hamas and no army more moral than the IDF, in apparent reaction to genocide charges made against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague earlier on Thursday.

The army “still differentiates each day between [terrorists] who need to be eliminated and those who are uninvolved, for whom we provide access to humanitarian aid, medicine, food, water; to separate between the civilian population and murderous lowlife terrorists who we will hunt until they are finished off,” the defense minister said.

Fighting also continued Thursday in Maghazi in the Strip’s center, the IDF said.

In one incident in Maghazi, troops of the Golani Brigade spotted three Hamas gunmen coming out of a tunnel. The gunmen were then struck by an aircraft, according to the IDF.

In another incident, the IDF said reservists of the Yiftah Brigade spotted eight Hamas operatives moving toward a school in Maghazi, and killed them with sniper fire.

In Khan Younis, the IDF said troops of the Givati Brigade spotted three Hamas operatives coming out of a building where weapons were stored, and called in an airstrike.

Also in the Khan Younis area, the Commando Brigade spotted two Hamas operatives, one planting an explosive device and the other observing from a rooftop. The IDF said both operatives were killed in an airstrike by a fighter jet.

The war has triggered an acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with an Israeli siege sparking shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine.

The UN humanitarian office said in a report that “access denials” and other constraints blocked most aid deliveries that had been planned this month.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday said there are “nearly insurmountable challenges” to aid delivery in Gaza amid bombardment, movement restrictions, fuel shortages and interrupted communications.

The WHO says only a few Gaza hospitals are even partly functioning.

On Thursday afternoon, Palestinian media reported that an Israeli strike had targeted a car in the southern Gaza Strip, killing eight people.

The reports said the strike occurred in the al-Manara neighborhood of Khan Younis.

There was no immediate comment on the strike from Israeli authorities, though Israeli reports described the attack as a “targeted assassination.”

The war in Gaza against Hamas has claimed the lives of 186 Israeli soldiers since Israel launched a ground operation in late October to eliminate the Strip’s Hamas rulers and free hostages abducted during the terror group’s October 7 rampage.

The latest fatality, announced Wednesday morning, was Sgt. First Class (res.) Elkana Newlander, 24, a combat medic in the 99th Division from the West Bank settlement of Efrat, who was killed fighting in the central Gaza Strip Tuesday. A reservist from the Yiftach Brigade was seriously wounded in the same battle.