The United States, Egypt, and Qatar are pushing a new, multi-part plan to end the Israel–Hamas war. The US-Egyptian-Qatari plan will enable Hamas to reconstitute and present a continued threat to Israel. This proposed plan, as reported, does not include any provisions to disarm Hamas.

The plan contains three parts that will occur over a 90-day period.  

Hamas would first release all civilian hostages in return for Israel releasing “hundreds” of Palestinian prisoners.

Israel would also withdraw its forces from population centers in the Gaza Strip, allow freedom of movement throughout the Gaza Strip, end “surveillance,” and double the flow of humanitarian aid into the strip.

Hamas would release all female Israeli soldiers and return the bodies of dead hostages to Israel in the second stage.

Finally, Hamas would release the remaining Israeli soldiers and fighting-age males, while Israeli forces withdraw from the strip completely.

An Egyptian official [said] that the parties to the agreement are considering “safety guarantees” for Hamas’ political leadership and the formation of an “international fund” for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

After the 90-day period, the plan would lead to a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the relaunching of a process to form a Palestinian state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his rejection of a “ceasefire” in exchange for the release of all Israeli hostages held by Hamas in a video published on January 21.  Netanyahu was not explicitly responding to the US-Egyptian-Qatari plan. The PM also noted that an end to the war that leaves Hamas intact means that the next October 7 attack is “a matter of time.”

This proposed plan, as reported, does not include any provisions to disarm Hamas. Hamas will be able to rebuild its governance capabilities in the Gaza Strip, which allowed it to generate funds for its operations prior to its October 7 attack.

Hamas would essentially have access to the same resource pools that it had prior to the war. Hamas fighters are already reinfiltrating areas that Israeli forces cleared in the northern Gaza Strip, which will facilitate Hamas’ reconstitution.  

This reinfiltration process would accelerate under the implementation of the first phase of the proposed plan, in which Israeli forces would leave Gazan cities and towns.
 
“Safety guarantees” for Hamas’ political leadership would protect some of the planners of the October 7 attacks, possibly including Yahya Sinwar.

Two East Jerusalem residents indicted for alledged ISIS-inspired terror plot near Knesset
According to the indictment, the two individuals were alledgedly planning to blow up a truck full of gas tanks outside the Knesset in Novemeber, after being radicalized online and swearing allegience to the Islamic State

Two East Jerusalem residents, aged 19 and 20, were indicted on Monday for planning to carry out an attack near the Knesset in Jerusalem. The prosecution claims that the two suspects, Mustafa Abd al-Nabi and Ahmad Natsheh, are Islamic State supporters and petitioned the Jerusalem District Court to extend the detention order until the end of the proceedings.

According to the indictment, over the past two years Al-Nabi had undergone religious radicalization, watching videos of ISIS's atrocities and the organizations' religious preaching. In September, Natsheh also began supporting the Islamic State and swore allegiance to it, according to a training video on its website.

The indictment says that during November, following Hamas' October 7 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, Al-Nabi decided to carry out an attack by blowing up a truck full of gas tanks near the Knesset. To execute his plan, he started learning about explosives and how to maximize their damage, stocked up on chemicals, began turning them into explosives and gathered information about the Knesset building.

At the beginning of December, according to the indictment, Al-Nabi turned to Natsheh, who he knew shared his interest with ISIS, and asked for help with obtaining additional tools and materials. He then asked him to take part in the attack, which Natsheh accepted.

The two were arrested on December 26. The indictment accuses the two of attempting to use weapons for terror purposes, conspiracy of terrorism, training in acts of terrorism, membership in a terrorist organization and obstruction of justice.

In deadliest incident of Gaza combat, 21 soldiers killed as buildings collapse in blast

Explosion possibly caused by Palestinian RPG attack as IDF prepared structures for demolition using explosives, with nearby tank hit by a missile; death toll in ground op reaches

Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed Monday when they came under attack in the southern Gaza Strip, triggering a blast that collapsed two buildings with soldiers inside them, the military said Tuesday morning.

The buildings were being rigged for demolition by troops when Palestinian gunmen fired an RPG at a tank securing the forces. A second blast then occurred in the buildings, possibly as a result of a second RPG, leading to their collapse.

It was the single deadliest incident since the start of Israel’s ground offensive in the enclave, and raised the military death toll in the operation to 219.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that troops were operating in an area around 600 meters from the border, across from the southern Israeli community of Kissufim.

They were destroying structures and Hamas sites as part of the army’s efforts to establish a buffer zone to allow residents of Israeli border communities to return to their homes.

“At around 4 p.m., an RPG was fired by gunmen at a tank securing the forces, and simultaneously, an explosion occurred in two two-story buildings. The buildings collapsed due to this explosion, while most of the forces were inside and near them,” he said.

According to military sources, two of the soldiers were killed by the RPG fire on the tank. Several other soldiers were wounded in the blast, including one in serious condition.

Hagari said the explosion in the buildings was likely a result of mines planted by troops for the purpose of later demolishing the structures, but the cause of the detonation was still under investigation. The buildings may have been hit by a second RPG.

Rescue forces described the scene as reminiscent of the aftermath of an earthquake.

For several hours, a large number of troops from the IDF’s search and rescue units worked to extract the casualties from the collapsed buildings.

The IDF was investigating the circumstances of the incident in order to prevent its recurrence.

By Tuesday afternoon, the IDF named all 21 soldiers killed in the incident, all of them reservists.

They were named as:

Sgt. Maj. (res.) Matan Lazar, 32, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Haifa.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Hadar Kapeluk, 23, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Mevo Beitar.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Sergey Gontmaher, 37, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Ramat Gan.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Elkana Yehuda Sfez, 25, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Kiryat Arba.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Yuval Lopez, 27,of the 205th Brigade’s 9206th Battalion, from Alon Shvut.
Master Sgt. (res.) Yoav Levi, 29, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Yehud-Monosson.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Nicholas Berger, 22, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Jerusalem.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Cedrick Garin, 23, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Tel Aviv.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Rafael Elias Mosheyoff, 33, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Pardes Hanna-Karkur.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Barak Haim Ben Valid, 33, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Rishon Lezion.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Ahmad Abu Latif, 26, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Rahat.
Cpt. (res.) Nir Binyamin, 29, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Givatayim.
Master Sgt. (res.) Elkana Vizel, 35, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Bnei Dakalim.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Israel Socol, 24, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Karnei Shomron.
Cpt. (res.) Ariel Mordechay Wollfstal, 28, of the 205th Brigade’s 9206th Battalion, from Elazar.
Sgt. First Class (res.) Sagi Idan, 24, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Rosh Haayin.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Mark Kononovich, 35, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Herzliya.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Itamar Tal, 32, of the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Mesilot.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Adam Bismut, 35, a squad commander in the 261st Brigade’s 6261st Battalion, from Karnei Shomron.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Shay Biton Hayun, 40, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Zichron Yaakov.
Sgt. Maj. (res.) Daniel Kasau Zegeye, 38, of the 261st Brigade’s 8208th Battalion, from Yokne’am Illit.
An additional three soldiers were killed in combat Monday as part of a stepped-up assault on the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Israel launched the offensive on Gaza after the October 7 Hamas onslaught into southern Israel when terrorists overran military bases, communities and a music festival, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, amid widespread scenes of horrific abuse. The terrorists also took 253 hostages.

Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and free the hostages. However, three months in, the offensive has not yet achieved those goals and pressure has mounted within Israel to reach a deal with the terror group for the return of 136 people still held in Gaza — not all of them alive. International pressure has also intensified to bring the war to an end, amid the mounting Palestinian toll and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The Hamas-run health ministry said Monday that 25,295 Gazans had been killed so far in the war, an unverified figure that includes Hamas operatives as well as those killed in failed Palestinian rocket launches. The IDF says it has killed more than 9,000 Hamas members since launching the offensive. A further 1,000 were killed in Israel on October 7.

Israel has intensified its military campaign in southern Gaza in recent days, focused on the city of Khan Younis.

Four brigades, led by the 98th Division, are taking part in the offensive, which began Sunday with a series of airstrikes on Hamas sites in the area and has continued with intensive gun battles that the IDF says have killed dozens of gunmen.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Tuesday the heavy losses suffered by the military only underlined the necessity to push on.

“Our hearts are with the dear families in their most difficult time,” Gallant wrote of the “difficult and painful morning.”

But, he said, “this is a war that will determine the future of Israel for decades to come – the fall of the soldiers compels us to achieve the goals of the fighting.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he mourned the deaths and wished to “strengthen the dear families of our heroic warriors who fell on the battlefield. I know that for these families, their lives will be changed forever.”

Israel will “will not stop fighting until absolute victory,” he said.

“The IDF has launched an investigation into the disaster. We must learn the necessary lessons and do everything to preserve the lives of our warriors,” he continued.

Later, in a joint video statement, that also included war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, the leaders pledged that the war will continue at full strength despite the loss of 24 soldiers Monday.

“We bow our heads in memory of our fallen, and yet we do not for a moment stop striving for an irreplaceable goal – the achievement of complete victory,” said Netanyahu.

“We continue at this time in the spirit of the fallen,” added Gallant.

“We will do it together, we will do it in unity. I ask to strengthen the bereaved families, to know that we have to continue. I have no doubt that when they set out on their mission yesterday, they intended for us to continue, and that is what we will do,” Gantz said.

Many family members of the 136 remaining hostages held by Hamas, organizing through the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, have grown increasingly vocal in their opposition to the government’s strategy, saying the continued fighting is putting their loved ones at risk.

On Sunday evening, the families rallied outside Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem to demand he reach a deal for the hostages’ release. On Monday, relatives of hostages crashed a session of the Knesset’s Finance Committee, bearing signs that read “You will not sit here while they die there.”

Two hundred and fifty-three people, including children and the elderly, were abducted by Hamas on October 7. In late November, 105 hostages were released during a two-week “humanitarian ceasefire” mediated by the US and Qatar, and several were previously recovered in other circumstances, but talks of a further deal have languished since that ceasefire collapsed.

International pressure has also mounted with much of Gaza’s population displaced and a rising death toll.

On Monday it was reported that Israel has submitted a proposal through Qatari and Egyptian mediators that would see it agree to pause its military offensive against Hamas for as long as two months, in exchange for a phased release of the remaining hostages.

The proposal does not heed the Hamas demand for Israel to end the war completely, but does appear to go further than previous Israeli offers, according to the Axios news site, which cited two Israeli officials.

The offer was publicized as White House Middle East czar Brett McGurk was in the region for meetings with Egyptian and Qatari counterparts aimed at advancing a hostage deal, a US official told The Times of Israel.

How a Ragtag Militia in Yemen Became a Nimble U.S. Foe

The Iran-backed Houthis perfected the tactics of irregular warfare during years of conflict against a Saudi-led coalition, military officials say.
Jan. 24, 2024

For years, the scrappy Iran-backed Yemeni rebels known as the Houthis did such a good job of bedeviling American partners in the Middle East that Pentagon war planners started copying some of their tactics.

Noting that the Houthis had managed to weaponize commercial radar systems that are commonly available in boating stores and make them more portable, a senior U.S. commander challenged his Marines to figure out something similar. By September 2022, Marines in the Baltic Sea were adapting Houthi-inspired mobile radar systems.

So senior Pentagon officials knew as soon as the Houthis started attacking ships in the Red Sea that they would be hard to tame.

As the Biden administration approaches its third week of airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, the Pentagon is trying to thread an impossibly tiny needle: making a dent in the Houthis’ ability to hit commercial and Navy vessels without dragging the United States into a prolonged war.

It is a difficult task, made more so because the Houthis have perfected the tactics of irregular warfare, American military officials say. The group does not have many big weapons depots for American fighter jets to bomb — Houthi fighters are constantly on the move with missiles they launch from pickup trucks on remote beaches before hustling away.

The first barrage of American-led airstrikes nearly two weeks ago hit nearly 30 locations in Yemen, destroying around 90 percent of the targets struck, Pentagon officials said. But even with that high success rate, the Houthis retained around 75 percent of their ability to fire missiles and drones at ships transiting the Red Sea, those officials acknowledged.

Since then, the Pentagon has carried out several more rounds of strikes. And the Houthis have continued their attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea.

“There is a level of sophistication here that you can’t ignore,” said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, who led the U.S. military’s Central Command from 2016 to 2019, as Saudi Arabia was trying to defeat the Houthis in Yemen.

So far the Pentagon strategy has been to put armed Reaper drones and other surveillance platforms in the skies over Yemen, so that U.S. warplanes and ships can hit Houthi mobile targets as they pop up.

On Monday night, the United States and Britain struck nine sites in Yemen, hitting multiple targets at each location. Unlike most of the previous strikes, which were more targets of opportunity, the nighttime strikes were planned. They hit radars as well as drone and missile sites and underground weapons storage bunkers.

This middle ground reflects the administration’s attempt to chip away at the Houthis’ ability to menace merchant ships and military vessels but not hit so hard as to kill large numbers of Houthi fighters and commanders, potentially unleashing even more mayhem into the region.

But officials say they will continue to try to hit mobile targets as analysts search for more fixed targets.

After nearly a decade of Saudi airstrikes, the Houthis are skilled at concealing what they have, putting some of their launchers and weaponry in urban areas and shooting missiles from the backs of vehicles or tractors before scooting off.

And the weapons that are destroyed are soon replaced by Iran, as a never-ending stream of dhows ferry more weaponry into Yemen, U.S. officials say.

Even a seemingly successful American commando operation on Jan. 11 that seized a small boat carrying ballistic-missile and cruise-missile components to Yemen came at a cost: the Pentagon said on Sunday that the status of two Navy SEALs reported missing during the operation had been changed to dead after an “exhaustive” 10-day search. Navy commandos, backed by helicopters and drones hovering overhead, had boarded the small boat and seized propulsion and guidance systems, warheads and other items.

The Houthis are believed to have had underground assembly and manufacturing sites even before the civil war began in Yemen in 2014. The militia seized the country’s army arsenal when it took over Sana, the capital, a decade ago. Since then, it has amassed a diverse and increasingly lethal arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles and one-way attack drones, most supplied by Iran, military analysts said.

“It’s mind-blowing, the diversity of their arsenal,” said Fabian Hinz, an expert on missiles, drones and the Middle East at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militia, has helped as well. Top Houthi commanders studied under Hezbollah trainers in Lebanon on, first and foremost, how to be adaptable, said Hisham Maqdashi, a defense adviser with the internationally recognized Yemeni government.

Hezbollah “trained them to be able to adapt to the changes of the war in Yemen,” Mr. Maqdashi said in an interview. “They did not train them on the specifics, but on how to be very dynamic.”

That leaves the United States and its coalition partners with only three viable options, given the parameters of President Biden’s strategic aims in Yemen, military analysts say. They could commandeer the weapons coming by sea from Iran; find the missiles, which requires extensive intelligence; or attack the launch sites.

The third option is the hardest. Houthi militants are believed to hide mobile missile launchers in a range of locations, anywhere from inside culverts to beneath highway overpasses. They are easily moved for hasty launches.

The Houthi mobile maneuvers worked so well against Saudi Arabia that the Marines began an experimental effort to copy them. They developed a mobile radar, essentially a Simrad Halo24 radar — you can get one for about $3,000 at Bass Pro Shops — that can be put on any fishing boat. It takes five minutes to set up. The Marines, like the Houthis, have been looking into how to use the radars to send data back on what’s going on at sea.

Lt. Gen. Frank Donovan, now the vice commander of United States Special Operations Command, noticed what the Houthis were doing with the radar back when he was leading a Fifth Fleet amphibious task force operating in the southern Red Sea. Trying to figure out how the Houthis were targeting ships, General Donovan soon realized the Houthis were mounting off-the-shelf radars on vehicles on the shore and moving them around.

He challenged his Second Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion to develop a similar system.

Source article link:  Haaretz: Armed and Anxious, Residents Along Israel's Borders Are Bracing for the Worst

Rafi Nagar from Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov, near Lake Kinneret in northern Israel, cried out on Facebook. “Help!” he wrote in a recent post. “Thousands of Jordanian commandos can easily cross the border, massacre and slaughter people in our kibbutzim and moshavim.” Describing a sharp rise in the frequency of training exercises by the Jordanian Legion, Nagar expressed concern that under the guise of the exercises, an attack from the other side of the border was being organized.

“Sometimes I’m afraid to look out the window, in case I suddenly see armed Jordanian soldiers attacking us from the fields. It’s an insane classic case of crying ‘wolf,’ when at the moment of truth they’ll catch us unprepared, with our pants down,” he warned, and called on the prime minister, the defense minister and the Israel Defense Forces ‘to stop the next ‘itbah al yahud’” – slaughter (of) the Jews.

Nagar’s post resonated strongly among residents of the Jordan Valley when it was published two weeks ago. But there were also reactions that arrived from completely different directions, both literally and metaphorically.

“A day or two after I published the post, I started to get threats from Yemen,” Nagar tells Haaretz. “They sent me a few hundred messages until I blocked them.” The screenshot he shows is full of frightening WhatsApp messages from a phone number in Yemen. “Hello, how are you,” one Houthi writer addresses him politely, in Hebrew. “I am happy to inform you that your house has become a target for us, the Yemeni Houthis, and we will target you with drones and winged missiles, Jewish man. There’s no need to fear the Jordanian army… I recommend that you leave your house before we send you to hell.” The WhatsApp thread went on and on, and included a few unanswered calls, grinning or tearful emojis and images of Palestinian flags.

The hostilities that erupted on October 7 have severely shaken Israelis’ feeling of security along borders that until recently were considered to be quiet – those with Syria, Jordan and Egypt, as well as the Green Line. Fears of still-unlikely developments, such as an invasion by thousands of Jordanian troops, or a Houthi targeted assassination because of a Facebook post, are mingled with apprehension that has a more solid basis.

People who until not long ago looked east or west and saw the pastoral landscape of a neighboring country, are now focusing on the border fence, wondering how long it would take for someone to cut it with a cordless circular saw, or what sort of tractor can knock it down with one blow. Even in tranquil, laid-back communities, residents are trying to use connections to obtain night-vision equipment or crates of ammunition from the army for their security teams.

Many security arrangements that once gave people a feeling of calm are now unsettling. Eitan Ronen, from Kadesh Barnea, near the Egyptian border, glances apprehensively at the tank deployed on the ridge nearby to protect him and his neighbors. An Israeli tank used to be considered a big deal. Now, after it turns out that a motorized hang glider can easily fly over it, things look different.

“A tank can be disabled, too,” Ronen says. “We’ve lost our faith in the army.” A range of scenarios troubles him: a terrorist cell in Sinai that decides to attack, Egyptian police who suddenly run amok, Hamas terrorists who cross into Egypt from Gaza and hope to infiltrate into Israel from there.

Like many others in the frontier communities, Ronen was recruited to serve in the local defensive squad under an emergency order, and he’s on guard duty 24/7.

“At age 40, I was exempted from reserve duty,” he says. “When they told me, ‘Come and volunteer,’ I told them I was done with weapons, it’s not my scene, I never liked it. Today I understand that it’s not a question of liking or not liking.”

Now the person who makes a living growing tomatoes, strawberries and pineapples has submitted a request for a rifle permit. “In Tel Aviv I’d prefer a pistol,” he explains, “but here there are large expanses of land; it’s better to have a weapon with a barrel, with range. So you don’t need to have someone get all the way to you in order to stop them.”

He and his buddies on the squad “want to upgrade it,” he says – to be better trained and be issued arms that will enable them to cope with more than light weapons. Against armored vehicles, for example.

Do you mean that you want RPGs?

“I don’t know what’s involved. We’ll let the IDF decide. But as an emergency community squad we need to be trained in using the right equipment. There won’t be time to weigh a response. We won’t have the privilege of waiting for someone to arrive and help us. We will have to defend ourselves, we have to be able to help ourselves.

“This is a season when there is a lot of fog, a transitional time in terms of the weather,” he adds. “We get ourselves organized at dawn, we look out, everyone with their weapon cocked, waiting to see who will come at us from out of the fog.”

Geological advantage

Merom Golan, 900 meters above sea level, 2.5 kilometers from the border with Syria, last Sunday. A hard rain is falling on the kibbutz, but in the Kosovski Mizrahi home it’s warm and pleasant – they’ve lit the wood-burning stove for the first time this season. The mother, Galit, shows us the safe room, where she and her three children have been sleeping since the war started. Oded, the father, sleeps in a different room because he gets up early for guard duty, as part of the kibbutz security detail. There’s no shooting into the northern Golan Heights these days, but a Syrian militia fired a rocket at the southern Golan earlier in the war, and the family isn’t taking chances.

“Supposedly, you live here with the feeling that everything is green, beautiful, pleasant and calm,” Galit says. “The children wander around the kibbutz freely. But you’re not calm at all. My husband, who’s not a hysterical type, moved our two cars from the private parking space to the public area, so it would look like there’s no one at home. You hear the kids – who are 11, 12 and 15 – talking among themselves about where they’ll hide, all kinds of tricks they’ll use if something happens, like people used there [in the communities near Gaza, on October 7].”

The safe room of course now has the requisite wooden plank with the hole that’s intended to prevent anyone from breaking in through the door. Still, Galit’s plan is that if they come under missile or drone attack, not to use the plank, because “if part of the house should collapse and we are wounded in the safe room, it will make rescuing us difficult.”

Merom Golan borders on a small demilitarized zone that is guarded by the United Nations, an area that’s a buffer between Israel and Syria. But Galit thinks that the UN will not necessarily intervene if its personnel see terrorists making their way into Israel. “And then, what will stop them? The fence? You know, not long ago there was an Israeli woman who simply walked into Syria.”

On the other hand, Galit takes comfort in the geological advantage she has over her neighbors in the Upper Galilee. “Here at least the ground is basalt,” she notes. “It’s impossible to dig into it easily, like with limestone. No tunnel will suddenly appear here in the middle of the kibbutz without us hearing something.” Oded, an engineer who was in the midst of a work meeting via Zoom, while still in his guard uniform, remarked, “There’s quiet here, but no tranquility. You don’t know how fragile the border is.”

There have been precious few shooting accidents along the border with Syria in the past, but the hostilities in Gaza have caused some residents and academics to look at the area in a different light.

“Syria is a wide-open expanse for all kinds of terrorist organizations that might be of concern to Israel, and it’s unlikely that the Syrian army has any interest in stopping them,” says Yehuda Blanga, an expert on Syria in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan. “Could a squad like that cut the fence tomorrow? I don’t think so. Along this border, there is a presence of ground forces. In Gaza we relied too much on technological means. When you lose a presence on the ground, you lose eyes and contact.” In Dr. Blanga’s view, Syria does not pose any particular danger at the moment. On the other hand, he’s aware of the diminished value of so-called security assessments these days. “Anything is possible,” he concludes.

Blanga ranks Egypt a bit higher on the scale of danger. Just last June, he recalls, an Egyptian police officer crossed the border in the Mount Harif area through a gate that was shut with only plastic handcuffs. He killed Staff Sgt. Ori Yitzhak Illouz and Sgt. Lia Ben Nun, and afterward Staff Sgt. Ohad Dahan also fell in the exchange of fire with the intruder. In addition to the danger posed by the Egyptian security forces, Blanga notes that several terrorist organizations are operating in the Sinai Peninsula. Terrorism in Sinai has abated over the past decade in the wake of an uncompromising struggle waged by Egyptian President al-Sissi. But even so, there are all manner of worrisome elements there, among them organizations that smuggled in to Gaza vast quantity of arms for the Hamas terrorists.

“I happen to be the regional paramedic,” says Sharon from Moshav Be’er Milka (who preferred not to give his last name), about one kilometer from the Egyptian border. “Based on the amount of Valium I have dispensed in the past month, I can tell you exactly what the level of tension is in each community. It’s no simple thing, especially in Kadesh Barnea, which is right smack on the border. You jump over the fence and in a minute you reach the houses. One person there was sitting in his living room when a stray bullet passed half a meter over his head and lodged in the wall.”

The tight cluster of communities belonging to what is called the Nitzana Salient – Kadesh Barnea, Be’er Milka, Kmehin, Ezuz and Nitzana – lie close to the border, about halfway along an imaginary line drawn from Kibbutz Sde Boker to El Arish in Egypt. These locales are still grappling with the loss of two of their fighters, members of a local antiterrorist reserve force that rushed to assist besieged residents living near Gaza on October 7 and were killed: Capt. (res.) Iftach Gorny, of Be’er Milka, and Master Sgt. (res.) Liran Almosnino, from Kmehin.

“There’s a bad feeling around here,” Sharon asserts. “There’s no sense of security, there are no fences that can deter incursions in these communities – there’s nothing. The army is lulling us; they say we’re not at risk. No one has said, ‘Let’s look at the area, we’ll examine the threats and deal with them.’ It’s all Band-Aids. On the Egyptian side we see more and more settlement. Buildings. Solar panels. Look at the satellite image on Google. What’s happening there security-wise? Are terrorist cells being established there? We don’t know. Even on our side there are cannabis farms, there are arms caches in the desert. It’s Colombia here. For the right price, anything can happen here. To take over our community you don’t need 50 terrorists – five will do.”

‘A cardboard settlement’

“A window of opportunity has been opened here for the peoples of the region, who have had their fill of seeing the war crimes of ‘Israel,’ which have been ongoing for 75 years… ‘Israel’ is not fate, it’s a cardboard settlement… The victory of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza necessarily talks about the collapse of the Zionist project and of American influence.” That quote comes from a story published by the Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad last week, which, unusually, was translated into Hebrew and appeared on the front page, among other articles in Arabic. The headline: “What’s after Israel.”

The article is rife with hatred of Israel and expresses the hope that with one little nudge, it will collapse. Those aren’t unusual sentiments in Jordan, especially these days, and Israelis who see that country from the windows of their home are aware of this. Experts on the Hashemite kingdom explain that even if the accepted estimate is that “80 percent of Jordan’s population is Palestinian” is exaggerated, it is still more than 50 percent, and the rest don’t exactly sing the Israeli national anthem in their sleep, either.

The scenario in which a Hamas-like incursion takes place on the Jordanian border became very real, at least momentarily, for Hadas Sarig Rapaport, who lives with her husband and their four children on Tzofar, a moshav in the Arava desert south of the Dead Sea. “On October 7, I received a message on Telegram [from the kibbutz security team] saying that terrorists had infiltrated Tzofar. I took kitchen knives, wrapped them in a towel and went with the children into a room whose door you can kick open; we don’t even have a safe room. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that it turned out there had been a spelling mistake of one letter: The warning was real, but it was for Tzohar, which is near the Gaza Strip. A mistake of one letter.”

Rapaport got another false alarm from the security squad, most likely as a result of some sort of error by the army, while she was in Greece, where the family had fled, in the meantime. They returned only two weeks later.

Residents of the eastern part of the Arava know that there are no fences, or virtually none, demarcating the border in their vicinity, a realization that doesn’t exactly help people stay calm these days.

“We want to advance the idea of building a serious physical barrier along the border with Jordan,” says Uri Lev, the security officer of the regional council. “There have been a lot of incidents here involving arms and drug smuggling. Those smuggling routes can be used by terrorists, too.”

Experts on Jordan note that very close security coordination still exists between the IDF and the Jordanian Legion. Amman has a vested interest in nipping in the bud any sign of terrorism in the kingdom, and to date seems to be doing that successfully. One reason is the government’s desire to prevent instability that could put their own country at risk. Still, a scenario in which a soldier runs amok or where, despite everything, a terrorist squad infiltrates from the east, is not completely ruled out.

It’s known, for example, that Islamist terror groups are trying to gain a foothold in Ma’an, a small city located some 55 kilometers across from the middle section of the Arava. “It is a very poor city,” says Prof. (emeritus) Asher Susser, from the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, an authority on Jordan. “Armed Islamist groups operated there, and there were periods there of sympathy for Islamic State. But the government for the most part has the upper hand in dealing with these groups.”

Meanwhile, about 200 kilometers north of the Arava, residents of the Jordan Valley are grappling not only with pervasive anxiety about a possible infiltration, but also with actual incursions (albeit by migrant workers), in the wake of which they have had to hide in their homes. The reason is visible from a small observation point, about half a kilometer from the fence surrounding Kibbutz Ashdot Yaakov. Through a carob tree, on which a proudly weaned toddler has hung a pacifier, looms the security fence. Beyond it is the Yarmuk River, which once may once have been an obstacle, but which is barely trickling now because its waters are trapped upstream.

“Even a cat could cross the Yarmuk,” Eli Arazi, a veteran kibbutz member, guffaws. Everyone, smugglers included, knows that this is an easy place to cross over into Israel. Just last Tuesday six migrant laborers from the Far East crossed there. “They were caught here,” Arazi says, pointing at a water reservoir on which a solar field has been placed. “It’s not far at all from the houses.”

The infiltration of workers, weapons and drugs is not new along this stretch of the border. What has changed is that the army is far more alert now, with the result that practically every bird that lands on the fence sets off a “Turkish horseman” alarm – code for the entry of some unidentified object into Israel. Two or three times a week, residents in the area take shelter in their homes because of an infiltration warning. In addition there are incessant sounds of Jordanian soldiers firing shots in the distance, which may not have increased but are more worrying now.

“There is terrible panic here,” Arazi says. “It’s nerve-wracking.”

As is the case in other frontier areas today, here too the level of stress is directly affected not only by the objective security situation, but also by history and people’s psychological state. “I personally am less worried,” Arazi explains. “In the War of Attrition [1967-1970], terrorists used to come here, shoot at us and plant land mines in the fields. In the morning we would go with prodders to look for the mines – people were killed.”

What’s happening now seems less destabilizing, he adds, but he can’t argue with young kibbutz members, parents of young children, who are getting sick of the present state of attrition. “They tell you, ‘Do you remember the murder of the seven girls at Naharayim [by a Jordanian soldier in 1997]? That could happen again.’ To that I have no answer.”

Only 460 bullets

There is no need to dredge up memories from the 1990s or use much imagination when considering the plight of communities along the seam line that borders the West Bank, with its separation barrier. Just last February the state comptroller warned that even though more than 8 billion shekels had been invested over the years in building the barrier, and hundreds of millions allocated to its maintenance, as of 2021 half of it (!) was deemed to be in substandard condition. According to the comptroller, this failing was explained to the security cabinet and to Prime Minister Netanyahu “from 2017 onward,” but nothing was done to address it until 11 people were murdered during the course of attacks perpetrated in 2022 by terrorists who entered through breaches in the fence.

Subsequently the level of security was tightened and repairs were made, but thousands of Palestinians have still managed to enter Israel every day for years, without a proper work permit, by foot and by car. Last week a vehicle carrying three terrorists armed with rifles, ammunition and axes reached at the “tunnel road” checkpoint south of Jerusalem, apparently on the way to carry out a massacre in Israel. They killed Cpl. Avraham Fetena of the Border Police and wounded five other members of the security forces, before being shot to death.

Yad Hana is situated close to the separation barrier in Hefer Valley, in central Israel. Nevertheless, the head of the community’s council, Maya Yaron, reports that only now, in the wake of the war in Gaza, is part of the part of the barrier, made of metal, being replaced with a concrete wall. “But the wall doesn’t prevent people from crossing over, either,” she points out. “You can climb over it.”

Yaron mentions incessant shooting from the direction of the West Bank city of Tul Karm, because of which Yad Hana residents have recently been forbidden to walk along their community’s perimeter fence. “Every hour or two we have light-arms fire aimed at us and at the soldiers who guard us,” she says. “We shoot back at them.”

Benny Chifrut, security chief of the neighboring community of Bat Hefer, also talks about shooting – we too heard gunfire and explosions during our visit – from the direction of the West Bank village of Shweika. There are only about 80 meters between the first houses of Bat Hefer and the security barrier.

“People simply go outside and shoot at us,” Chifrut says. “The latest TikTok star can be seen stepping onto a bale of hay, firing a round and running off. It’s not precision shooting, so it’s not very dangerous. But it’s still dangerous all the same.” When Daniel, the Haaretz photographer, wanted to climb up to the roof of one of the buildings in Bat Hefer to get a better vantage point, he was immediately told to drop the idea, because he would be an easy target.

For its part, the IDF doesn’t dismiss the idea that there are weapons in the Palestinian villages abutting the barrier or shots being fired, sometimes at soldiers, but it claims that they don’t endanger the residents. “So far there hasn’t been precise gunfire aimed at Bat Hefer and Yad Hana,” says a senior officer who knows the area, adding that he knows of no prohibition on taking a walk along the fence or going up to one’s roof, and that every report of a suspicious incident is carefully looked into.

Based on interviews in many of the communities we visited for this article, it seems that residents fearful of the security situation cannot manage without putting their hands deep in their pockets or obtaining donations. People living along borders and the security barrier are not waiting for the state to act, but have bought whatever they could lay their hands on, from flashlights and ceramic vests to M-16 rifles and drones. When the war broke out residents of Bat Hefer, for example, lost no time finding money to underwrite the installation of surveillance cameras on the separation fence itself; they also set up a command center with volunteer spotters.

"We realized that the army hadn’t recovered” from the shock of October 7, relates Reuven Bracha, the head of the community’s emergency security team. “We started to get organized on our own and succeeded in stabilizing a basic line of defense for ourselves. That was a very intense week.”

But people who have not been able to obtain the necessary equipment or simply cannot afford it, are stuck. “I’m still lacking three protective vests,” says one local security chief (whose name we won’t mention so as not to reveal the location of his community). “If there is some sort of incident, the members of the security squads will have to grab magazines with their hands and run.”

We repeatedly heard complaints about an acute shortage of ammunition, but on the other hand, in some cases far more sophisticated, heavier weapons were supplied than might have been expected. Some communities have received MAG machine guns, among them even pastoral Kochav Yair.

“They gave us a MAG but only 460 rounds,” says a member of a security squad from another border community. “That’s a joke – a MAG fires 600 to 1,200 rounds a minute. What are going to do with 460 bullets?”

Kobi Avraham, the commander of the security squad of Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin – spitting distance from the Jordanian border – takes a different view. He’s not upset at having to scrounge around for ammunition and equipment (“It’s a form of Israeli moonlighting”), he’s not particularly worried about the condition of the border fence (“There are spotters, too”) and he thinks that, despite the fact that there is room for improvement, the security situation in his sector has actually been enhanced since the war broke out. A former bodyguard with a lot of experience in the security realm, Avraham is more concerned about the excessive arming of the Israeli public at large and the troubles that could cause.

For one, Dekel Yosef, head of security on Moshav Yardena, which also abuts the Jordanian border, is far less sanguine. “If I were a terrorist, I would enter this place,” he says simply.

In other communities around here people say you’re lucky, because the Jordan River is an obstacle that protects you.

“Forget it. The water comes up to your hips. Come over here, we can shake the fence, wait a bit, make some coffee, have a barbecue, and the army won’t arrive. It’s a matter of time before a terrorist squad will infiltrate the moshav. In my opinion, it will happen on my watch. Any squad that enters won’t even need to organize a charge – within a minute and a half they’re at the houses.”

In the meantime, the generally heightened level of anxiety is beginning to spill over into the rest of the country. Even on Moshav Gimzo, which is not really a frontier community, and is a lot farther from the Green Line than Modi’in or Kfar Sava, a major furor erupted when an estimated 10 to 15 all-terrain vehicles arrived on a Friday afternoon earlier this month, made a ruckus and played loud songs in Arabic in the moshav’s fields. Someone also claimed to having seen a Palestinian flag waving in the breeze. A local resident named Dvir Spiegel, a musician, related that this was enough for him and his two children, aged 13 and 11, to go outside with knives, “ready to do battle,” in his words. “We alerted the security squad,” he said later, in a radio interview. “We felt like it was Kfar Azza 2. That we were being raided.”

Avraham from Kfar Ruppin relates that he received a surprising phone call relating to security issues – from someone in Metropolitan Tel Aviv. “Someone asked if they could consult with me about a security squad they were setting up,” he says. “He told me he lives in Ganei Tikva, near Tel Aviv, in a complex of five buildings with a park in the middle. I gave him all the advice I had; I explained what to do. But at the end of the conversation I said, ‘Can I tell you something personal? You’re off the wall, ‘bro.’”

It’s impossible to say now whether Israel’s relatively quiet borders will remain that way until the war ends. But what is certain is that the people who live in those areas will be in a totally different place by then.

“We will all need therapy at the end of this period,” says Eitan Ronen, from Kadesh Barnea on the Egyptian border. “Even when we end our guard shift, it’s not like we fall into a nice sound sleep. Some people simply go back to their positions. Do you get it? We’re in a type of trauma.”

In Hefer Valley there is concern about what will happen after the war ends. Yad Hana’s security “is based on volunteers,” Maya Yaron says. “Most of them didn’t get an emergency call-up order. I have a front gate, a back one, a command center. People will soon run out of steam and go back to their old routines. I don’t know who will guard us or how we’ll be guarded.”

Bracha, the neighbor from Bat Hefer, left his private business – he sells dental equipment – and is volunteering full-time to defend his community. He’s not even been formally mobilized. “We understood that if we don’t safeguard ourselves, no one will,” he says. “At the moment, the army is here, we’re here, all’s well. But what will happen on the day after? That’s our greatest fear.”

Asked about the security squads’ shortage of ammunition and weapons, tensions along the Jordan border and the deep concerns of residents near the Egypt border, among other issues – the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit offered this response: “IDF forces are active and will continue to act day and night to defend Israel’s borders in general, and the Jordan and Egypt borders in particular, against a variety of scenarios, among them scenarios of terrorist infiltration. Since the beginning of the war, all fronts have been reinforced with combatants and combat equipment. Combat equipment is provided based on the operational needs of the security squads. Any report regarding a shortage of equipment is carefully investigated and taken care of accordingly. The bolstering of forces after the war [along the borders] will be considered in accordance with the situation assessment at that time.”

Among the documents found was an Arabic-Hebrew phrasebook with Hebrew words and phrases transliterated into Arabic characters. The pamphlet was found in the possession of the Jerusalem Battalion of the Izz al-Din Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, and was apparently distributed to terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023 attack and massacre.  Its contents are shocking and testify to the terrorists’ intentions and plans, including attacking and humiliating civilians, stealing their vehicles, separating men, women and children, capturing and murdering civilians. Some of the Hebrew phrases are, “Take off your pants,” “Where is your weapon?” “I will kill you,” “You are a prisoner,” “Where is the head of the kibbutz?” “We have hostages,” “We will kill the captives,” “Where are the car keys?” “Men are here,” “Women are here,” “The children are here,” “Take off your clothes,” “Where is the commander?”

[img]https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2024/01/020_24_01-1.jpg" />

A document seized by the IDF in one of the Hamas strongholds in the Gaza Strip revealed details of the preparations made by Hamas operatives prior to the terrorist attack and massacre in the cities, towns and villages near the Gaza Strip, indicating that the planning of the attack included locating the shelters to deliberately harm as well as kidnap civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The document includes a follow-up report on a platoon exercise carried out by Hamas operatives in preparation for the massacre as well as a review, apparently written by one of the commanders, about the operatives’ performance during the exercise. Among the criticisms it was written, “No thorough operation was carried out to increase the number of hostages (number of women, children, men…),” indicating that the terrorists planned to kidnap civilians.

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Secretly Alerted Iran Ahead of Islamic State Terrorist Attack

WASHINGTON—The U.S. secretly warned Iran that Islamic State was preparing to carry out the terrorist attack early this month that killed more than 80 Iranians in a pair of coordinated suicide bombings, U.S. officials said.

The confidential alert came after the U.S. acquired intelligence that Islamic State’s affiliate in Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, known as ISIS-K, was plotting to attack Iran, they said.

American officials said the information passed to Iran was specific enough about the location and sufficiently timely that it might have proved useful to Tehran in thwarting the attack on Jan. 3 or at least mitigating the casualty toll.

Iran, however, failed to prevent the suicide bombings in the southeastern town of Kerman, which targeted a crowd that was commemorating the anniversary of the death of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force. Soleimani was killed in a January 2020 drone attack near the Baghdad airport ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

“Prior to ISIS’s terrorist attack on January 3, 2024, in Kerman, Iran, the U.S. government provided Iran with a private warning that there was a terrorist threat within Iranian borders,” a U.S. official said, using an acronym for Islamic State. “The U.S. government followed a longstanding ‘duty to warn’  policy that has been implemented across administrations to warn governments against potential lethal threats. We provide these warnings in part because we do not want to see innocent lives lost in terror attacks.”

Officials with Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Despite the American warning, some Iranian hard-liners have suggested that Islamic State perpetrators were linked to the U.S. and Israel. At a ceremony in Kerman honoring the victims, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the most senior Revolutionary Guard commander said Islamic State “has disappeared nowadays,” arguing the jihadists “only act as mercenaries” for U.S. and Israeli interests.

U.S. officials declined to say what channels were used to warn Iran or divulge details of what was passed.  Nor did they say if this was the first time Washington has passed such a warning  to the Iranian regime.

Iranian officials didn’t respond to the U.S. about the warning, said one American official. It wasn’t clear why the Iranians failed to thwart or blunt the attack, several officials said.

The U.S. routinely shares warnings of potential terrorist activity with allies and partners. In some cases, it also warns  potential adversaries. In December 2019, Russian President Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked President Trump for sharing intelligence that helped the Kremlin thwart a plot in  St. Petersburg.

The bombings in Kerman, which killed 84 Iranians and wounded hundreds more, were the bloodiest terrorist attack inside Iran since the current government took over in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi honored the victims of the suicide bombings.Photo: Iranian Presidency/Zuma Press
Islamic State claimed responsibility after the attack, saying that two of its operatives had detonated explosive belts. The ideology of Islamic State, a hard-line Sunni group, considers Shiite Muslims, a majority of Iran’s population, to be apostates. Islamic State and Iran have previously clashed.

ISIS-K first emerged in Afghanistan in 2015 after Islamic State militants declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. It was responsible for the bombing near the Kabul airport in August 2021 that killed 13 American troops and about 170 Afghan civilians as the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan.

The group has been a mortal enemy of the Taliban and had been greatly weakened during the American military presence in Afghanistan by attacks from U.S. and Afghan government forces and by the Taliban themselves.

With the departure of U.S. forces, ISIS-K has grown in strength. U.S. officials say it is one of the most dangerous groups in the region, eclipsing al Qaeda, with ambitions to strike targets in the West.

Biden administration officials confirmed soon after the Jan. 3 attack in Iran that they had information that ISIS-K was the culprit. But they didn’t reveal that the U.S. had advance intelligence about the attack or that they had tipped off the Iranians.

A U.S. intelligence community directive known as “duty to warn” requires spy agencies to warn intended victims, both U.S. citizens and non-Americans, if they are the target of a terrorist attack. There are exceptions, including if the intended victims are themselves terrorists or criminals, or if issuing a warning would endanger U.S. or allied government personnel, or intelligence or military operations.

In the case of Iran, Washington alerted an adversary that has armed multiple proxies, including Yemen’s Houthis as well as militias in Syria and Iraq that have carried out more than 150 attacks on American forces since mid-October.

One former U.S. official said there could be a number of reasons for Washington to warn Iran. In addition to protecting innocent civilians, such a warning might be intended to prevent Tehran from responding to the attack in a way that could create further instability in the region and potentially undermine U.S. interests.  

Other former officials said that providing such a warning might also be a way to spur dialogue on foreign policy issues.

“With Iran, it gets gray,” said former CIA officer Douglas London, because the U.S. has designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization and yet most of the intended victims of the ISIS-K attack were civilians.

London, who worked on counterterrorism including duty-to-warn issues at the spy agency, said the decision to tip off Iran was likely made by senior officials at the White House and CIA. Passing the intelligence, he said, allowed the U.S. to take the moral high ground and could also be intended to encourage Iran to be receptive to dealing with Washington on some security matters.

Within the U.S. government, the warning to Iran has been a carefully guarded secret, a U.S. official said, suggesting that Washington was trying to minimize the risk that its contact with Tehran, even indirect, might be disclosed.

The ISIS-K bombings have posed a conundrum for Iran’s hard-liners, who have  portrayed the U.S. and Israel as the regime’s enduring foes.

After ISIS-K took responsibility for the attack, Iran on Jan. 15 fired four Kheibar Shekan ballistic missiles at targets Tehran claimed were linked to Islamic State in Syria’s Idlib province.  Fired from Iran’s Khuzestan Province, it was Iran’s longest missile strike, according to the IRGC Aerospace force commander.  

An investigation by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, published on Jan. 10, reported that the attack was carried out by a team of Tajik operatives based in Afghanistan—where the local branch of Islamic State’s ISIS-Khorasan Province is based.

Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said that the ISIS-K attack was a humiliating setback for Tehran, whose strategy calls for training and equipping proxies across the Middle East so it doesn’t have to fight its foes at home.

“ISIS operatives were able to come in and attack in the birthplace of Soleimani,” Vatanka said. “The headlines wrote themselves: the Islamic Republic cannot protect the Iranian homeland.”

Israel Builds Buffer Zone Along Gaza Border, Risking New Rift With U.S.

TEL AVIV—Beginning last November, an Israeli soldier and members of his reserve unit worked day after day in a northern section of the Gaza Strip to create a wasteland.

Their orders were to clear a 1-kilometer-wide area along the border, the soldier said, as part of an Israeli plan to construct a security zone just inside Gaza—to which Palestinians would be barred entry.

With bulldozers and other heavy equipment, they leveled greenhouses and other structures, filled Hamas militants’ tunnel shafts and plowed under farm fields.

“Everything has been flattened,” the soldier said. “It was mostly agriculture. Now it’s a military zone, a complete no man’s land.”

To Israeli officials, the buffer zone is a critical security measure in their plan to demilitarize Gaza and assure Israelis that they can return safely to the towns and communities near the border that were evacuated after the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people.

The project is a source of growing frustration for U.S. officials, who say they first voiced their opposition to such plans shortly after the Gaza war began and have watched with growing dismay as Israel has pushed ahead anyway.

U.S. officials warn that turning the border along the 25-mile-long Gaza Strip into a no man’s land would deepen Palestinian fears that Israel intends to occupy all or part of the crowded enclave, and make it harder to persuade Arab governments to help rebuild the shattered territory after the fighting stops.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced opposition to the concept Tuesday after the Israeli military said 21 soldiers had been killed during demolitions of buildings while attempting to create a security zone.

“We’ve been very clear about our opposition to the forced displacement of people. We’ve been very clear about maintaining in effect the territorial integrity of Gaza,” Blinken told reporters.

But, in a sign of the difficulty the U.S. faces in pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to halt the project, Blinken indicated Washington might accept a zone temporarily, saying questions remained about “transitional arrangements” when Israeli military operations slow.

Israeli officials agree the buffer zone could be temporary, but they have given no timetable for how long it might be necessary. Nor have they publicly described the size of the planned strip and other details.

Some sections might be one-kilometer wide but that could vary, depending on the topography and how close Palestinian communities are to the border, according to a former Israeli official familiar with the plans.

In some areas, Israel’s military might not remove all structures in the zone, as they already have in some places, two current officials and the former official said. Israeli officials haven’t said what would happen to people who enter the zone.

Israel already had a no-go zone for Gazans near sections of the border before Oct. 7, but the restrictions weren’t always enforced. Jonathan Conricus, a former Israeli military spokesman, said Hamas was able to send operatives close to the security fence disguised as protesters, allowing them to conduct reconnaissance in preparation for the Oct. 7 attack.

A kilometer-wide zone likely wouldn’t prevent future rocket launches or drone attacks from within Gaza by Hamas fighters and other militants who survive the war, analysts said.

Asked about the clearance of areas along the border, Israel’s military said in a statement that it was removing “terror infrastructure,” calling the work “imperative…in order to implement a defense plan that will provide improved security in Southern Israel.”

The work is already well advanced in some areas, according to a study by Adi Ben Nun, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who examined satellite imagery since the beginning of the war for an Israeli Channel 12 report on the project. The Israeli military appears to have demolished 1,072 out of 2,824 structures located one kilometer or less from the border, he said. Most of the buildings were residential, according to his study.

The most built-up area of the potential buffer zone is near Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza and where Israeli troops have been operating for over a month. There 67%, or 704 of 1,048, buildings have been demolished within one kilometer of the border, the study found.

Houthis Attack U.S. Warship as China Urges Iran to Rein In Rebels

A Yemeni rebel group launched missiles at a U.S. destroyer and a British tanker, as China pressed Iran to lean on the Houthis to halt their attacks in the Red Sea that have sent global shipping costs surging.

The Marlin Luanda, a fuel tanker sailing on behalf of trading giant Trafigura Group, was struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden, in one of the most significant attacks yet by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on an oil-carrying vessel.

“Firefighting equipment on board is being deployed to suppress and control the fire caused in one cargo tank on the starboard side,” a Trafigura spokesperson said in a statement. “We remain in contact with the vessel and are monitoring the situation carefully.”

In conversations in Tehran and Beijing, Chinese officials asked their Iranian counterparts to rein in their Yemeni ally, an Iranian official and an Iranian government adviser said. Iran officials told the Chinese that they weren’t in control of the group and that turmoil in the region would end if Israel agreed to a cease-fire, the Iranians said.

China hasn’t commented directly on its talks with Iran, but a spokesman for its foreign ministry in Beijing said Friday the country had “actively deescalated the situation, called for an end to the disturbance to civilian ships, and urged relevant parties to avoid fueling the tensions.”

A spokesman for the Iranian delegation at the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Administration officials have asked Beijing to convey messages to Iran about avoiding a broader conflict in the region, since the Oct. 7 start of Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met in Thailand Thursday with Beijing’s top foreign-policy official, Wang Yi, to discuss the matter.

On Friday, a U.S. destroyer, the USS Carney, shot down a ballistic missile fired toward it from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen, the Pentagon said, marking the second time the U.S. has announced that the group has targeted one of its military vessels.

In each instance, the rebels have targeted Navy destroyers within days of coalition attacks aimed at Houthi sites. The strikes by the U.S. and U.K. are intended to weaken the group and secure ships passing through the Gulf of Aden and Rea Sea.

The exchange of fire caused no damages or casualties, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said in a tweet.

Yahya Saree, a Houthi spokesman, in a statement confirmed the group had fired on the Marlin Luanda “in support of the injustice against the Palestinian people and as a response to the American-British aggression on our country.”

The ship’s managing company, Oceonix Services in London, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The U.S. is trying to stop the attacks by the Iranian-backed group without escalating tensions in an already volatile region. The Houthis have said their campaign will continue until Israel halts the fighting in Gaza and humanitarian aid is let in. The Houthis may be targeting U.S. Navy ships shortly after major strikes to demonstrate they haven’t been stopped, U.S. officials said.

China is Iran’s largest oil buyer, giving it leverage on the heavily-sanctioned Islamic Republic. Last year, Beijing also brokered a deal to normalize relations between Tehran and Saudi Arabia after years of tensions.

The Houthis began attacking ships traveling through the Red Sea and on the Gulf of Aden at the end of November in what they said was a response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, rattling global markets and upending international shipping routes.

Though eager to protect global shipping, the Biden administration has been reluctant to respond too forcefully to the Houthis lest it trigger a war in the region, in part because of the group’s backing from Tehran, Western security officials and advisers have said.

The U.S. led a coalition that has launched two major assaults on Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, including one last week, while the U.S. alone has launched at least six other limited strikes. Targets included rocket launchers, missile depots, an underground weapons storage facility, warehouses, drones used by the Houthis and radar, missile and air surveillance sites, some of them near the capital San’a, U.S., British and Houthi officials have said.

Days after the first major coalition assault, which targeted more than a dozen sites, the USS Laboon, another American destroyer, shot down an antiship cruise missile launched by the Houthis, Central Command said. There were no reports of damages on the Laboon or casualties, the Pentagon said then.

The U.S. has so far refused to say the impact of the coalition assaults on the Houthis except to say they have had “good effects,” destroying roughly 30% of Houthi capabilities. Despite that, the Houthis have continued launching attacks on commercial ships passing, more than 30 in all. And the Houthis have been defiant after each strike, saying that they would keep attacking ships.

Houthi fighters overthrew the Yemeni government in 2014, leading Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to mount a military campaign against the rebels. Months of talks between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have produced a road map that the U.S. hopes could lead to resolution of the conflict. But those talks have since stalled.

Privately, U.S. defense officials have said that strikes alone are unlikely to deter the Houthis, who both have survived a decade of war and, since their attacks on nearby waters, enjoyed an elevated status in a region angered by Israel’s war in Gaza.

Biden administration officials have said that Beijing is pressing the Iranians, but they don’t know the exact substance of those conversations. The U.S. says Iran supplies the Houthis with weapons, funding and other support.

The Carney has come under Houthi attacks in the past, but in those instances, the U.S. has stopped short of saying its military ships were the targets. And some of those strikes have come as the destroyer responded to distress calls from nearby commercial ships also under Houthi attack. In December, the Carney struck a drone that was headed toward the destroyer, “although its specific target is not clear,” the Pentagon said at the time.

Shortly after that shootdown, the M/V Unity Explorer, a Bahamas-flagged bulk cargo ship, came under ballistic-missile attack and sent a distress call, leading the Carney to move toward the ship in response, Central Command said.

As the Carney was assessing the damage on the commercial ship, it spotted a second drone operating nearby and shot it down, Central Command said.