Hamas trying to get some very "heavy hitters" in the Palestinian militant scene out of prison.  If they can pull it off it will be bad news for Israel and long-term peace.

Unspecified officials familiar with the hostage negotiations told the Wall Street Journal that divisions between Hamas’ leadership in the Gaza Strip and its exiled political leadership are impeding negotiations. The officials said that Hamas’ political leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, is prepared to accept a six-week pause in fighting and hostage exchange, but that Hamas’ exiled political leadership is calling for more concessions and a permanent ceasefire.

Egyptian officials added that Hamas’ political leadership is also demanding the release of 3,000 Palestinian prisoners—including some who took part in the October 7, 2023 attacks—in return for 36 Israeli civilian hostages.

Beirut-based senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on February 3 that Hamas and its allies rejected the six-week pause in fighting in a “united decision."

Hamdan added that Hamas and its allies are committed to a permanent ceasefire. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader demanded that any negotiations guarantee a “comprehensive ceasefire,” an Israeli withdrawal from and reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, and a “clear political solution.”

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that approving a hostage release deal is “up to Hamas,” but that he is not able to give a precise timetable on a hostage release deal.  He added that a deal is not imminent. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will not release “thousands” of prisoners in a hostage deal and that a permanent ceasefire will not be part of any hostage release deal.

Sinwar may calculate that a six-week pause would slow Israel’s momentum sufficiently enough to permanently end fighting and secure Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip. The Wall Street Journal reported on January 31 that US officials are seeking a six-week pause in fighting to “stall Israel’s military momentum and potentially set the stage for a more lasting truce.”

US and Arab officials “familiar with the negotiations” told the Wall Street Journal that Israel would find it “difficult to resume the war at its current intensity.”

An interim pause leading to less intense Israeli ground operations or an end to Israeli operations would likely ensure Hamas‘ survival as a governing authority in the Gaza Strip.

Sinwar also likely seeks a pause in fighting to secure short-term military advantage. A six-week pause would enable Sinwar to reorganize his military forces, accelerate their infiltration into areas previously cleared by Israeli forces, and continue the reconstitution of Hamas’ military organization in the northern Gaza Strip free from Israeli interference.

An IDF military correspondent reported on February 4 that Hamas’ Gaza City Brigade commander is still alive and a “major factor in Hamas’ reconstitution efforts” in the northern Strip.

This commander, free from the threat of Israeli strikes during a pause, could accelerate these efforts.

The Shadowy Backroom Dealer Steering Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’
Four years ago, the U.S. launched a drone strike to kill the man who headed up Iran’s covert paramilitary operations. Qassem Soleimani had an almost cultlike following as the Middle East’s perhaps most recognizable military commander, and had placed his Quds Force atop a web of regional militias that over two decades had extended Iran military influence across the Arab world. His funeral procession drew such huge crowds that more than 50 people were killed in a stampede.

The man who succeeded him is very different, an unassuming backroom dealer who now faces a difficult new task—using this patchwork of armed groups to expand Iran’s footprint without provoking a devastating reprisal from the U.S.

Since taking over the Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani has quietly worked to consolidate the various militias working under Iran’s direction from Baghdad to the Red Sea, where they have created what the U.S. government calls the most volatile situation in the Middle East in decades.

From the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen to Shia paramilitaries in Syria and Iraq, Qaani’s militia clients have the potential to inflame a cascading series of conflicts triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, and draw the U.S. further into the morass by targeting American bases, such as the drone strike that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan more than a week ago.

When the U.S. responded with strikes on Iran-backed militias across Syria and Iraq at the weekend, it was a message directed squarely at Qaani: Back off.

Whether Qaani will be able to put a lid on the militias, freshly galvanized by Israel’s war in Gaza and stung by the American attacks, is perhaps the greatest source of uncertainty across the region.

The U.S.’s killing of Soleimani was a specific attempt to dislocate the chain of command running from Tehran to its armed allies operating from Syria and Iraq to Yemen, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. But it didn’t degrade their ability to upend the region; it just made them more freewheeling, disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, attacking Israel and posing a growing threat to American forces.

“If the aim was to diminish Iran’s control of these groups, the United States achieved that. That’s where the problem comes from,” said Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow and expert on Iran’s regional policies at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, or SWP.

Indeed, the Quds Force commander has spent weeks since Hamas’s attack on Israel shuttling between the militias to tell them to make sure their attacks against Israel and U.S. bases aren’t so severe that they end up triggering a broader regional war, according to a Western security official, a senior Lebanese official and an adviser to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned last week that “we’ve not seen a situation as dangerous as the one we’re facing now across the region since at least 1973, and arguably even before that,” referring to the year of the Yom Kippur War.

Soleimani had been instrumental in arming and training Iran’s alliance of nonstate actors. He was arguably the region’s most recognizable commander, with an almost mythical aura among his followers and a public image cultivated by the Iranian leadership as evidence of its growing influence in the Middle East.

“Soleimani was thought about as a once-in-a-lifetime figure, a generational player. They don’t come down the pike so often,” said Ray Takeyh, an expert on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard with the Council on Foreign Relations, an American think tank. “Qaani is a more understated figure.”

Born in the late 1950s, Qaani has revealed few biographical details to the public. A bureaucrat, he spent much of his career overseeing Iran’s interests in Afghanistan and spoke little to no Arabic. Unlike other senior figures in Tehran, he doesn’t appear to have played an active role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, joining the Revolutionary Guard, formed to defend the new rulers, a full year later, in 1980.

He befriended Soleimani in the early 1980s on the southern front during Iran’s war with Iraq, and later said the fighting forged a deep friendship between them.

“We are all war kids,” he said in a 2015 interview, cited by Ali Alfoneh, an expert on the Revolutionary Guard. “Those who become friends at times of hardship have deeper and more lasting relations than those who become friends just because they are neighborhood friends.”

In the 1990s, following the war, Qaani rose in the ranks and as deputy chief of the Guard’s ground forces turned his attention to Afghanistan, where he fought drug smugglers and later supported the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, which worked with the U.S. to topple the Taliban in 2001. When Soleimani mobilized tens of thousands of fighters to defend the Syrian government against Islamic State forces during the civil war there, Qaani helped recruit Afghan Shiites to join their ranks.

As the wars in Iraq and Syria waned, the role of Iran’s militia network changed. Many became part of the political fabric—in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is both a political party and viewed as a deterrent against attacks from Israel, and in Yemen, where the Houthis have captured the capital and are viewed as the de facto government.

In Iraq, the militias integrated deeper into the country’s political and security system, gaining power to influence national politics, while remaining outside state control.

Receiving funding and arms from Iran, the groups all operated within an overall framework established by Tehran, but with the autonomy to pursue their own domestic agendas. The groups’ growing self-sufficiency relieved Tehran of some of the economic burden of financing them, but also lessened its ability to restrain them.

This is a problem for Iran.

Whereas Soleimani used his charisma to mobilize what he called “the axis of resistance,” Qaani has sought to tie Iran’s disparate allies closer together at an operational level, Takeyh said.

“And that requires more of a backroom conversation than a cult of personality like Soleimani,” he said.

Arash Azizi, a historian at Clemson University, S.C., and the author of a biography on Soleimani, said that is especially true for the Iraqi militias, perhaps the most volatile of all the pieces in the Quds Force network.

“Soleimani had built a relationship with them over the years and was respected by them tremendously,” he said. “Qaani lacks the charisma and history of relationship with these Iraqi and other Arab groups…As a result, Qaani struggles much more in keeping the Iraqi groups in check and in line with the broader axis. Same problem exists in relation to Houthis who are more independent-minded.”

With the Middle East on the brink of what could be a broader conflict, Qaani and other Iranian officials are working to ensure that their militias don’t provoke further attacks.

After the drone strike in Jordan, Iranian officials traveled to Iraq to tell its allies there that the attack had crossed a line by killing American troops, according to a senior adviser to the Iranian government who participated in the meetings.

U.S. officials say they have yet to see evidence that Iran ordered the attack, and Iran wouldn’t gain anything from killing American troops, Azizi of SWP said.

“The aim since October 7 has been to keep the other fronts busy to provide some breathing space for Hamas, but without inviting broader conflict or a U.S. attack,” he said. “It doesn’t fit into the Iranian pattern of escalation, and wouldn’t serve any of Iran’s strategic aims at the moment.”

The question now is whether the militias will listen.

Hamas wish list of prisoners includes terror masterminds of Second Intifada

Hamas is expected to demand the release of several high-profile terrorists, all of whom are serving multiple life sentences in Israeli prisons, as part of a potential truce and hostage release deal with Israel, according to a TV report aired Sunday.

Channel 12 news reported that the list includes names of terrorists behind some of the biggest terror attacks in Israel during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005 like Abdullah Barghouti, Abbas Al-Sayed, Ibrahim Hamed, Ahmad Saadat, and Muhammad Arman.

Hamas is seeking the release of the top terrorists as part of a new brewing agreement that could free the remaining hostages in Gaza who were abducted from Israel during the group’s murderous terror rampage on October 7 when thousands of terrorists killed 1,200 people across southern Israel and abducted 253 as hostages.

Hamas released 105 hostages in late November as part of a weeklong truce agreement and in exchange for some 300 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and underaged suspects.

The terror group has sought a much steeper price for the release of the remaining 132 hostages — 29 of whom have been confirmed dead — including the release of large numbers of Palestinian terror convicts, a permanent ceasefire, a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, an end to the blockade, and reconstruction of the enclave.

Israel is unlikely to agree to these terms, and has vowed to advance operations in Gaza to dismantle Hamas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also said Israel would not be releasing thousands of Palestinian prisoners in a potential deal.

Channel 12 said that high on Hamas’s expected list is Abdullah Barghouti, nicknamed “Hamas’s engineer,” and considered the terror organization’s biggest explosives expert with the possible exception of Yahya Ayyash, who was assassinated in 1996. Barghouti was responsible for planning terror attacks such as the 2003 Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 16 people including seven children and a pregnant woman; the Café Moment suicide bombing in 2002 that killed 11; and the 2002 Hebrew University bombing that killed nine people, including five US citizens.

In total, Barghouti was responsible for the murder of 66 Israelis. He was sentenced to 67 life sentences, the most ever given to a Palestinian prisoner.

Also on Hamas’s likely list, according to the report, is Abbas Al-Sayed, the commander of Hamas’s military wing in the West Bank city of Tulkarem. He planned the 2002 Park Hotel suicide bombing in Netanya during Passover, which killed 30 mostly elderly Israelis and injured 140,and became the deadliest Palestinian act of terror during the Second Intifada. Al-Sayed was sentenced to 35 life sentences.

Hamas is also expected to seek to free Ibrahim Hamed, who is considered the most dangerous prisoner currently held by Israel. He was the commander of Hamas’s military wing throughout the West Bank and was behind numerous terror acts. Hamed was ultimately convicted for the murder of 46 civilians and was given 54 life sentences.

Ahmad Saadat, the leader of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), is also expected to be on Hamas’s list. Considered a symbol in Palestinian society, Saadat is the mastermind of the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi, and and given 30 life sentences. Last year, he was put into solitary confinement as part of a crackdown on a PFLP terror cell accused of attempting to carry out attacks in the West Bank and which was linked to members in jails.

Muhammad Arman, the leader of Hamas prisoners in Israeli detention, is also being sought for release by the terror group, the TV report said. Arman was also one of the planners behind the Café Moment bombing and the suicide bombing at the Hebrew University. He was given 36 life sentences.

On Friday, Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said the group seeks the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held for acts related to the conflict with Israel, including those serving life sentences.

He also named Saadat, as well as Marwan Barghouti, a terror chief who is a popular Palestinian leader seen as a unifying figure. Barghouti was arrested by Israel in 2002 and is serving five life terms for planning three terror attacks that killed five Israelis during the Second Intifada.

On Sunday, Hamas again appeared set to rebuff a proposed hostage release deal that would include pauses in fighting and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza. The outlines of the reported deal were negotiated in Paris last weekend, with mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States.

Several ministers in the government, particularly far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, have expressed opposition to a deal that could see the release of terrorists convicted of murder charges.

Ben Gvir launched an SMS campaign urging citizens to petition the government against such an arrangement.

According to some reports, the outline reached in Paris offers the possibility of a six-week pause in fighting in Gaza for the first time since late November, and the release of all the hostages still in Gaza. Other reports, however, have said the framework provides for the release of only 35 hostages — women, the elderly and the sick — during a 35-day initial truce, with the potential for another week’s pause in fighting during which negotiations could be held on further releases. Still other reports have cited differing terms in the unconfirmed framework deal.

A senior Egyptian official familiar with the discussions on Friday described the proposal to The Associated Press, saying it includes an initial truce of six to eight weeks during which Hamas would release elderly hostages, women and children in return for hundreds of Palestinians jailed by Israel.

Throughout that phase, negotiations would continue on prolonging the truce and releasing more prisoners and hostages. Israel would allow the number of aid trucks entering Gaza to increase to up to 300 daily — from a few dozen currently — and let displaced Gaza residents gradually return to their homes in the north, according to the proposal.

Hamas has been insisting on an end to the war with international guarantees and “a full withdrawal” of Israeli troops from Gaza.

Israel is seeking a temporary truce that will free the hostages before continuing with its war effort to destroy Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.

Iranian-backed Iraqi officials are using recent US airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to retroactively justify their political pressure on the Iraqi federal government to expel US forces from Iraq. The United States has the right to respond and defend itself against these attacks from Iranian-backed groups in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups in Iraq are themselves violating Iraqi sovereignty by launching attacks from Iraqi territory targeting US forces, who are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, and American assets elsewhere in the region.

Acting parliament speaker Mohsen al Mandalawi called on the Iraqi federal government to implement the January 2020 parliamentary resolution to expel “all foreign forces” from Iraq while touring the sites of the US strikes in al Qaim and Akashat in western Anbar Province on February 5.  Popular Mobilization Forces Chief of Staff and Kataib Hezbollah official Abu Fadak al Muhammadawi and Iranian-backed Badr Organization member and Parliamentary Security and Defense Committee Chairman Abbas Zamili accompanied Mandalawi to al Qaim and Akashat. The Parliamentary Security and Defense Committee announced in December 2023 a draft resolution in December 2023 that would expel US forces from Iraq.

Mandalawi is a Shia politician who is close to the Shia Coordination Framework, a loose coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi political parties. Mandalawi became acting parliament speaker in November 2023, when the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court unconstitutionally dismissed former speaker Mohammad al Halbousi.  The Shia Coordination Framework has sought to postpone the election of a new parliament speaker to replace Mandalawi by invalidating the candidacies of parliament speaker hopefuls.  Iranian-backed Iraqi actors filed a lawsuit on January 23 that includes a clause preventing Parliament from resuming the vote for a parliament speaker until the Federal Supreme Court issues a ruling on the eligibility of Halbousi-backed candidate Shaalan al Karim.

Other Iranian-backed politicians in Iraq also issued statements to increase pressure on Iraqi officials. Popular Mobilization Commission Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh said that the US airstrikes went “too far” because they targeted a Popular Mobilization Forces facility, adding that the Iraqi people, government, and political forces must end the foreign presence in Iraq.  Fayyadh said that targeting the Popular Mobilization Forces was a “red line” and that US strikes will not go “unnoticed.” Key Iranian proxy Hadi Ameri and the Shia Coordination Framework—a loose coalition of Shia parties—called for the expulsion of US forces immediately.  Iran backs some Shia Coordination Framework parties.

Iran’s surrogates in Iraq co-opted and lead the Popular Mobilization Forces. Fayyadh, who leads the PMF, has closely cooperated with Quds Forces operatives to implement Iranian directives in Iraq, including by killing Iraqi citizens during peaceful protests in 2019. The PMF contains many Iranian proxy groups. The US strikes targeted two such groups on February 2.

Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian met with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad on February 5. The Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson stated on January 29 that Ahmadian would discuss border security and terrorism with Iraqi officials.[13] Ahmadian emphasized Iran’s willingness to cooperate with Iraq during a meeting with the Iraqi prime minister, citing the March 2023 security agreement between the two countries. The March 2023 agreement requires Iraqi authorities to disarm and relocate members of Iranian Kurdish opposition groups away from Iran’s borders.[15] Ahmadian’s visit to Iraq follows the IRGC’s drone and missile strikes targeting alleged Mossad-affiliated facilities and individuals in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan on January 15.  Iran claims frequently that anti-regime Kurdish groups and Israel use Iraqi Kurdistan to conduct operations in Iran.

Ahmadian also likely discussed the recent US strikes targeting IRGC Quds Force and Iranian-backed Iraqi militia targets in Iraq during his meetings with Iraqi officials. Sudani stated that Iraq opposes “any unilateral actions” that violate the principle of “respect for sovereignty” during his meeting with Ahmadian.  Sudani was likely referring to both the IRGC’s January 15 strikes in Erbil and the February 2 US strikes, which the Sudani administration described as a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty on February 3.

Iran-Backed Groups Continue to Target American Bases as U.S. Plans Further Strike
A strike near a U.S. base in Syria killed six members of a U.S.-allied militia Monday, the group said, despite the U.S. pounding Iran-allied militia sites with airstrikes over the weekend, underscoring the challenge Washington faces in its goal of keeping the conflict in the Middle East contained.

A U.S. military official confirmed that there were fatalities from an attack on the al-Omar oil field, part of a complex that includes a U.S. base and is jointly controlled with the American military. The official declined to comment further.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, a U.S.-allied Kurdish militia, said six of its fighters had died in a drone strike on al-Omar. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of Iran-backed armed groups, claimed responsibility for the attack, and the SDF threatened to retaliate.

Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria have carried out more than 165 attacks on American bases with rockets, missiles, drones or mortars in recent months, according to the U.S., seeking to put pressure on Washington over its support for Israel and trying to force the American military to leave.

Tensions with Iran-backed groups escalated with the deaths of three U.S. service members in a drone strike on Jan. 28 launched by an Iraqi militia on an American base in Jordan.

In response, Washington carried out 85 airstrikes on Tehran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq on Friday. Over the weekend, U.S. and U.K. forces launched dozens of strikes on Houthi rebel sites in Yemen, where the Iran-backed group has launched attacks on commercial and U.S. naval vessels. The U.S. on Monday launched what it called a self-defense strike against two Houthi drone boats carrying explosives in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, military officials said. The Houthis said they were undeterred, and that they would continue to launch attacks until Israel ends its war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“The United States will continue working with regional partners to address threats to U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as Houthi threats to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,’’ Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday night on X.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East this week as part of a continuing U.S. effort to try to bring an end to the war in Gaza and roll back Tehran’s influence while avoiding a direct confrontation with Iran.

In a meeting Monday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Blinken discussed ways to end the war and end Houthi attacks against commercial shipping, the State Department said.

U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking is also traveling to the region this week, where U.S. officials said he is expected to try to exert pressure on the Houthis to halt their attacks in the Red Sea and advance peace talks aimed at ending the war in Yemen.

Some Middle East experts question whether the U.S. can successfully contain the various militias that make up Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” which spans several countries across the Middle East, while Israel continues its war against Hamas.

“All these militias have to do is keep hitting the U.S. every day with something in order to demonstrate they aren’t deterred and tie the tempo of attacks to the Gaza conflict,” said Andrew Tabler, a former Middle East director at the White House’s National Security Council.

The financial cost alone could keep the U.S. from hitting Iran-backed militias daily, Tabler said. “The problem for the U.S. is that it has to be sustainable. We can’t hit them every day,” Tabler said.

Attacks from Yemen’s Houthis and the military response by a U.S.-led coalition are forcing an increased number of vessels to renounce crossings through the Red Sea. Diversions away from the waterway have doubled since the killing of the three U.S. soldiers, according to maritime artificial intelligence company Windward.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” wouldn’t rule out strikes on Iranian territory itself, saying it would “not be wise” for him to discuss what targets the U.S. might consider. So far, however, both Washington and Tehran have sought to avoid direct confrontation.

The U.S. publicized the retaliatory strikes in Iraq and Syria in advance, giving the Iranians ample time to move their troops out of the area, and no Iranian forces were killed, according to Iranian officials.

In Yemen, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps advisers moved away from coastal areas, The Wall Street Journal has reported. The Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York said that Iran “maintains no military presence in Yemen and has never deployed forces there.”

Report: Iran planned to kill Jews in Sweden using agents disguised as refugees

Swedish public radio reported on Tuesday that Iran had planned to kill Swedish Jews using agents who had infiltrated into the country in 2015 by pretending to be refugees.

In its investigative report, Radio Sweden said that the agents, a man, and a woman, were linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and that among the targets of their plot was Aron Verständig, the chairman of the Swedish Jewish community's umbrella organization, the Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities.

"This involves a plan by another country to murder a Swedish citizen, and that has me boiling," Verständig told the public radio station. "It felt very unpleasant. I was worried and as a father of young children, I felt a major responsibility for my children's safety."

In a Facebook post, Verständig added: "From my standpoint, there was never any doubt that I would continue living life as usual. I hope that what was disclosed today doesn't cause anyone to be less open regarding their Jewish identity."

Another person who was in the Iranian agents' crosshairs was a U.S. citizen, and according to the Swedish prosecutor's office, the FBI was involved in the investigation.

The two alleged Iranian agents – Mahdi Ramezani and Fereshteh Sanaeifarid– were arrested in the Stockholm area in April 2021, the radio station reported. The Swedish prosecutor told reporters that the authorities hadn't managed to gather sufficient evidence against them at the time to indict them, so it was decided to expel them to Iran in 2022. Their expulsion was reported in the past, but the circumstances of the matter weren't disclosed at the time.

The Iranian embassy in Stockholm refused to comment.

The Iranian plot revealed a major failure on the part of Sweden's immigration authority, which had granted the pair status as Afghan asylum-seekers, and later resident status.

This was despite the fact that in 2016, the immigration authority received two anonymous tips that the pair were Iranian and not Afghani, and that the Iranian man was working for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The immigration authority declined to comment on this specific case, but a spokesman said, "What's important is that ultimately, the correct decision was made."

The disclosure of the plot comes at a complicated time for Jews and Israelis in Sweden. Last week, a grenade was thrown at the Israeli embassy in Stockholm. It didn't explode. Several days before that, there were reports that Hamas planned to attack the Israeli embassy in Sweden as well as other sites following the arrest of its members in Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.

In addition, in recent months, there has been an increase in reports of antisemitic incidents in Sweden, including demonstrations with antisemitic content, calls for boycotts, antisemitic comments in the media and on social media and abuse and harassment at schools and universities.

"Antisemitism has gone sky-high since October 7," Verständig told Haaretz last week, in reference to the Hamas attacks in a string of Israeli border communities that day, "and many people have been experiencing fear, insecurity, and anxiety. A survey that we carried out in November shows that many Jews have considered leaving Sweden. The government has reacted in an excellent way – but in civil society, reactions are sometimes very different."

Drone strike in Baghdad kills high-ranking Iranian-backed militia commander

Officials with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq said that one of those killed was the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah's operations in Syria. The strike came days after the U.S. military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria

Members of an Iraqi Shiite militant group attend the funeral of a fighter with the Kataib Hezbollah, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024.

A drone strike hit a car in the Iraqi capital Wednesday night, killing three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, militia officials said.

The strike occurred on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage.

Two officials with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq said that one of those killed was Wissam Mohammed "Abu Bakr" al—Saadi, the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah's operations in Syria. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to journalists.

The strike came days after the U.S. military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan in late January.

The U.S. has blamed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a broad coalition of Iran-backed militias, for the attack in Jordan, and officials have said they suspect Kataib Hezbollah in particular of leading it.

There was no immediate comment from U.S. officials on Wednesday's strike.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has regularly claimed strikes on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying that they are in retaliation for Washington's support of Israel.

Kataib Hezbollah had said in a statement that it was suspending attacks on American troops to avoid "embarrassing the Iraqi government" after the strike in Jordan, but others have vowed to continue fighting.

Also on Wednesday, the media office of the Houthi rebels in Yemen reported two airstrikes in Ras Issa area in Salif district in Hodeida province.

Senior terror suspect killed in West Bank shootout with security forces

Israeli security forces killed a senior terror operative and another two gunmen in the West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp, close to Tulkarem, on Wednesday the army and police said in a joint statement.

Undercover Border Police officers and Israel Defense Forces reservists of the 8105th Battalion operated in Nur Shams for more than four hours following intelligence information provided by the Shin Bet security service.

The IDF said the troops encircled the building where the wanted Palestinian, Moatasem Ali, was holed up, and applied a tactic known as “pressure cooker” that involves escalating the volume of fire directed at a building to force suspects to come out.

Ali was accused of being a senior terror operative in Nur Shams, and responsible for previous shooting attacks against IDF troops.

The statement said that after “using various means,” and amid a gun battle, Ali was killed.

Two more gunmen who attempted to flee from the building where the wanted man was holed up were..killed, the statement said.

The troops also recovered weapons from the building.

No soldiers or officers were hurt in the raid.

In other operations overnight, security forces carried out raids in the West Bank city of Jenin and in Nur Shams, the IDF said.
During those activities, terrorists threw explosive devices at soldiers as well as opened fire at them. Troops returned fire and engineering units uncovered improvised explosive devices that were placed along access routes used by security forces. During the operations, seven wanted suspects were arrested.

Meanwhile, in the city of Qalqilya security forces found a storage room that contained “very large amounts of materials to prepare explosive devices,” seized weapons, and arrested two suspects.

Weapons were also found in other locations in the West Bank during raids. In the town of Ya’bad a suspect was arrested who was found to be carrying weapons.

Suspects arrested in the overnight raids were handed over for further interrogation.

The IDF said there were no injuries to Israeli forces.

Violence in the West Bank has soared since October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into Israel from Gaza by land, air and sea in a shock assault in which they massacred more than 1,200 people and seized some 253 hostages.

In response to the deadliest attack in the country’s history, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, where the terror group has ruled since 2007.

Since the beginning of the war 3,050 suspects have been arrested in the West Bank, of whom 1,350 are affiliated with Hamas, the IDF said.

According to the Palestinian Authority health ministry, some 300 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time.

Based on military estimates, the vast majority of those killed since October 7 were shot during clashes amid arrest raids, and many of them, according to data seen by The Times of Israel, were armed with either a firearm or an explosive device.

The IDF is aware of at least three cases of uninvolved Palestinians being killed by troops in recent months, and a handful of cases of settlers killing Palestinians, which are still under investigation.

U.S. Airstrike Increases Calls in Iraq to Expel Coalition Forces

The U.S. drone strike that killed an Iran-backed militia commander in Iraq risks further straining relations with Baghdad and intensifying popular and political pressure on the Iraqi government to expel the U.S.-led coalition aiding the fight against Islamic State in the country.

Wednesday’s strike in the Iraqi capital killed a commander of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, which the Pentagon said was responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on American forces in the region.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed al-Sudani on Thursday accused the U.S. of violating his country’s sovereignty, saying the strike would push Baghdad to terminate the mission of the U.S.-led military coalition, according to his spokesperson.

Months of escalating clashes between the U.S. and Iranian-backed militias in the country have increased pressure—both from ordinary Iraqis and from political factions loyal to Iran—on the prime minister to fast-track an American exit.

Approximately 2,500 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq, advising and assisting local forces to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State.

Should the U.S. be forced to depart or scale back its presence significantly, it could reduce its already waning influence in the region, undermine past successes in defeating Islamic State, and risk upsetting the fragile regional equilibrium between rival powers, from Iran to Russia, Turkey or Saudi Arabia.

As the U.S. takes on Tehran-backed militias in the Middle East in an effort to prevent more attacks on American soldiers, the challenge for Washington is to do so without sowing further chaos in an already volatile region. That is because the militias it has targeted in Iraq aren’t only supported by Tehran but are also part of the security establishment in Iraq.

Sudani has previously called for an exit of U.S. troops, but hasn’t set a deadline for the departure of the coalition, which was formed in 2014 to support Iraqi forces in regaining control of the country from Islamic State militants. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in January, he didn’t close the door to a role for U.S. troops advising Iraqi forces to remain in the country under a new bilateral relationship

The recent strikes could amplify political pressure on Sudani to set a clear timeline for the withdrawal, said Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi, Abu Dhabi based expert on Iraq and Iran with Control Risks, a consulting firm.

“The strikes are seen by political actors across Iraq’s federal government, including Sudani, as a demonstration that the U.S. presence in Iraq is destabilizing the country and increasing the chances of Iraq being drawn into a regional confrontation and dragged into war,” she said.

By striking militias in Iraq and Syria, Washington seeks to dissuade further attacks on its soldiers. But it is unclear whether the militias can be restricted.

On Wednesday, Iraqi militants responded by launching a drone at a military base housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria.

“Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq are unlikely to be deterred by U.S. strikes,” Tabrizi said.

U.S. strikes on Iraqi soil, especially Baghdad, have exposed a key vulnerability of the Iraqi government: its partial reliance on militias that are part of the country’s security apparatus, paid to fight Islamic State, but who also lash out against Baghdad’s American patrons.

“The American forces have carried out a clear-cut assassination operation by launching an airstrike in the midst of a residential neighborhood in the capital, Baghdad, in a manner that disregards the lives of civilians and international laws,” a spokesman for Sudani said Thursday.

Last week, after 16 Iraqi militia members loyal to Iran were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in retaliation for a drone strike in Jordan that killed three U.S. servicemen, Sudani declared a national day of mourning and sent a representative, health minister Saleh Al-Hasnawi, to their funeral.

Following the recent U.S. strikes, many Iranian-backed militia commanders have gone into hiding in Iraqi Kurdistan, in upscale hotels in Baghdad, or crossed the border into Iran, according to an Iraqi official and a U.S. security adviser. They worried that Islamic State might take advantage of the chaos.

Kataib Hezbollah was initially created after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a pro-Iranian force fighting American troops. Over the years, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq killed more than 600 American soldiers, according to the Justice Department.

But with the rise a decade later of the Sunni radical Islamic State, which threatened U.S. interests as well as Shiite Iran and its militias, the U.S. found itself sharing a common enemy with various Tehran-backed groups known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella including Kataib Hezbollah.

Yet, after the demise of Islamic State, the militias resumed attacks on U.S. interests. In 2020, a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the top commander of Kataib Hezbollah alongside Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional alliance of militias, in an attempt to curb the threat to American troops.

Since then, Kataib Hezbollah has been the most prominent component of a group of militias that are both integrated into the Iraqi security forces, while also targeting U.S. forces in both Iraq and Syria.

The militia commander killed on Wednesday, who the Pentagon didn’t name but who was identified in Iraq media as Abu Baqr al-Saadi, was once a bodyguard for Muhandis and often accompanied him in meetings with Soleimani, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.

The trajectory shows that U.S. airstrikes have limited ability to influence Iraqi politics and security, said Renad Mansour, project director of the Iraq Initiative at Chatham House.

“Four years on, the U.S. has even less influence,” Mansour said, “and in fact it’s the groups like Kataib Hezbollah and others from the Popular Mobilization Forces that have become more powerful since those attacks.”

Pro-Iranian militias might seize on the recent U.S. strikes for mobilization purposes, he said.

“This offers an opportunity for them to say, we are fighting the Americans, we are defending Iraqi sovereignty, we are doing this in line with the Palestinian cause. These are all ways in which these groups are trying to recover a serious legitimacy gap that they and the entire Iraqi leadership is facing domestically.”

However, Mansour added, the militias are drawing on a dwindling portion of society for their mobilization.

“Iraqis are sick and tired of their country being used as a battleground, and they know that Iran and the U.S. are pursuing their own interests in Iraq.”

U.S. intelligence officials told members of Congress this week that Israel had degraded Hamas’s fighting capabilities but was not close to eliminating the group, the principal war aim of the Israeli government, American officials said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, speaking after a meeting with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, emphasized again on Wednesday that his goal was to destroy Hamas.

Those war aims are divisive in Israel, where parts of the Israeli public have criticized the government’s decision to prioritize the complete defeat of Hamas over securing the release of hostages.

Last month, retired Lt. Gen. Gati Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff and a member of the war cabinet, criticized the Netanyahu government’s prosecution of the war, saying the government should negotiate a cease-fire to free hostages and rebuking Mr. Netanyahu’s call for “total victory.”

American officials have also raised doubts about whether the destruction or elimination of Hamas is a realistic objective, given it operates like a guerrilla force, hidden in a network of tunnels that are difficult to penetrate. Weakening the combat strength of the group may be a far more achievable goal, U.S. officials have said.

The United States is also pushing for Israel and Hamas to agree to a series of temporary cease-fires and an exchange of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.

The closed-door intelligence briefing to members of Congress did not include a discussion of how many Hamas fighters may have been killed, nor did it contain refined estimates of civilian casualties. Gaza health officials estimate that more than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, most of them noncombatants who have died in airstrikes.

American intelligence officials have refrained from offering specific estimates of how many Hamas fighters have been killed, arguing that such estimates are neither accurate nor meaningful.

Mr. Netanyahu said last month that Israel had destroyed two-thirds of Hamas’s fighting regiments. American officials say privately that their estimates are lower, and perhaps only a third of Hamas fighters have been killed. Before the war, estimates of Hamas’s fighting strength ranged from 20,000 to 25,000.

But American officials also emphasize that the United States has learned in war after war that counting the number of enemies killed in an insurgency or counterterrorism operation is a fool’s game.

Operations that kill militants often radicalize others, swelling the ranks of enemy organizations. And U.S. officials say death counts of fighters do not give an indication of whether a government has addressed the core issues driving the war

53 Days in the Hamas Tunnels: A Hostage’s Story

Just days into captivity, Tamar Metzger felt her energy fading rapidly. She began to notice herself sometimes slipping into what felt like a state of half-consciousness. Slumped against a white ceramic-tile wall that was moist from humidity, she struggled to pace her breath.

Boredom set in. Her hearing felt weak. The voices of people near her seemed faint, including that of her husband, who was constantly bickering with a decadeslong friend about everything from history to film.

Tamar, 78 years old, found herself counting a ribbon of brown tiles on the opposite wall a few feet away. Their edges were darker brown and they ran in two horizontal layers. She found them oddly beautiful in a cell that had no furnishings except for the AstroTurf they laid their sleeping mats on and a fan that was constantly breaking down.

With her were about a dozen people from the Nir Oz kibbutz, including two Thai farmhands, an elderly Israeli historian, a cinema buff and an anxious father who didn’t know if his wife and children were alive.

They were hostages being held in an enormous tunnel complex built by Hamas under the south Gazan town of Khan Younis. It wasn’t clear to Tamar how many others were underground with them—Hamas took more than 250 people captive during its attack on Israel on Oct. 7. At one point, when their room began shaking from Israeli airstrikes far above, their guards rushed all of them into a different space with another crowd of hostages for a few days.

Tamar, who was released after 53 days in captivity, described her day-to-day experience in hours of interviews with The Wall Street Journal. Right up until her handover to the Red Cross on Nov. 28, she was unsure if she would be able to return home, let alone what would happen to those held with her. Her husband and other men in the group remain captive.

She said many of her group hoped the Israeli government would strike a deal with Hamas to free everyone. They didn’t want a high-wire military attempt to free them that might result in deaths.

The retiree and avid reader was part of a group of women and children who were returned to Israel from Gaza in daily batches during a one-week cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas in late November. The U.S.-designated terrorist group continues to hold more than 130 people


This account of life in the tunnels is based on Tamar’s description as well as interviews with relatives of freed hostages and video testimonies by released hostages to Israeli media.

The Israeli government and international mediators are negotiating for the release of hostages, while Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers have painstakingly searched for them. Adding to the country’s collective anguish, the information about them has included propaganda videos from militant groups with unconfirmed statements—including one of hostage Yarden Bibas with Hamas saying his wife and two redheaded little boys, who had captivated hearts in Israel, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.  

In recent weeks, the Israeli military raided the Khan Younis underground complex, which it said was rigged with explosives and blast doors and likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. It found no hostages but said it saw evidence that about 20 hostages had been there at various times. The Journal verified footage and photos released by the military showing a passageway about a half mile in length winding more than 65 feet deep, with a kitchenette, bathrooms and cells.

Israel is now trying to forge a new deal to secure the remaining hostages. An initial U.S.-backed proposal that Egyptian and Qatari mediators relayed to Hamas outlines a six-week pause in fighting, during which civilian hostages, including children, the elderly and sick, would be released. The next two phases would have Hamas releasing female and male Israeli soldiers as well as the bodies of dead hostages.

A detailed counterproposal by Hamas this week showed that the two sides are still far from a deal, the Journal reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the militant group’s demands, which included the mass release of Palestinian prisoners.  

Relatives of hostages have tried to increase pressure on Netanyahu by protesting outside his Mediterranean seaside villa and apartment residence in Jerusalem, and by blocking a major expressway in Tel Aviv. Former hostages, many of whom have friends and family still being held, have also screamed at officials to get their loved ones back home instead of trying to dismantle Hamas first. A recent Israeli assessment said as many as 50 of the hostages could be dead, considerably higher than the 29 deaths Israel has publicly acknowledged, the Journal reported.

Discussing the Holocaust
Tamar was in shock when she was shoved into a vehicle with other hostages on Oct. 7. Her face was bruised and blood ran down her legs from falling off a motorbike earlier. Suddenly she heard a female whisper next to her.

“Tammy, I’m with you. Don’t be afraid.” It was her friend Nili Margalit. Tamar had known the 41-year-old nurse since she was born on the kibbutz.

The women were dropped off at a tunnel shaft near a warehouse-style building. It was risky to talk much, let alone embrace each other. Their kidnappers, who wore civilian clothing, turned them over to Hamas men after what seemed like a period of bargaining.

As they descended underground, the muddy path was barely visible in the dark. Tamar was a longtime smoker and had asthma and high blood pressure. She held on to the back of Nili’s pants to keep up. She was barefoot—her slippers had fallen off earlier. They walked past rocks, boxes, sandbags and other construction material.

At some point, Tamar’s feet were so numb she couldn’t feel the ground. “Go, go, go,” their kidnappers kept saying.

As they moved through the tunnel, they got a glimpse of a large well-lit area with computers where Hamas men worked. Some later saw a prisonlike cell that an Israeli couple was kept in because the woman had raised her voice with another hostage.  

They eventually arrived at a room where they saw about 20 hostages seated on the floor. They included Tamar’s husband, Yoram Metzger, who had been in a different part of their house when kidnappers broke in. Some of the people were wounded and bleeding. Hamas separated those with more serious injuries from the elderly of Nir Oz, taking the latter group to a holding area.

The space would become their underground home.

In a small space for cooking, Adina Moshe, a 72-year-old retired kindergarten teacher and Tamar and Nili’s friend, would heat up rice and canned green peas, even though she didn’t have her eyeglasses and couldn’t see well. The shelves were well-stocked, as if in preparation for a large crowd. Five or six of the hostages would gather around one plate, each with a spoon. After about two weeks, only rice was left.

They soon realized they needed a way to pass the time.

Alex Dancyg, a 75-year-old scholar at Yad Vashem, Israel’s main Holocaust memorial, began to give lectures about his studies. Alex had been born in Poland after the war, but his sister was a Holocaust survivor.

That history was painful to hear. Some in the group pleaded for him to change the subject.

Yoram, 80, quizzed the group on the Bible and popular culture. He knew Arabic so Hamas captors at one point took him to another room where they made him translate the news for them on Hebrew television. Yoram didn’t have his hearing aid so they had to blast the sound.

There was also Chaim Peri, an 80-year-old filmmaker who talked about the history of cinema, including the rise of Hollywood. Later, Hamas made him and Yoram appear in a propaganda video broadcast to the outside world titled “Do not cast me away when I’m old,” a line from Psalm 71.

But even with the three talkative men, the room often fell silent. People spent long stretches in their own head, especially Yarden, the father of the redheads. The 34-year-old had been kidnapped at a different location in the kibbutz from his wife and children, who had stayed in their home’s safe room. Tamar said Yarden felt guilty that he hadn’t stayed with them.

He had hoped Israeli soldiers had saved his family, but he grew distressed in the tunnels as he received no news. One day, the captors told him they had spotted his kids in Tel Aviv, just to get him to calm down.

Nili had asked the guards for tablets of clonazepam—an antianxiety medication—that she divided up among the hostages including Yarden to help them relax and sleep. One male hostage suffered from nightmares and wouldn’t stop hitting his friend during sleep.

Not knowing whether it was day or night made things worse. When the electricity went out, a battery-powered LED fixture was brought to keep the space dimly lighted. Nili used an analog watch that had lost its straps to keep track of time. Still, the days began to blur.

Some tried to clean themselves with washcloths dipped in cold water, even though their captors had hot water. One time, Tamar asked her husband to get them to give her a bucket of heated water too, which to her surprise they did. The warm water on her skin felt like a luxury.

For a few days, Danielle Aloni and her daughter, Emilia, who was then 5, joined the group, according to Adina in a televised interview with Israel’s Channel 12. Emilia missed home and cried a lot. She was terrified of the AK-47s, so Adina approached one of the higher-up captors to tell them to lower their guns. We’re old people and a little girl who can do no harm, Adina told Hamas. They complied.

Propaganda video
Four captors oversaw the group. As routine set in, the hostages assigned some of them nicknames. “Mualim,” Arabic for teacher, was the one in charge. His deputy was Ahmed. “The Refrigerator” was the man who kept pushing food into his mouth—each morning he went out to fetch pita bread, half of which would be gone by the time it reached them. The fourth captor they called “the Electrician” because he was always fixing things that kept breaking.

Sometimes groups of senior Hamas officials would stop by on their way to somewhere else. Their beards were neatly trimmed and their clothes looked clean. Some of them spoke Hebrew and called the hostages by name.

Adina believed she saw Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, twice, three weeks apart. “Shalom,” he said in Hebrew. “How are you? All good?” Adina said the group lowered their heads and didn’t respond.

She said she thought it was ridiculous to see how short Sinwar was next to a group of taller men. He left quickly when none of the hostages would engage him.

The captors came to treat some of the hostages better than others. Gelienor Leaño Pacheco, a Filipino caregiver known as Jimmy, was held with two men from Thailand in a separate cell. The Thais were made to clean the floors.

But the Hamas captors liked Nili because she worked at Soroka Medical Center and knew what medicines both the hostages and some of the Hamas captors needed. She also knew a bit of Arabic. Shortly after everyone arrived, she wrote a list of the names of antibiotics, pills for high blood pressure and other medicine.

A few days later, Hamas brought some of it. But the captors also got annoyed when Nili kept pushing higher-up officials to bring more medicine. As punishment, Hamas stopped allowing people to use their only fan. The underground lair grew more stuffy than ever.

At the end of November, Nili was informed she would be released. It was a day before the cease-fire deal broke and rockets from Gaza would begin flying again. She was elated.

But then the captors entered the room with a video camera. They told Nili and Yoram, who wasn’t being released, that they wanted their help to tell Yarden that his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. They wanted to film Yarden’s reaction.

Nili was shocked and refused. Yarden was called in anyway, made to sit in a chair and told what to say.

Yoram was forced to translate Hamas’s Arabic message into Hebrew. Nili began to shake and sob. Hamas pulled her away after one last hug with Yarden.

In a WhatsApp message to his family on Oct. 7, Yarden said he had a handgun and would try to defend his wife and children. What happened next is unclear, but photos soon surfaced of Yarden surrounded by a mob, his head and hands bloodied. Separate widely shared footage showed his wife, Shiri Bibas, being taken, too. She looked terrified while she clutched their four-year-old, Ariel, and then-9-month-old, Kfir, both wrapped in a blanket, the crowns of their red heads showing.

During happier times, the hair color had been the subject of jokes in the family. Yarden, who is dark-haired and of Yemeni descent, used to say they were the first redheaded Yemenis.

On Nov. 30, Hamas blasted the propaganda video with Yarden on Telegram.

In it, Hamas says Shiri and the children were killed by Israeli airstrikes, and that it had offered to hand over their bodies to Israel but that Israeli officials refused to take them.

A distraught Yarden speaks. “Bibi, you bombed my family. You killed my wife and children,” he gasps, referring to Netanyahu. His beard has grown thick and he’s in a black T-shirt against a white wall. “I beg you, bring me, and my wife and my children back home. Please, I beg you.”

Then the video cuts out.

Some members of Yarden’s family couldn’t bring themselves to watch it. But Yarden’s sister, Ofri Bibas Levy, said she couldn’t not watch. They had been waiting 55 days at that point for a sign of life. “I felt like I had to see my brother. I had to look at him,” she said.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said it couldn’t confirm Hamas’s claims and accused Hamas of “psychological warfare” against Israel.

At a square in Tel Aviv, where supporters of hostage families set up tents and memorials, visitors multiplied in the days after, donning orange shirts and releasing orange balloons in remembrance of the children’s hair.

Parting with Yoram
None of the hostages were sure whether what they were being told was true. Each day, their captors would say they would go home the next day.

On Nov. 24, the captors came to take Adina, telling her she would be among the first to be released. Knowing that Tamar was older and struggling to breathe, Adina fruitlessly pleaded with her captors to free her friend instead.

Four days later, Tamar was told to gather her things, including two inhalers that Nili had persuaded Hamas to provide her earlier in captivity. The youngest woman in their group, Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav, then 36, had been chosen to be released with her that day.

Between saying goodbye to Nili and her husband, Yoram, Tamar could barely cope. “You’ll be out soon,” she told Nili, who began to cry.


Yoram hugged Tamar tightly. “It’s better you go,” he said.

It was almost their 40-year anniversary. In captivity, Tamar had gotten through the night with the help of an oxygen tank that Nili had pushed Hamas to bring. As they lay beside each other in their underground cell, Yoram never fell asleep before Tamar. This was the Yoram she knew.  

A young Hamas man guided Tamar and Rimon out via the same tunnel they used to enter the complex nearly two months earlier. This time, they were allowed to take breaks, sometimes on chairs. The man appeared eager to learn Hebrew, and asked Tamar and Rimon to translate some of their exchanges so he could record new words in his notebook.

When they came to an exit shaft, they saw a ladder with about eight rungs and began to hear the familiar sound of traffic. The sky shone brightly in their eyes. Once outside they saw Palestinian parents carrying food and children.

Tamar was given a pink tracksuit and sneakers to wear. She and Rimon were grouped with some Israeli hostages she didn’t recognize, including a teenage girl with her pet Shih Tzu. Both had lost weight during captivity.

Mobs of local Palestinians gathered around the vehicles, including an ambulance, that took them to the Red Cross. Tamar heard thumping on the roof and said she feared for her life.

Eventually a minibus took them into Israel where they were received by Israeli army officers.

Tamar was then flown by helicopter to Israel’s Sheba Medical Center in central Israel, where doctors told her her heart was deteriorating and that she needed surgery soon.

Her family was amazed Tamar had even survived. The stress in captivity had done no good for her health, and they believed Nili may have saved her life by obtaining medicine for her high blood pressure.

In an interview from her new apartment in Kiryat Gat, Tamar said her survival in captivity was “not interesting, just reality.” Such matter-of-factness was why her family thought it important for Tamar to help record history. She spoke to the Journal on Feb. 2, a few weeks after surgery on her aorta.

Seated next to her on the couch and clutching her hand was her granddaughter. Her husband’s status and location is unknown. Tamar said she imagined him still sitting in the place he was in when they were hostages together. “We would never bow our heads down to Hamas,” she said.

Tamar didn’t care about the war and fighting. She just missed her husband. She didn’t cry. She hoped he would be free.

Key to toppling Hamas, Rafah now a far bigger challenge for Israel than it needed to be

After decades of efforts to keep the Hamas threat in check, Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah — and the Philadelphi Route running between it and Egypt’s border — once again is a major problem for Israel.

Palestinians began digging tunnels under Israel’s border fences during the First Intifada in the late 1980s, and in the ensuing decades, the Israel Defense Forces tried a range of methods to uncover the tunnels and keep terrorist groups from bringing in deadly new weapons.

The focus was on the Philadelphi Route, the 14-kilometer security road dividing the Gazan and Egyptian sections of Rafah. But it was perilous work. During the Second Intifada, the corridor is where 13 IDF soldiers were killed in the 2004 APC Disaster, and Hamas managed to detonate explosives under the JVT outpost, killing five soldiers.

Over the objections of Israel’s security services and many officials, Israel withdrew from the Philadelphi Route in the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Israel allowed Egypt to introduce 750 heavily armed border guards, but they failed to prevent a massive increase in smuggling into the Strip.

When Hamas forcibly ejected the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, they used the tunnels — and occasional destruction of the Egypt border fence — to fill their coffers, and to build up their military capabilities.

Now, four months after Hamas used those weapons to massacre 1,200 Israelis and take hundreds more hostage, Rafah has become a tangled quandary for Israel’s leadership, one that threatens to derail the entire war effort.

With the exception of Rafah, Israeli forces have maneuvered into all of Gaza’s cities and driven Hamas fighters underground. It is hard to imagine Israel meeting its war aim of toppling Hamas if it doesn’t take Rafah. Most of the remaining functioning Hamas battalions are in the city, and if Israel doesn’t take control of the border area, the Gaza-ruling terror organization can resume smuggling new weapons in — and potentially hostages or senior leaders out — when the fighting ends.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as much on Friday. “It is impossible to achieve the war aim of eliminating Hamas while leaving four battalions in Rafah,” his office said in a statement.

But the circumstances are becoming more problematic for Israel with each passing day.

From the beginning of the war, Israel told Gazans to move south, and over 1 million civilians are now in and around the city.

Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.

“Continuing Israeli strikes on densely populated areas will create an unlivable reality. The scenario of mass displacement is a possibility. The Egyptian position on this has been very clear and straightforward: We are against this policy, and we will not allow it,” said a spokesperson for Egypt’s foreign ministry.

Images in recent weeks circulating on social media have shown Egypt apparently fortifying its defenses at the border, with additional barbed wire and walls.

The US has also been increasingly strident in its warnings about the consequences of an operation in Rafah.

US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Thursday that the US had “yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation,” adding: “To conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area” where one million people are sheltering “would be a disaster.”

The White House issued a similar warning.

“Any major military operation in Rafah at this time, under these circumstances, with more than a million – probably more like a million and a half – Palestinians who are seeking refuge and have been seeking refuge in Rafah without due consideration for their safety would be a disaster, and we would not support it,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Waiting this long to tackle the strategic border area has already made it less likely that the IDF will be able to do so, at least under the conditions it wants.

Putting off the conquest of Rafah and the border may turn into the biggest strategic mistake of Israel’s ground operation against Hamas.

The roots of the war’s mismanagement go back years before it erupted.

By the time Hamas jeeps were pouring through dozens of breaches in the state-of-the-art border fence on October 7, it had been almost a decade since the IDF had an operational plan ready for conquering the Gaza Strip and defeating Hamas.

Gen. Sami Turgeman, head of the IDF’s Southern Command during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, came into his position and found that there was no such plan. Yoav Gallant, who was in the post when Hamas took over the Strip in 2007, declined to create one, and no one decided to do so despite the rounds of fighting against Hamas in the interim.

Turgeman’s plan had three options, the largest of which was for the takeover of Gaza. The smallest one envisioned brigade-size IDF assaults against Hamas battalions.

The medium option, called Kela David (David’s Sling), would cut off Gaza City and the northern Strip from the south, using Division 162 north of the city and Division 36 to the south.

The plan for retaking Gaza called for four divisions attacking simultaneously, adding an assault by Division 98 on Khan Younis, and Division 252 on Rafah. Each city would be cut off from the others within two weeks, with civilians offered sheltered zones along the coast. After the quick conquering of the Strip, the clearing phase would begin in the cities.

This plan was presented to the cabinet at the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, but was turned down.

Even so, the existence of a well-prepared operational plan had results in the field.

“The operational plans of the Southern Command for combat in the Gaza Strip were updated and approved,” wrote Col. Avi Dahan in the IDF journal Ma’arachot. “In the Southern Command, the Gaza Division, and the cross-theater divisions, there were deep operational processes, comprehensive battle preparations were prepared, and professional learning and training processes were carried out.”

The processes, argued Dahan, “increased the professional confidence of commanders and soldiers, amplified the physical and mental readiness, and improved familiarity with the enemy and terrain in Gaza.”

After Turgeman moved on in 2015, his operational plan was subsequently canceled and not replaced by any of his successors, which include current Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.

Conquering Gaza was seen as unrealistic given the clear aversion by the political leadership to even countenance reassuming responsibility for two million Gazans.

“Resources are limited,” an officer who worked on operational plans for Gaza during that period told The Times of Israel, “and there was no desire to put resources into a plan that had no chance of being used.”

The lack of a plan to topple Hamas impacted the way the IDF fought after October 7. Because it needed time to draw up plans, the IDF waited three weeks to order the ground incursion into Gaza, not exploiting the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks when sympathy for Israel was at a high on airstrikes that began taking their toll on Gazan civilians.

It also affected the intelligence Israel possessed. If there was no chance of maneuvering deep into Gaza, there was little reason to expend resources on mapping out the Hamas tunnels that did not head toward Israel.

That choice has slowed the IDF operation significantly, and has made it far more dangerous for the maneuvering forces.

And when the incursion came in late October, it was not fought in an aggressive fashion that maximized Israeli advantages.

“When the offensive finally began, it seemed that some of its actions were rooted in the concept of indecisive maneuver,” wrote Brigadier-General (res.) Eran Ortal. “Between a decisive approach aimed at quickly taking over crucial enemy positions and one aimed at eliminating terrorists wherever they were, the IDF’s maneuvers were more in line with the latter. A maneuver approach would call for multiple simultaneous efforts to prevent the adversary from retreating and reorganizing.”

“Such an offensive should have begun as quickly as possible, with maximum force, while heading towards multiple locations simultaneously,” Ortal continued.

Heading into Gaza City first made perfect strategic sense. The most effective Hamas battalions in terms of rocket fire were in the northern Strip, and their range would be limited somewhat if Hamas had to fire from further south.

Gaza City was also the center of Hamas’s governing capabilities.

But it is not clear why IDF forces didn’t take Rafah at the same time, as envisioned in the plan for retaking Gaza. There were far fewer civilians there at the time, making it easier for Egypt and the US to accept a major operation there.

And less than a month after the Hamas atrocities — and before Gazan casualties had reached unprecedented levels — there would have been far less room internationally to criticize Israel as it kicked off its ground operation.

‘No compromise’?
For now, Israeli leaders promise they will take Rafah. On Wednesday, Netanyahu said he ordered troops to “prepare to operate” in Rafah, after rejecting Hamas’s “delusional demands” in hostage deal talks.

According to the Israeli official, there would be “no compromise” on toppling Hamas militarily and politically, which would mean operating in Rafah.

A second Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Thursday that the operation in Rafah will not be a large-scale assault by a full division like a current operation in Khan Younis, but will instead be organized around targeted pinpoint raids.

Israeli forces also have stepped up airstrikes on the city, and Arabic-language reports say IDF ground forces are approaching the edges of Rafah.

None of this means, however, that an operation is a given. An order to “prepare to operate” is different than a directive to attack, and, as Israel is still looking to pressure Hamas to agree to a hostage deal on more favorable terms, threats to take Rafah could make an immediate ceasefire seem more pressing to Hamas leaders.

Netanyahu said that he recognizes that “a major operation in Rafah demands the evacuation of the civilian population from areas of combat,” and that he instructed the IDF to come up with a plan to do so while defeating Hamas forces in the city.

It may well turn out that the IDF conquers the city, as Netanyahu and his war leadership promise. But the mission would have been far more certain if Israel’s political and military leadership took the Hamas threat more seriously before October 7, and drew up a more aggressive plan in the weeks afterward.