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President Joe Biden plans to issue an executive order targeting violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank whom he has said have undermined stability in the area, a US official and source familiar with the matter told CNN.

The new directive, first reported by Politico and expected to be announced Thursday, will impose sanctions on several individuals accused of having participated in the violent acts.

Biden has condemned these acts of violence in the past, and the issue is one that the president has personally discussed in recent months with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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The anticipated order comes as the president faces backlash from key parts of his political coalition for his backing of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. While the order is not expected to address the situation in Gaza, it will mark one of the more significant actions Biden has taken to critique Israel since the war began in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas and could be a signal from Biden toward Muslim and Arab-American voters who are upset with his refusal to call for a ceasefire.

In December, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a new policy to prevent extremist Israeli settlers responsible for violence in the West Bank from coming to the United States.

The State Department can apply the policy to both Israelis and Palestinians who were responsible for attacks in the West Bank, Blinken said at the time.

Blinken did not name any individuals who were subject to the visa restrictions, nor did he say how many would be included in the initial tranche of restrictions.

Ultimately, the new policy is expected “to impact dozens of individuals and potentially their family members,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said at the time.

Settler violence against West Bank residents has been a primary flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since long before the October 7 Hamas attack. When hundreds of Israeli settlers rampaged through the West Bank town of Huwara last February, the ensuing violence was so brutal that the Israeli military commander over the West Bank referred to it as a “pogrom.”

The violence has sharpened since October 7, along with the fears of Palestinians that they would be subjected to revenge attacks. Dozens of Palestinians were killed in the West Bank in the weeks immediately following the Hamas attack as settler violence intensified.

An estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank. It’s unclear which specific acts those targeted by Biden’s executive order participated in.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast on Capitol Hill Thursday morning, ahead of issuing the executive order, Biden acknowledged the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. He said he understands the “pain and passion felt by so many here in America and around the world” in response to the “trauma, the destruction in Israel and Gaza.”

“We value and pray for the lives taken and for the families left behind,” Biden said. “For all those who are living in dire circumstances, innocent men, women and children, held hostage or under bombardment, or displaced not knowing where the next meal will come from, or if it will come at all.”

As of early this week, the overall death toll in Gaza since October 7 had risen to 26,422 with 65,087 injured, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza. More than 1,200 people were killed in the original Hamas attack on Israel and more than 200 were taken hostage.

“Not only do we pray for peace,” he continued, “we’re actively working for peace, security and dignity for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people.”

Biden said he was engaged in bringing hostages held by Hamas home “day and night,” and was also working to “ease the humanitarian crisis and to bring peace to Gaza and Israel and enduring peace with two states for two peoples.”

A U.N. Agency Is Accused of Links to Hamas. The Clues Were There All Along.
For years, international relief workers and the Israeli military have reported weapons caches occasionally found in schools operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the organization that for decades has provided schooling, healthcare and other assistance to Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

They learned of underground tunnels beneath Unrwa facilities and the theft by Hamas of agency-provided fuel and aid. Some had run-ins with teachers over textbooks promoting the hatred of Jews and Israel.

In 2014, part of the parking lot at the Unrwa headquarters in Gaza began sinking, likely from a Hamas tunnel dug beneath. “No one talked about what was causing the collapse,” a former Unrwa official said, “but everyone knew.”

Suspicions that Hamas and other militant groups wielded untoward influence over Unrwa spread worldwide this week after Israeli intelligence reported that a dozen employees of the U.N. agency allegedly participated in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

What began as a small agency providing tents, food and other emergency relief for refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war has grown into an organization with a staff of 30,000 people, nearly all Palestinians, operating in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Western nations pay for most of its roughly $1.3 billion budget.

Its future is now in doubt. Western donors are questioning whether the agency has become irrevocably radicalized. The U.S. is among 18 countries that have suspended funding, including most of Unrwa’s largest givers.

Six Unrwa employees were allegedly among the thousands of Palestinians and Hamas militants who entered Israel on Oct. 7, in an assault that killed the most Jewish people since the Holocaust and sparked a war that threatens the region.

Several of the assailants were from Unrwa schools, including an Arabic teacher and a math teacher, according to Israeli intelligence reports viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Six other agency workers allegedly coordinated logistics for the assault, helped provide weapons, or were told to report to staging grounds for the attack.

Israeli intelligence estimates that 10% of the agency’s 12,000 staff in Gaza are affiliated or have membership in Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad and half the employees have a close relative with an active membership in the militant groups. Since Hamas has both a military and political wing, affiliation doesn’t mean membership in the armed group.

“Unrwa is totally infiltrated with Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting Wednesday of U.N. ambassadors in Jerusalem, saying it was time for the agency to be scrapped and replaced by other U.N. or aid agencies that would operate in a neutral fashion. “We need such a body today in Gaza. But Unrwa is not that body.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week the U.S. hasn’t done its own investigation into Israel’s claims but called them “highly, highly credible.” Even so, American officials have also said the actions of individuals shouldn’t taint the entire agency, a sentiment echoed in other donor countries.

Unrwa officials questioned the Israeli assessment. “What qualifies an alleged involvement?” Unrwa spokesperson Tamara Alrifai said. “Since when is someone accountable for what their cousin does?”

Phillipe Lazzarini, Unrwa’s director general, said the agency took swift action to fire the employees alleged to have been involved while the U.N. continues its investigation. Two others died. He said the West’s funding freeze amounted to “collective punishment.”

Aid agencies say Unrwa holds the biggest role in providing shelter and lifesaving aid to the vast population displaced by Israel’s campaign to eradicate Hamas, which has killed more than 26,000 people, according to local authorities. The numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres pleaded Tuesday with representatives of donor countries to resume aid, his spokesperson said.

Besides providing schooling and healthcare, Unrwa maintains streets, sewage and water systems in the sprawling neighborhoods of refugees that it oversees. Israeli officials say that by taking care of such municipal tasks, the U.N. agency freed up Hamas, Gaza’s de facto authority, to expand its terrorist capacities over the years, including construction of an estimated 300 miles of underground tunnels.

The tunnels are believed to be holding many of the more than 100 Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza. One tunnel found in 2020 had an entrance inside a food distribution warehouse operated by Unrwa, according to images viewed by the Journal.

Beyond the current humanitarian crisis, Unrwa is in some ways too big to fail, especially in Gaza, say some Israeli and former agency officials. U.S. officials said the funding freeze is temporary.

Whatever is learned about the U.N. agency’s role before, during and after the Oct. 7 attack will figure largely in its postwar future. U.S. officials expect to see fundamental changes at the agency before it resumes direct funding, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Tuesday.

“I can’t from personal knowledge say how entwined Hamas is with Unrwa,” said James Lindsay, the legal counsel for Unrwa from 2000 to 2007. “Unrwa minimizes the problem, and Israel tries to maximize it. The truth is probably somewhere in between.”

Some teachers on Unrwa’s payroll voiced support for the Oct. 7 attack, according to conversations in a Telegram group for contract workers for the agency’s Gaza school system. The information, prepared by UN Watch, a pro-Israel advocacy group, was presented Tuesday to a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing in Washington. Transcripts of the alleged conversations were reviewed by the Journal.

As Hamas mounted its attack, one group member wrote, “Our boys are inside on jeeps,” and “God protect them and bring them back safe.” Another person said she wanted to raise her children to emulate the Oct. 7 attackers. Both people were said to be linked to Unrwa’s payroll by UN Watch.

Unrwa, which helped pioneer schooling for girls in Arab countries, has a record of helping refugee students outperform their peers at public schools in host countries. Among its graduates is a NASA engineer. Israel has long criticized classroom lessons at Unrwa schools for stoking grievances and inciting violence.

Unrwa’s Gaza and West Bank classrooms teach the Palestinian Authority curriculum and use the same textbooks taught by Hamas. Several of the books inject doses of antisemitism and martyrdom into class exercises, the Journal found.

One textbook to teach fifth-grade reading comprehension features Palestinian militant Dalal Mughrabi, who joined a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 Israelis, including 13 children. Middle-school science students learn physics accompanied by images of Palestinians using slingshots to hurl rocks at Israeli soldiers.

Unrwa said it uses the same national curriculum wherever it operates. The agency said it reviews problematic content and, while not removing it, offers teachers guidance for offering criticism, context or skipping the lesson, and provides supplementary materials to teach tolerance. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2019 said teachers weren’t given such guidance or the supplementary materials.

Militants began to make extensive use of Unrwa facilities to shield their activities during the 2014 conflict with Israel, according to Israeli military officials. Unrwa said it found weapons kept in three of its schools. Israel also identified at least 28 incidents of militants firing projectiles from close to a Unrwa school or facility.

Unrwa staff told Israeli officials at the time they had found rockets in an Unrwa elementary school in Gaza. When Israel asked what happened, the agency said it called local authorities, linked to Hamas, to collect them, according to two former Israeli military officials.

Then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed outrage that rockets had not only been found in an Unrwa school but then went missing. Militants, he said, were responsible for “turning schools into potential military targets.”

Unrwa criticized Hamas in 2021 for commandeering one of its schools and for tunneling under Unrwa facilities. The agency said the following year that it had identified a “man-made cavity” beneath the grounds of a school in Gaza.

Alrifai, the Unrwa spokeswoman, said in an interview that Unrwa checks schools for weapons and immediately reports any findings to donor countries. Any crimes by small numbers of teachers shouldn’t condemn an entire school system, she added. “I sometimes wonder if we can hold the entire U.S. education system accountable for one mass shooting from someone who went to a school,” she said.

Unrwa has had at least 152 of its Palestinian staff killed so far during the war in Gaza. Thousands continue to work handing out food and medicine, many of them displaced themselves.

The agency emerged from the turmoil after World War II, when borders were redrawn and millions of refugees displaced worldwide. Shortly after Unrwa was founded, the U.N. created its Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. It focused on long-term resettlement and rehabilitation for refugees who couldn’t return to their homes.

Arab countries and Palestinian refugees didn’t want Unrwa to be part of that refugee office because they opposed permanent resettlement. The refugees wanted to return to their lives in Israel, a right blessed by the U.N.

During the 1950s, neighboring Arab states and many refugees refused to take part in U.S.-backed proposals for homes outside of Israel. One was an agricultural development project in the Jordan Valley that would have created a permanent home for 200,000 refugees.

American officials at the time warned of trouble. “The presence of three quarters of a million idle, destitute people whose discontent increases with the passage of time, is the greatest threat to the security of the area,” George McGhee, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, said in 1950.  

Unrwa’s unique definition of a refugee extends even to Palestinians holding citizenship and fully resettled in other countries, including Jordan and the U.S. Two of Unrwa’s five areas of operations, Lebanon and Syria, refuse to nationalize Palestinians. Other than Jordan, no Arab country has agreed to resettle Palestinians en masse.

Neighborhoods of impoverished refugees overseen by Unrwa became fertile ground for Palestinian nationalism and militancy. The Trump administration cut off funding for the agency in 2018, saying “The fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked Unrwa for years—tied to Unrwa’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries—is simply unsustainable.” The Biden administration restored funding in 2021.

Starting 2007, when Hamas took power in a coup, Unrwa leaders trying to enforce the agency’s neutrality in Gaza faced threats and attacks. That year, John Ging, the agency’s local head, was in an Unrwa convoy when armed militants blocked its path and tried to enter the vehicles. They fired shots, but Ging wasn’t harmed.

Two years later, Ging suspended aid imports to Gaza after Hamas stole hundreds of tons of food and other assistance as it arrived. Days later, Hamas returned the goods.

A former top Unrwa official, who oversaw the firing of employees with suspected links to Hamas and the removal of weapons from schools, left Gaza in 2015 after death threats, including a box with a grenade, said people familiar with the incident.

Evidence mounted that Hamas was burrowing into the U.N. agency. In 2017, the longtime head of Unrwa’s union in Gaza, an elementary school principal, resigned after it was revealed that he was elected to Hamas’s political leadership.  

In 2021, Israeli warplanes bombed roads near the Unrwa headquarters in Gaza during a brief conflict with Hamas. Unrwa’s Gaza chief at the time, Matthias Schmale, raised protests after he acknowledged the precision of Israeli strikes on Israeli TV. Hamas said it couldn’t guarantee his safety, and he left Gaza. He said later in a radio interview that it was a “safe assumption” that Hamas tunnels ran near or under Unrwa schools.

Some in Israel’s government want the agency abolished. Others worry there is no better option, especially for delivering emergency aid. Ronny Leshno-Yaar, former head of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s unit on U.N. agencies, said Israel’s diplomatic position has been “until there is an alternative, we need Unrwa.”

Hamas Divisions Over U.S.-Backed Cease-Fire Proposal Stall Negotiations
Divisions between the top leaders of Hamas are preventing the militant group from signing off on a U.S.-backed proposal to stop the fighting in Gaza and free more hostages, according to officials familiar with the negotiations.

In a reversal of the group’s usual dynamics, Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and others, weary after months of war, say they are ready to accept the proposal for an initial six-week pause in fighting, the officials said. The organization’s exiled political leaders, though, are demanding more concessions and want to negotiate a permanent cease-fire, they said.

Hamas’s internal disagreement is one of an array of obstacles facing the potential deal, the broad outlines of which were agreed upon by intelligence chiefs from the U.S., Israel, Egypt and Qatar last weekend, according to the Qatari prime minister and others familiar with the talks. The proposal calls for an initial six-week pause in fighting, far longer than the weeklong cease-fire in November, and sets out a phased release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Negotiators plan to use the pause to broker an end to the war, making it difficult for Israel to resume a full-scale military campaign.

Hamas’s political wing is asking for nearly 3,000 Palestinian prisoners to be freed—including some who were arrested after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the current conflict—in exchange for 36 civilian hostages, Egyptian officials said. The militant group also is demanding that the hostage release be extended to four phases instead of three, the officials said.

Israeli negotiators, meanwhile, are demanding a full list of all hostages, alive and dead, and assurance from Hamas that they would all be released in the multiphase deal, the officials said. Hamas officials argued that they would need more time to locate all the hostages, especially those who might have died due to Israeli strikes on Gaza, they added.

The proposal also awaits a decision from Israel’s war cabinet led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after it received broad approval from the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, who participated in the negotiations. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist coalition partners are opposed to an agreement that could lead to the end of the war. Others in Israel favor a deal as the most viable way to free some of the remaining hostages held by militants in Gaza.

The U.S. is pressing for a cease-fire deal in the hope it would lead to a lasting truce amid a spiraling humanitarian crisis, escalating death toll in the strip and the specter of wider regional conflict. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to travel to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel and the West Bank starting on Sunday as part of efforts to secure a deal that would free hostages and pause the fighting in Gaza, the State Department said Friday.

Amid the negotiations, the U.S. began a series of airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq on Friday, hitting seven facilities in a bid to deter further attacks against American forces in the region after three U.S. service members were killed in a deadly drone strike in Jordan on Sunday. The response to the drone strike—which had been launched from Iraq by an Iranian-backed militia—is expected to unfold as a set of operations over several days, U.S. defense officials said.

President Biden on Friday traveled to Dover Air Force Base, Del., to honor the return of the three soldiers. The president met with family members of the fallen soldiers in private and then took part in the somber ceremony, where he was joined by a group that included first lady Jill Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Despite the numerous obstacles to a cease-fire deal, officials brokering the talks have expressed optimism in recent days that they can bridge the remaining gaps in the coming weeks. Even if a deal is agreed, officials and analysts tracking the talks say that both the Israeli government and Hamas have reason to potentially return to fighting before a long-term cease-fire can be negotiated.

Hamas at first unilaterally demanded a longer-term cease-fire in Gaza, but the group’s leadership within the enclave now appears closer to accepting the current proposal, according to officials familiar with the talks. Negotiators proposed the current framework as a way to bridge the divide between the militants and the Israeli government, who wanted a short-term pause in fighting.

Sinwar is ready to accept a six-week pause, thinking it would give Hamas’s forces time to regroup and allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians in Gaza, officials said. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the group’s political bureau, has argued in recent days that the group needs to negotiate a permanent cease-fire guaranteed by foreign powers, along with a plan to rebuild Gaza, they said.

“Their families are being killed,” one of the officials said of Hamas leaders in Gaza, referring to their apparent willingness to compromise in the cease-fire talks.

Hamas declined to comment on the divisions within the group’s leadership and reiterated that it hadn’t made a final decision on the truce agreement.

Israel’s war cabinet, caught between right-wing members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition and sections of the Israeli public who are demanding a deal to free the hostages, also hasn’t rendered a decision on the agreement. Netanyahu earlier this week said that ending the war was a “red line” he wouldn’t cross.

Domestic political pressure is rising on the Israeli government to strike a deal. Former Israeli officials, hostage negotiators and military analysts say an agreement could be the only way to secure the release of around 130 hostages still in Gaza, including the bodies of those who have died.

Israeli military officials have said they need to continue fighting to amplify pressure on Hamas and gain more favorable terms in negotiations. Israel this week vowed that its forces would target Hamas in Rafah, the southern Gaza city packed with civilians sheltering from the war.

“We are achieving our missions in Khan Younis, and we will also reach Rafah and eliminate terror elements that threaten us,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said late Thursday.

Doing so would hasten the release of the hostages, he added during a visit to Khan Younis, Hamas’s last major stronghold in the strip. Rafah has previously come under Israeli bombardment. Gallant didn’t provide details about the Israeli military’s plan for Rafah.

Any Israeli military operation in Rafah, an area in the southern Gaza Strip that abuts Egypt, could open a risky new phase of the war. More than a million Palestinian civilians crowded into the area after the Israeli military urged Palestinians to move southward for their own safety. Aid workers and Palestinian residents warn that a military offensive in the area would deepen Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.

More than 27,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign aimed at uprooting Hamas from power, according to Palestinian health officials, whose numbers don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The offensive began in response to a Hamas attack that Israel says killed more than 1,200 people, most of them civilians, across a swath of southern Israel.

Hamas seems to rule out key points of truce offer, wants release of Marwan Barghouti

Hamas officials said Friday that the group is studying a proposed ceasefire deal that would include prolonged pauses in fighting in Gaza and swaps of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but at the same time appeared to rule out some of its key components.

Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh held a phone call with Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh to discuss the deal, the Gaza-ruling terror group announced. According to a statement from Haniyeh’s office, the two agreed any deal with Israel for the release of hostages must be accompanied by a complete halt to the fighting, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, ending the blockade, reconstruction of the Strip and the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners.

Such steep demands would seem to be non-starters for Israel.

Meanwhile Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, also said the group remains committed to its initial demands for a permanent ceasefire that would end the war. Hamdan also 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 mentioned two by name, including Marwan Barghouti, 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.

In addition to Barghouti, Hamdan named Ahmad Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, as well as Hamas prisoners and those from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Saadat is serving a 30-year sentence for his role in the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

Hamdan’s comments on the prisoners were the most detailed demands yet to be raised by the group in public.

The insistence on large-scale prisoner releases and an end to the fighting in Gaza put the group at odds with the multi-stage proposal that officials from Egypt, Israel, Qatar and the United States put forth this week. The proposal does not include a permanent ceasefire.

“There is no way that this will be acceptable by the resistance,” Hamdan told Lebanon’s LBC TV on Friday, referring to proposed successive pauses in fighting.

“We have tried temporary truces and it turned out that the Israelis don’t respect these truces but always violate them,” Hamdan said, in an apparent reference to a weeklong truce in November that ended after Hamas failed to provide a new list of hostages for release that met previously agreed criteria and fired rockets at Israel. Hamas claimed various violations by Israel throughout that truce, though these were reportedly dismissed by mediators Qatar and Egypt.

Israeli leaders have said they will keep fighting until Hamas is crushed, even while agreeing to long pauses that are accompanied by the release of hostages.

While there is broad support in Israel for efforts to return the 136 hostages held by Hamas — not all of them alive — an end to the war with Hamas still in power in Gaza is anathema to public sentiment in the Jewish state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed on Wednesday that Israel will not agree to a deal “at any cost,” and that it will not end the war, pull the IDF out of the Gaza Strip or “release thousands of terrorists.”

Hamdan’s remarks reaffirmed statements from other Hamas officials, including the group’s top political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who said Tuesday that the group was studying the terms but remained committed to seeking the “full withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza and steps toward a long-term ceasefire.

Another Hamas official said Friday that the group would answer “very soon” and ask for several unspecified changes. He refused to give any details on what they are seeking or how many hostages would be released in return for how many prisoners.

There have been various, sometimes conflicting reports on the proposed terms of the deal.

A senior Egyptian official familiar with the discussions on Friday described the proposal to The Associated Press, saying it includes an initial ceasefire 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 ceasefire 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.

A senior Israeli official told NBC News Friday that it was unclear that a deal would come to fruition.

“I don’t think it’s more than 50/50 it will materialize,” the unnamed senior official said.

Unnamed ministers also told Channel 12 news that a deal was far from certain.

Hamas and other terrorists captured some 250 hostages during their deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war. More than 100 were released during the one-week truce in November, in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas and other terror factions are holding onto 132 hostages taken on October 7. The IDF has said 29 are dead, citing intelligence and findings obtained by troops operating in Gaza. One more person is listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.

Hamas is also holding the bodies of fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin since 2014, as well as two Israeli civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who are both thought to be alive after entering the Strip of their own accord in 2014 and 2015, respectively.

In his remarks, Hamdan said Hamas wants to free Palestinian prisoners of all factions. The prisoner release is a “national cause, not only for Hamas,” he said.

Alluding to additional points of dispute, Hamdan also said that Israel is carving out a buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border. Israel is widely reported to be planning such a zone, though it has not acknowledged such plans officially. Satellite photos show new demolition along a one-kilometer-wide (0.6-mile-wide) path along the border between Israel and the enclave.

Israel’s war cabinet met earlier this week to discuss the proposal and met again Thursday evening for more talks.

Hebrew media reported Friday that ministers voiced opposition to several elements of the proposed deal, including its phased nature.

Kan news and Channel 13 cited Justice Minister Yariv Levin as saying it was “immoral” to agree to the release of only some hostages at first and then negotiate over others.

Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter agreed, saying: “We should have a single deal and not two phases.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich warned a pause in fighting would increase international pressure to end the war entirely, and said any who thought otherwise were “deluding” themselves.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said a long pause in fighting “will give Hamas oxygen” and allow it to rebuild its forces while freeing from prison “arch-murderers.”

Likud ministers David Amsalem and Eli Cohen also warned against a weeks-long stoppage of the war, saying it would end Israeli momentum and endanger its achievements in the fighting.

Hezbollah reveals advanced missile strikes and intel sortie over Iron Dome battery

In the Yom Kippur War, the Sagger missile was the most advanced threat facing Israel's armored forces. In the Second Lebanon War, the IDF encountered the Kornet anti-tank missile, which became Hezbollah's greatest threat to IDF armor and infantry. Last week, a new anti-tank missile was officially and publicly unveiled when the Lebanese terrorist organization documented an attack against two IDF intelligence facilities on the border.

The Kornet is a laser-guided missile that needs direct line of sight to its target in order to reach it. Conversely, the Almas 1 (diamond) anti-tank guided missile has advanced capabilities, which enable it to be launched at a target outside the direct line of sight of its operator, even at something behind a ridge or other obstacles. It is programmed to gain altitude after its launch and bypass line-of-sight obstacles. Its operators track the trajectory by a camera in the missile's nose until the target is acquired, at which point it continues until the precise strike.

"This is the first time that there is unequivocal documentation of this missile's use, but it's not the first time it's been fired," Tal Inbar said, a missile and drone expert and senior research fellow at the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. Hezbollah's first footage of the Almas launch shows it moving towards an IDF intelligence facility located on the border ridge in Israel, north of Shlomi.

The missile's nose camera documents its climb to a high altitude, revealing the Israeli base in full to the missile's operator, who guides it directly towards the facility's white dome supposedly housing radar equipment or other intelligence apparatus. The video ostensibly ends when the missile strikes the dome, but the explosion isn't seen. In the video, Hezbollah also shows other facilities at the base, which it claims were damaged in previous attacks.

The dome that was allegedly damaged in the strike is lying on the ground, rather than in its regular raised position, suggesting that it might not be operational. The day after the attack, the IDF Arabic spokesperson published a picture of that dome, intact, and claimed that Hezbollah was lying about the damage.

On Saturday, Hezbollah published footage of another strike by an Almas missile. In this case too, the missile's flight is shown from its nose camera: It gains altitude westward, turns south toward the Rosh Hanikra IDF base and dives towards a white dome that houses intelligence devices. This time, Hezbollah published additional footage of the strike from a different angle to prove that the dome exploded.

In response to Haaretz' inquiry about the strikes, the IDF said that "Roughly one week ago, a missile was fired at an IDF base in northern Israel. No equipment was damaged. The hole in the fabric was caused by another factor and doesn't affect the operational readiness of the equipment."

The army also said that it is "learning lessons from every incident [along the border with Lebanon] in order to improve its defenses," and that it is "operating in order to keep the residents of Israel's north safe from all threats."

The Almas missile, unveiled in 2016, is a copy of advanced anti-tank missiles in the IDF's arsenal. "The missile originates in several Israeli Spike (Gil) missiles that Hezbollah captured in 2006," says Inbar. This affair demonstrates Iran's ability to reverse engineer Western munitions, as it has done to several types of missiles, UAVs and other munitions that came into its possession. "Iran is a fairly advanced country, which can take these kinds of systems and copy them at high, near-original quality, and has frequently demonstrated an impressive improvisation capacity. Clearly, Israel is producing advanced versions that they do not have, but for Hezbollah's needs, what they have goes above and beyond."

The Israeli Spike missiles offer capabilities that their predecessors, like the Kornet and TOW missiles – used by Hezbollah – lack. The Spike is equipped with an electro-optic guidance system, which includes thermal guidance, giving it a 'fire-and-forget' capability. The operator chooses a target, launches the missile, which locks onto the target, even when it is moving, and tracks it until impact.

Alternatively, if the target is beyond the operator's line of sight, he can first launch the missile, let it approach the estimated area, and select the target at a later stage. One of the Spike's advantages is its ability to strike tanks and armored vehicles from above, where the armor is relatively thin.

The Spike can be launched from a tripod, light vehicle, armored vehicle, helicopter, ship, and drone. The sixth-generation Spike NLOS (Tammuz) has a 50 kilometer (31 mile) range when launched from the air. The latest addition to the Spike family is the Spike Firefly (Maoz), a suicide drone that has been used operationally by Israel in Gaza and Jenin in the West Bank.

According to Iranian reports, the Almas 1 has a 4 kilometer (2.4 miles) range, but they have presented models which they claim have a range of 8 kilometer (4.9 miles). "The development of such a project is very complex and takes years. The best minds have worked on it," says Inbar. "It's very difficult to copy everything one-for-one, but according to test results in Iran, assuming that they are not Photoshop fakes, they achieved pinpoint accuracy. The important point is that there is a missile here that does not necessarily require a line of sight. Iran also has a drone-launched version, so we must assume that Hezbollah also has it," according to Inbar.

Over the weekend, Hezbollah published another disturbing video, ostensibly showing an intelligence-gathering sortie deep inside Israel, seemingly carried out by a model aircraft or drone. The video claims that the sortie was conducted on Wednesday, January 24.It shows the model aircraft flying across Israel's north over the Hula Valley, documenting, among other things, Kibbutz Kfar Blum and what is allegedly an Iron Dome battery stationed nearby.

The footage is recent, if it isn't fake. In the video, Hezbollah claims that it attacked the battery the day after the intelligence sortie. On Thursday, the IDF Spokesperson did indeed report that "two hostile aerial targets" of Hezbollah had fallen near Kfar Blum, and that there were no casualties or damage.

On January 24, the day Hezbollah claimed to have conducted its intelligence sortie, no alert of a hostile aircraft was reported. The last alert in this area, before the attack on the battery, was four days earlier.

In response to a question from Haaretz on how it was possible that a Hezbollah aircraft or drone conducted a photographic sortie over the Hula Valley and flew directly over an Iron Dome battery, the IDF said that it was unaware of an intelligence-gathering sortie on that day. "The video and flight characteristics are investigated like any incident, with the aim of improving the Air Force's detection system," it said.

U.S. Strikes Steer Clear of Iran’s Red Lines
U.S. strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen continued into Sunday morning as the Biden administration pressed on with its effort to defend shipping lanes in the Red Sea and pin back the growing influence of one of Iran’s most active allies.

But in a sign that Washington and Tehran are seeking to avoid a direct confrontation, American strikes haven’t killed any Iranian forces so far in a separate set of strikes against the Quds Force unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq. Those strikes began on Friday and are expected to continue in the coming days after a drone strike in Jordan on Jan. 28 that killed three U.S. troops and injured more than 40.

U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said it had conducted a strike overnight in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen against an antiship cruise missile that the rebels had prepared to launch at vessels in the Red Sea. It said the strike, at around 4 a.m. Sunday local time, came after officials deemed the missile to be an imminent threat to the U.S. Navy and merchant shipping.

On Saturday, the U.S. and the U.K. said they struck at 36 targets in 13 locations in Yemen, targeting weapons-storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air-defense systems and radars to degrade the Houthis’ capability to threaten global trade.

The strikes sent a message to the Houthis that they would “continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.

Tensions boiled over across the Middle East shortly after Israel invaded Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. Various Iranian-backed groups have targeted U.S. forces in the region and commercial ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they wouldn’t stop until Israel ends the war in Gaza. In response, the U.S. has launched scores of strikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Despite the presence of advisers and fighters from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the targeted areas, the strikes so far haven’t killed any Iranian personnel.

“Unless [the strikes] continue, it is anything except deterrence. The last thing Biden wants is to be stuck in another quagmire in the Middle East,” said Saeid Golkar, an authority on Tehran’s security services at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Fighting with a more advanced technological enemy, the [Islamic Republic] uses a war of attrition, to frustrate the enemy, and when he steps back, fill out the power vacuum.”

The Iraqi government said 16 people were killed, including civilians, and 25 wounded in U.S. attacks on two towns in western Iraq near the border with Syria on Friday. Telegram channels close to Iran’s Guards published pictures of 10 Iraqi militiamen they said had died in the U.S. strikes.

Last week, Tehran warned the U.S. it would retaliate if its forces were hit—even outside Iran. “Should any party attack Iran’s territory or its interests and nationals beyond its borders, they will face a resolute and forceful response,” a spokesman for Iran’s delegation at the United Nations in New York told The Wall Street Journal.

Washington widely publicized its plans to attack Iranian allies in Syria and Iraq, giving Tehran ample opportunity to prepare and redeploy its personnel.

As long as U.S. strikes in Iraq and Syria avoid killing senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel, Tehran is unlikely to respond in kind. Even hard-line media outlets in Iran that are close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the security establishment have refrained from calling for retaliation against the American bombings.

Some Revolutionary Guard commanders in eastern Syria’s countryside moved to safe houses in densely populated areas and to the south of the country where they could easily mix with Syrian and Russian military forces, said Syrian and U.S. government advisers.

In Yemen, about 50 advisers from Iran’s Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah left coastal areas where they had been assisting missile and drone attacks on ships to San’a, the Houthis’ de facto capital, according to people familiar with the redeployment.

Khamenei has said that an American attack on Iranian soil, which the U.S. has never conducted, would prompt a response. Short of that, American strikes on Iraq and Syria provide Iran a public-relations victory, said Foad Izadi, professor of American studies at the University of Tehran.

“If the U.S. is afraid of attacking Iran, then other countries will feel the same,” he said. U.S. strikes on Iraqi forces, some of which are part of Iraq’s security apparatus, also fray Washington’s relations with Baghdad, which is to Iran’s advantage.

“If you look at the propaganda value, Iran is winning. And who is responsible? The U.S. government is,” Izadi said.

However, this careful dance around unspoken red lines is hazardous and carries with it a risk of miscalculation and mistakes that can tip a low-intensity conflict into something more destabilizing.

The militia drone that killed three U.S. soldiers at a military outpost in Jordan appears to have hit the living quarters there only because American troops got confused as it approached them at the same time as one of their own drones returned to base, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

Following the attack, Iranian officials refrained from endorsing it, despite the death of American soldiers, and instead dispatched officials to Iraq to tell their militia allies that they had overstepped a line, the Journal also reported.

There are signs the U.S. strikes may lead only to a temporary slowdown in attacks from Iran-backed militias. Yemen’s Houthis and some of the pro-Tehran groups in Iraq have vowed to continue seeking out targets until Israel ends its war in Gaza.

While Iran can influence its allies by turning off funding and military assistance, it has only limited control over them, analysts say. Iranian-backed militias in Iraq operate within an overall framework dictated by Tehran but also follow their own agenda, and for years have pursued the eviction of American troops from the country as their top priority. The Houthis, meanwhile, see a confrontation with the U.S. as a way of legitimizing their claim to the rightful leadership of Yemen.

How these groups respond to the wave of U.S. strikes will likely determine whether the conflict can be contained.

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.