Important Takeaways:
- Mediators reported Wednesday that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire deal, pausing the 15-month war against the terrorist rulers of the Gaza Strip.
- Once the Netanyahu government approves the deal, 33 of the nearly 100 remaining hostages are to be reunited with their loved ones over the next six weeks. The hostages have been held in brutal conditions since October of 2023 with no access to medical inspection and no contact with the outside world. It’s unclear how many of them are still alive.
- The deal is being rolled out in three phases.
- The first phase is six weeks long:
- It allows 33 hostages to be returned to their families — although it’s unclear how many are still alive.
- The IDF would also pull back from population centers to allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes and receive an influx of aid.
- Phase two is considered the most difficult. It includes the release of all remaining hostages and the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza.
- The third phase calls for the start of major reconstruction inside the Gaza Strip.
- President Issac Herzog addressed the nation late Wednesday.
- “As the President of the State of Israel, I say in the clearest terms: This is the right move. This is an important move. This is a necessary move. There is no greater moral, human, Jewish, or Israeli obligation than to bring our sons and daughters back to us—whether to recover at home, or to be laid to rest,” he said.
- Herzog continued, “Let there be no illusions. This deal—when signed, approved, and implemented—will bring with it deeply painful, challenging, and harrowing moments. It will also present significant challenges. This is not a simple situation; it is among the greatest challenges we have ever known.”
- “Today, as the President of the State of Israel, I pledge: We will continue to act with all our might until every stage of the deal is realized and the last captive returns. We will not rest or relent until all our sons and daughters are back home,” he added.
- Retired Israeli General Amir Avivi, founder and chairman of the Defense and Security Forum… believes it’s possible the deal could break down before all the hostages return.
- “But if this happens and we don’t get all the hostages, the pressure on Hamas needs to be huge,” he cautioned. “Stopping humanitarian aid, attacking, firstly, eliminating all the leaders of Hamas outside of Gaza, deporting them from Qatar.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Agreement says 33 hostages are expected to be released over 42 days
- Israel and Hamas have agreed to a cease-fire deal that also ensures the release of hostages, Fox News has confirmed.
- “A Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal was reached following the Qatari Prime Minister’s meeting with Hamas negotiators, and separately Israeli negotiators in his office,” a source briefed on the matter told Fox News
- The conflict, which began with Hamas’ brutal attacks on October 7, 2023, has left over 1,200 Israelis dead, more than 250 taken hostage, and thousands of others killed on both sides.
- President-elect Donald Trump, who threatened last week if a deal wasn’t struck before his Inauguration Day that “all hell will break out” in the Middle East, quickly offered his praise.
- The deal, brokered by Qatari negotiators and facilitated by Egyptian intermediaries, also saw significant involvement from the United States. Both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration applied strategic pressure to finalize the agreement, despite concerns about Hamas re-arming and internal tensions within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.
- The agreement calls for the release of three hostages on the first day, followed by weekly batches. Women, children, and men over 50 will be prioritized initially, with younger men in humanitarian cases included later. Updates on hostages’ statuses will alternate between announcements of survivors and confirmation of those who did not survive captivity.
- Approximately 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will be freed in exchange, with murder convicts barred from returning to the West Bank. Instead, they will be sent to Gaza, Qatar, or Turkey.
- The cease-fire will also facilitate significant humanitarian aid to Gaza, with up to 600 trucks of supplies entering daily. By the 22nd day, displaced residents will be allowed to return to northern Gaza. Qatari and Egyptian teams will manage vehicle inspections, while pedestrian crossings will not require checks. The IDF will withdraw from the Nitzarim corridor but maintain a limited presence along the Philadelphi Route.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- US officials believe hostage-ceasefire deal unlikely by end of Biden’s term
- Multiple senior US officials have reportedly acknowledged that a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas is unlikely before the end of US President Joe Biden’s term in office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
- The US officials told the outlet that one of the biggest obstacles to a deal has been the ratio of Palestinian security prisoners Israel must release in exchange for each hostage.
- The US has said publicly that Hamas has raised the number of prisoners it originally asked for, even after executing six hostages earlier this month.
- More broadly, WSJ reported that Hamas has made demands and then refuses to agree to a deal after Israel accepted them.
- “There’s no chance now of it happening,” an official from an Arab country told the newspaper. “Everyone is in a wait-and-see mode until after the [US] election. The outcome will determine what can happen in the next administration.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- There were three other ways besides the recent smuggling of weapons through the corridor that were likely responsible for the vast majority of Hamas’s massive weapons buildup, the sources said.
- Although these points were made in a technical and professional context, they could also have significant implications for the ongoing debate within Israel over how crucial it is for the IDF to hold onto the Philadelphi Corridor or whether it can be temporarily given up as part of a deal for the return of dozens of Israeli hostages.
- According to people familiar with the matter, it could take Hamas years to rebuild its cross-border tunnel network, meaning certainly not during the 40-plus days Israel would theoretically leave the area during Phase I of one of the proposed hostage deals.
- Regarding the use of the tunnels for long-range rockets, IDF sources said Rafah, in general, and the corridor, in particular, had turned out to have one of Hamas’s largest long-range rocket arsenals that the military found, compared with any other part of Gaza.
- Hamas’s strategy was to place the long-range rockets and their launchers next to the border with Egypt to deter Israel from striking them and risking an international incident with Cairo, either by accidentally hitting Egyptian soldiers or merely causing explosions so close to another sovereign nation’s territory, the sources said.
- Furthermore, Hamas rocket teams would hide in the large tunnels, which had launchers and inventories of rockets connected to them via their extensive space and storage capabilities, they said.
- The Hamas rocket teams would briefly pop out of the tunnels at selected moments, only meters from the Egyptian border fence, and then either fire the rockets or set timers for them to launch, IDF sources said.
- After a brief time of being exposed and in an area in which Israel would be very worried about attacking, even if it had much time to calculate a precision strike carefully, the rocket teams would rapidly disappear back into the cross-border tunnels, they said.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Israel Defense Forces Chief Spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari stated on Sunday, “A few hours ago, we informed the families that the bodies of their loved ones had been located by IDF troops in an underground tunnel in Rafah. According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.”
- The nation is mourning as six hostages, including American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were found murdered in Gaza. Just a few days before this grim discovery, Hersh’s mother Rachel stood at the Gaza border, shouting a blessing to her son: “May God bless you and keep you. May God shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up His face toward you and may God give you peace and may God bring you home now.”
- Some Israelis blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not being willing to approve a ceasefire deal. However, Netanyahu insisted a deal must have acceptable terms – and Israel must be able to stop Hamas from attacking Israel again.
- “The fact that Hamas is continuing to perpetrate atrocities like those it carried out on October 7 requires us to do everything so that it will be unable to perpetrate these atrocities again,” Netanyahu declared.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Four prison employees have been killed after prisoners staged a revolt in a Russian penal colony and took several hostages, federal authorities say.
- Special forces stormed the IK-19 Surovikino facility in the southwestern Volgograd region after knife-wielding prisoners, who identified themselves as Islamic State (IS) militants, claimed to have taken control of the sprawling complex.
- The attack began during a disciplinary commission meeting, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said in a statement.
- It was unclear how many hostages had been taken, though some reports in Russian media suggested that the prison’s director and deputy director had been seized
- The Volgograd hostage-taking is the second such incident this summer, after six prisoners who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group captured two guards at a facility in the neighboring Rostov region.
- IK-19 Surovikino is a high-security penal colony. It is believed to hold about 1,200 inmates.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- The bodies of kindergarten teacher Maya Goren as well as the soldiers Major Ravid Aryeh Katz, Master Sergeant Oren Goldin, Staff Sergeant Tomer Ahimas and Sergeant Kiril Brodski were found during an operation in the Khan Younis area.
- The military said it had determined that Ms. Goren was murdered in captivity, while the soldiers were killed in combat on 7 October and their bodies then abducted.
- The announcement means 111 of the 251 people taken hostage are still being held in Gaza, including 39 who the military says are presumed dead.
- The Hostages and Missing Families Forum praised what it called the “crucial and decisive military action that provides their families with important closure and eternal rest for the murdered”.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- It apparently never occurred to either the heads of the UN or the EU to consider that if you are a terrorist organization that commits war crimes, you do not get to choose how a war that you started is waged against you.
- If you do not want a “bloodbath,” do not take hostages, hide them among civilians, try to prevent a rescue, then if they are rescued, profess shock at the fallout that you yourself have teed up.
- In contravention of the Geneva conventions, Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross to check on the welfare of the hostages. One can imagine why.
- To this day, there seems little-to-no interest in the fate or condition of the hostages still in Gaza. Instead, there is denial that the October 7 atrocities even took place, compared to an almost obsessive regard for the safety of, and humanitarian aid for Gazans. When the UN is unable to deliver the aid, Israel, not the UN, is blamed.
- The Hamas murders, rapes, burning alive of babies and abductions – all the reasons why Israel was forced to go to war with Hamas to begin with — have retreated into the background.
- What seems to matter instead to those who set the political and media agendas is to use the Hamas war once again to demonize the Jews as the world’s most inhuman people for wanting to live peacefully on their historical land without daily massacres from Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis — which apparently plan to encircle them in a “Ring of Fire” — “six fronts of aggression
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- The United Nations, the player with the widest reach delivering aid within Gaza, has paused its work with the pier after a June 8 operation by Israeli security forces that rescued four Israeli hostages
- Rushing out a mortally wounded Israeli commando after the raid, Israeli rescuers opted against returning the way they came, across a land border. Instead, they sped toward the beach and the site of the U.S. aid hub on Gaza’s coast.
- An Israeli helicopter touched down near the U.S.-built pier and helped whisk away hostages and the commando, according to the U.S. and Israeli militaries.
- For the U.N. and independent humanitarian groups, the event made real one of their main doubts about the U.S. sea route: Whether aid workers could cooperate with the U.S. military-backed, Israeli military-secured project without violating core humanitarian principles of neutrality and independence and without risking aid workers becoming seen as U.S. and Israeli allies — and in turn, targets in their own right.
- Israel and the U.S. deny that any aspect of the month-old U.S. pier was used in the Israeli raid. They say an area near it was used to fly home the hostages after.
- The U.N. World Food Program, which works with the U.S. to transfer aid from the $230 million pier to warehouses and local aid teams for distribution within Gaza, suspended cooperation as it conducts a security review. Aid has been piling up on the beach since.
- For aid workers who generally work without weapons or armed guards, and for those they serve, “the best guarantee of our security is the acceptance of communities” that aid workers are neutral, said Paul, the Oxfam official.
- “So you know, perception matters a lot,” he said. “And for the people who are literally putting their lives on the line to get humanitarian aid moving around a war zone, perception gets you in danger.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Biden administration officials have discussed potentially negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage in Gaza if current cease-fire talks involving Israel fail, according to two current senior U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials.
- Such negotiations would not include Israel and would be conducted through Qatari interlocutors, as current talks have been, said the officials, all of whom have been briefed on the discussions.
- White House officials declined to comment.
- The officials did not know what the United States might give Hamas in exchange for the release of American hostages. But, the officials said, Hamas could have an incentive to cut a unilateral deal with Washington because doing so would likely further strain relations between the U.S. and Israel and put additional domestic political pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- The five Americans believed to be held in Gaza are Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Neutra and Keith Siegel. The three Americans believed to have been killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack are Itay Chen, Judy Weinstein and Gad Haggai.
Read the original article by clicking here.
