Important Takeaways:
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday was as clear as he has ever been that he does not believe a ceasefire and hostage deal is likely in Gaza in a sharp rebuke to the Biden administration’s insistence it’s close at hand.
- On Sunday, President Joe Biden claimed that the parties were on the verge of a deal, and on Wednesday, a senior administration official claimed 90% of the agreement had been completed.
- “It’s exactly inaccurate. There’s a story, a narrative out there, that there’s a deal out there,” the Israeli Prime Minister said of the statement
- US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby doubled down on those assessments in comments to the press Thursday, saying, “90% – verge of a deal. You call that optimistic, I call that accurate.”
- “What Hamas has been demanding here, the Israelis have come forward to meet the terms as best they can,” the official said. “And Hamas, frankly, on this issue, we’ve had a pretty frustrating process.”
- The official said Hamas’s recent killing of six hostages had “colored” the ongoing negotiations and thrown into question Hamas’s willingness to reach a deal.
- Netanyahu has held two news conferences this week to argue that maintaining permanent control of the Philadelphi Corridor is vital to Israeli security.
- On Thursday, Netanyahu claimed Hamas “don’t agree to anything. Not to the Philadelphi Corridor, not to the keys of exchanging hostages for jailed terrorists, not to anything. So that’s just a false narrative.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Agreeing to the world’s demands to leave Gaza prematurely, even to have the IDF leave the Egyptian border area temporarily, would be a serious and strategic error that would embolden and resupply Hamas and put Israelis in grave danger.
- That’s the case that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made last night in a nationally televised press conference in Hebrew.
- A visibly emotional Netanyahu apologized to the hostage families and nation for not being able to get the six recently murdered hostages out in time. He called the six “pure souls” and vowed Hamas would pay a heavy price for this “horrible massacre.”
- However, the prime minister insisted that the only way to get back the remaining 101 hostages and protect all Israelis from future attacks by Hamas was not to surrender the vital gains the IDF has made so far.
- His top priority right now?
- The IDF absolutely must maintain control of the border between Gaza and Egypt called the Philadelphi Corridor, Netanyahu said.
- He called it “the oxygen tube for Hamas” because through the smuggling tunnels on that border has come most of the weapons, ammunition, rockets, explosives, and other supplies that the terror group needs to fight Israel.
- Cutting off those supply lines will suffocate Hamas and persuade them to make a deal, the prime minister insisted.
- “They thought that Iran will save them. Or Hezbollah will come save them. They are hoping that international pressure — or internal Israeli pressure — will affect it. But the first change for a possible [hostage deal] came because we took control of the Philadelphi Line.”
- “Once we get out of it we will not be able to go back in,” Netanyahu said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Fury was palpable at the end of a demonstration in Tel Aviv on Thursday, as protesters demanded a deal to free Israeli hostages in Gaza and grieved this week’s news that the bodies of six captives had been retrieved.
- Their tragic fate has raised fears that more Israeli hostages will not be retrieved alive either, said one protester.
- There has been no official explanation yet of how the six died.
- On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that initial forensic tests suggest that all six hostages had been shot, but it has not determined whether the gunshot wounds were the cause of death.
- The IDF said four additional bodies were found next to the bodies of the six hostages, which were believed to be those of the Hamas militants who had been holding the hostages, but that no evidence of shooting was found on their bodies.
- There are currently 109 Israeli hostages that remain in Gaza, including 36 believed to be dead, according to data from the Israeli Government Press Office.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s military reported an airstrike hitting a weapons warehouse near a Hamas military site in Gaza City, as well as strikes that killed militants in central Gaza.
- Another round of airstrikes targeted more than 10 areas in southern Lebanon overnight, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday. Those attacks were aimed at locations used by the Hezbollah militant group, the IDF said.
- U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Wednesday about efforts by the United States to support Israel “against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments,” according to a White House statement.
- Negotiators from the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are expected to meet in the coming days in Cairo to try to push forward the process of achieving a cease-fire that would include a halt in fighting and the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
- Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday that Israel insists on achieving all of its goals for the war, including ensuring that Hamas cannot pose a security threat to Israel.
- Hamas on Wednesday reiterated its core demands, which include Israel fully withdrawing from Gaza.
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Important Takeaways:
- Within the last month, nearly all major Western and international airlines have announced suspensions and cancelations of their service to both Tel Aviv and Beirut. This also as foreign nationals have scrambled to get out of both countries, given ongoing fears of the outbreak of bigger regional war involving Iran and Hezbollah attacking Israel.
- While American Airlines was among the many carriers announcing temporary pauses in service, it has just issued a surprising lengthy extension to this suspension in flights. On Friday, the Fort Worth-based company announced it doesn’t plan to resume flights to Tel Aviv until April 2025.
- This is a longer cancelation than any other airline, including in all of Europe, so far as a result of the Gaza war and related fears of regional escalation and spillover.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli troops launched a new assault Friday into the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, targeting Hamas fighters who the military claims still operate there despite repeated offensives, as American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators renewed their push for Israel and Hamas to reach a cease-fire deal.
- Officials from Israel and the United States have said they believe Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’ newly named top leader and one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, could be hiding in tunnels under Khan Younis.
- The military said Friday its warplanes struck 30 Hamas targets in the city, including fighters and weapons storage sites. It said troops were searching for Hamas tunnels and other infrastructure while engaging in combat “above and below ground.”
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed Thursday that it would send negotiators to talks that mediators have called for on Aug. 15, to be held in either Qatar’s capital of Doha or Egypt’s capital of Cairo.
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Important Takeaways:
- Since October 7…. the total of US taxpayer funds donated to Gaza as a reward since the massacre on October 7 to $896 million, or close to a billion dollars.
- A lawsuit, brought in December 2022 and updated in March 2024, by Rep. Ronny Jackson and victims of terror attacks in Israel, alleges that President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken “knowingly and unlawfully” provided more than $1.5 billion in aid to Gaza and the West Bank since taking office. Biden and Blinken have “known for years” that the US aid is providing “material support” for Hamas’ “tunnels, rockets, weapon procurement, and command and control infrastructure,” among other terror structures, the lawsuit stated.
- The Biden administration has sought to have the case dismissed twice but failed. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled that the lawsuit can proceed, and that there is evidence the Biden administration continued awarding taxpayer cash to UNRWA even after Congress blocked funding to that group due to its support for Hamas’s military infrastructure.
- In short, the Biden administration has donated less to Sudan and DRC Congo combined, where a total of nearly 50 million people face starvation, than to Gaza, where 2 million people face no such thing. What is going on? And where is Congress?
- According to FBI director Christopher Wray, “the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called caliphate years ago.” Iran, officially labeled the world’s leading sponsor of state terrorism by the 2023 US annual Terrorism Report, calls the US “the Great Satan” and continues to vow “Death to America.”
- Blinken casually announced in a July 19 interview that Iran had reduced the time it would need to create sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon “to one to two weeks.” He then went on to gaslight the audience by claiming that the Biden administration has been “maximizing pressure on Iran across the board.”
- Why is the Biden administration, under the pretense of “humanitarian aid,” drowning these terrorist enemies of America in US taxpayer money? And what, if anything, is Congress going to do about it?
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Important Takeaways:
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday appeared to threaten to invade Israel in support of the Palestinians, and to put an end to the nearly 10-month-old war Israel is fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
- Turkey must be “very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to the Palestinians,” the Turkish leader said of the war. “Just as we entered [Nagorno-]Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we might do the same to them. There is nothing we can’t do. We must only be strong.”
- As a member of NATO, which includes the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and other close allies of Israel, Erdogan would almost certainly face heavy opposition if he attempted to take military action over the war in Gaza.
- Since the war erupted with the October 7 terror assault in southern Israel, when Hamas killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians and abducted 251 others, the Turkish leader has met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Istanbul — where he encouraged Palestinians to unite against Israel, and has compared Israel to Nazi Germany and Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
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Important Takeaways:
- Harris’ comments provided the clearest explanation yet of her views on the conflict as she works to balance the issue that has not only divided the country but caused friction within the Democratic Party.
- Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that committing to the deal in its current form would mean “surrendering” to Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. A deal would “allow Hamas to rehabilitate… abandoning most of the hostages in Hamas captivity.” Smotrich wrote on X. “Do not fall into this trap!”
- The Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir wrote on X Friday, “The war won’t be ceased, Madame candidate.”
- Following Harris’ remarks, Israeli media have been quoting a “senior Israeli official” as saying that pressure from the US vice president to reach a ceasefire and hostages deal in Gaza is counter-productive and may put at risk efforts to reach an agreement
- The October 7 attacks killed 1,200 people in Israel and saw more than 250 others taken hostage.
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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”.
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