Important Takeaways:
- Lebanon and Israel have regularly traded cross-border fire since the start of the Jewish state’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas — which, like Hezbollah, is backed by Iran — in the Gaza Strip.
- Fire exchanges have intensified since an Israeli airstrike last week killed a senior Hezbollah commander
- Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said: “Israel knows very well that no place will be safe from our missiles and drones”
- He added that Hezbollah has now “obtained new weapons,” but did not share any more details.
- The Hezbollah leader also threatened war against the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, if the European Union member permits Israel to launch military operations from its territory.
- Nasrallah’s speech fans the flames of increasingly heated rhetoric over the past week, as the spike in missiles traded between Israel and Lebanon raises concerns of a wider conflict in the Middle East.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz also warned that his country is now “very close to the moment of decision to change the rules against Hezbollah and Lebanon.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel, Hezbollah on ‘brink’ of all-out war, officials warn
- The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) made the warning on Sunday, just a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to meet with Amos Hochstein, a top aide to President Biden. Biden’s administration is pushing Israel to avoid a war in Lebanon, but IDF officials continue to highlight the outsized threat posed by Hezbollah compared to Hamas.
- “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation,” an IDF spokesman warned Sunday.
- “We are committed to the diplomatic process, however Hezbollah’s aggression is bringing us closer to a critical point in the decision-making regarding our military activities in Lebanon,” he told the Biden representative.
- Hezbollah, however, is far more well-equipped and has more manpower. Their rockets and drone attacks have already forced over 100,000 Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel.
- “Hezbollah is the crown jewel in the Iranian empire of terror and evil and is by far the most powerful Iranian proxy, equipped with nation state capabilities and even more firepower than several European countries have today,” former IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus told Fox News.
- “In a military comparison, Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas,” he added.
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF: Half of Hamas Battalions Destroyed in Rafah; Operation to Last Two More Weeks
- The IDF entered Rafah in early May — against the wishes of the Biden administration — to destroy the four Hamas battalions that remained there, having destroyed at least 18 of the 24 battalions in fighting elsewhere in Gaza since late October. The White House relented but insisted on a slow pace, with limited use of heavy munitions, and care to avoid civilian casualties.
- The IDF raced to secure the Philadelphi Corridor — the road along the Gaza-Egypt border — and the Rafah border crossing. It has since fought a steady, methodical, house-to-house and tunnel-to-tunnel battle against Hamas there.
- The Jerusalem Post reported:
- The IDF on Monday said that its Division 162 has defeated half of Hamas’s battalions in Rafah, including killing at least 550 terrorists, as well as destroyed around 200 tunnel shafts, and eliminated the terror group’s last major rocket inventory.
- Further, the IDF said that within a couple of weeks it would likely be in control of all of Rafah and that the final battles with the remaining two Hamas battalions in parts of Tel al-Sultan and the eastern part of Shabura are already underway.
- Currently, the IDF says Division 162, commanded by Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, has already achieved operation control of over 60-70% of all of Rafah with all of the 1.4 million or so civilians having long fled to al-Muwasi on the coast, central Gaza and Khan Yunis.
- Once it is concluded, the IDF will shift to a counterinsurgency strategy in Gaza — and will likely shift focus to a potential clash with Iran-backed Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
- There are still 116 Israeli hostages in Gaza, of whom 41 are known to be dead. They are being hidden — possibly underground.
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Important Takeaways:
- The latest proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza has the support of the United States and most of the international community, but Hamas has not fully embraced it, and neither, it seems, has Israel.
- Hamas is seeking the release of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including political leaders and senior militants convicted of orchestrating deadly attacks on Israeli civilians.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly disputed aspects of the plan, raising questions about Israel’s commitment to what the U.S. says is an Israeli proposal.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Hamas had requested “numerous” changes, adding that “some of the changes are workable; some are not.”
- Hamas has insisted it will not release the remaining hostages unless there’s a permanent cease-fire and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
- When President Joe Biden announced the latest proposal last month, he said it included both.
- Israel has yet to put forward a plan for Gaza’s postwar governance, and has rejected a U.S. proposal that has wide regional support because it would require major progress toward creating a Palestinian state.
- Blinken hinted that the negotiations would not continue indefinitely. “At some point in a negotiation, and this has gone back and forth for a long time, you get to a point where if one side continues to change its demands, including making demands and insisting on changes for things that it already accepted, you have to question whether they’re proceeding in good faith or not.”
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Important Takeaways:
- UN Security Council Passes US Ceasefire Resolution, Analyst Warns Language Putting Gaza under PA Dangerous
- At the United Nations, the Security Council approved that U.S. resolution. It calls for the return of the hostages and an end to the war through a three-phased plan.
- Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority welcomed the resolution.
- It calls for a two-state solution and “stresses the importance of unifying the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
- Itamar Marcus, founder of the Palestinian Media Watch, believes that language in the resolution is dangerous.
- “We saw the October 7th massacre by Hamas, which was a direct result of Palestinian Authority education, not Hamas education,” Marcus noted.
- Marcus dismisses the claim by the State Department that the P.A. has been “revitalized.”
- “The problem is that the Palestinian Authority teaches its people that Israel has no right to exist – that killing Jews is something that Allah wants; that destroying Israel is not only a national goal for Palestinians, but it’s also a goal for Islam because Israel is on holy Islamic land, Marcus asserted, and added, “These are the things that have to be changed in the Palestinian Authority and we haven’t seen any indication of any change at all in the new government.”
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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.
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Important Takeaways:
- Rather more jarring is that the Biden administration, and therefore taxpayer money, is also funding the protests, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
- “U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee… discussed oversight findings from the EPW Committee that revealed a $50 million grant was awarded from the EPA through the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to ‘Climate Justice Alliance,’ a group that engages in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities.” — US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, May 21, 2024.
- “[We] went to the website of Climate Justice Alliance. This is what we found on the website that our taxpayer dollars are going to organizations such as this. This, at the bottom, is a picture of the bulldozer that went through the fence when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.” — Senator Shelley Moore Capito, May 21, 2024.
- The People’s Forum’s executive director Manolo De Los Santos called for the complete destruction of the United States at the conference to great applause: “We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room.”
- Terrorists and their billionaire, as well as less-affluent supporters, are actively conspiring to destroy the US with the backing of foreign powers — and very little, if anything, is being done to stop it.
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Important Takeaways:
- On October 7, Hamas had a Plan A and a Plan B.
- Plan A was to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. Plan B was to pull back, stage ambushes and cry genocide while making up fake casualties and staging atrocities until its Islamist and leftist allies managed to save it while using hostages and their bodies as negotiating leverage.
- Phase 1. Hamas frees some surviving female hostages and returns the bodies of the others in return for Israel releasing hundreds of terrorists. Then Hamas retakes control over populated areas in Gaza.
- Phase 2. Endless negotiations for the possible return of the rest of the hostages as Hamas secures its grip on Gaza once again.
- Phase 3: US sends billions to Hamas to “rebuild” Gaza in exchange for some bodies of hostages.
- Phase 4: Hamas plots its next attack.
- The plan, presented as Israel’s proposal, is really Egypt and Qatar’s proposal overlaid on Israel, and now put forward by Biden and endorsed by Obama, whose people are running foreign policy in this administration.
- The Biden administration will decide if Israel gets to defend itself based on assurances from Qatar, a state sponsor of Hamas, and Egypt, which was caught red-handed with tunnels leading into Rafah to Hamas.
- This isn’t an Israeli deal or an American deal. It’s a deal by Islamic terrorists for Islamic terrorists. And Obama and Biden, two men who have done more to empower Islamic terrorists than almost anyone in the White House except Jimmy Carter, have put their seal on it. It’s a bad deal for America, for Israel and for civilization.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel says tent camp blaze that killed 45 Palestinians and sparked international outcry could have been caused by exploding Hamas weapons cache – as IDF tanks roll into the center of Rafah
- …the Israeli military claimed on Tuesday that the munitions it dropped near the camp were not enough to cause the large fires, instead suggesting an exploding weapons cache may have caused the inferno to spread.
- IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters that the strike was conducted against a ‘closed structure… away from the tent camp’ and claimed several Hamas officials were sheltering inside.
- He said the IDF dropped two munitions with 35lb warheads. ‘These are the smallest bombs we have. Our munitions alone could not have ignited a fire of this size.’
- As international pressure mounts on Israel over the horrific scenes emerging from Rafah – and as calls grow for its war in Gaza to cease – Israeli tanks reportedly reached the center of the beleaguered city on Tuesday.
- The Gaza Government Media Office claimed that Israel dropped seven 2,000lb (900kg) bombs as well as missiles on the camp in Tal as-Sultan, as reported by Al Jazeera.
- The UN Security Council is set to convene for an emergency meeting today to discuss the strike as the UN human rights chief Volker Turk expressed his ‘horror at the further loss of civilian life in Gaza’.
- Yet the Israeli Prime Minister’s resolve appears unwavering, as he declared in parliament: ‘I don’t intend to end the war before every goal has been achieved.’
- The Israeli military’s top legal official said authorities were examining the strikes and that the military regrets the loss of civilian life.
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Important Takeaways:
- Nearly 70% of Gaza Aid from US-Built Pier Stolen
- Close to three-fourths of the humanitarian aid transported from a new $320 million floating pier built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast was stolen on Saturday en route to a U.N. warehouse, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
- Eleven trucks “were cleaned out by Palestinians” on the journey to the World Food Program warehouse in Deir El Balah in the central Strip, with only five truckloads making it to the destination.
- “They’ve not seen trucks for a while,” a U.N. official told Reuters. “They just basically mounted on the trucks and helped themselves to some of the food parcels.”
- According to Israeli estimates, Hamas has been stealing up to 60% of the aid entering the Gaza Strip, and a Channel 12 report last week revealed that the terrorist organization has made at least $500 million in profit off humanitarian aid since the start of the war on Oct. 7.
- Reuters also reported that “food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza are piling up in Egypt because the Rafah crossing remains closed.”
- Israel took operational control of the crossing weeks ago, but Cairo so far has refused to cooperate with Israeli authorities to facilitate the entry of aid through Rafah. The Israeli government wants to allow aid into Gaza through the crossing but is unable to do so without Egyptian cooperation.
- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz last week placed the responsibility for averting a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip squarely on the shoulders of Egypt.
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