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 White House condemned what it called “disgraceful” protests outside Union Station Wednesday in Washington, D.C., while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an address to lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol.
- “Identifying with evil terrorist organizations like Hamas, burning the American flag, or forcibly removing the American flag and replacing it with another, is disgraceful,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.
- “Antisemitism and violence are never acceptable. Period,” Bates added.
- Protesters took down an American flag and replaced it with a Palestinian flag Wednesday, and at one point burned the U.S. flag
- A group of House Republicans restored the U.S. flags around Union Station, and former President Trump used the incident to renew his push for jail sentences for those that desecrate American flags.
- D.C. Metropolitan Police said six protesters were arrested at the scene. At least five protesters were also arrested in the House gallery during the prime minister’s speech, and another five were arrested while marching on Constitution Ave.
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Important Takeaways:
- Senior Hamas terrorist Musa Abu Marzouk announced on Tuesday the signing of a Palestinian unity agreement that includes Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, which rules areas of Judea and Samaria.
- “Today, we sign an agreement, and we say that the path to completing this journey is national unity. We are committed to national unity, and we call for it,” said Abu Marzouk.
- The “Beijing declaration” was signed by 14 Palestinian factions that took part in negotiations hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
- The Islamist group reportedly also gave its blessing to P.A. chief Abbas’s proposal to establish a “government of technocrats” whose primary purpose would be the reconstruction of Gaza after the war prompted by Hamas’s murder of some 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7.
- Hamas is an “essential part of the Palestinian political mosaic,” then-P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told world leaders gathered in Qatar in December.
- “We want a situation in which Palestinians are united. … I think it is time that Hamas call the Palestinian president and tell him we’re all united behind you, and you are the legitimate authority of the Palestinian people and we are ready to engage,” Shtayyeh stated at the Doha Forum.
- Amid the unity talks, Shtayyeh submitted the collective resignation of his government last month. Abbas then appointed Fatah loyalist Mohammad Mustafa to fill the prime minister’s role.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has insisted that an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” should ultimately govern Gaza.
- The Biden administration wants the P.A. to assume control of the Strip after Israel’s war against Hamas ends, a move that Jerusalem rejects because of Ramallah’s overt support for terrorism.
- According to recent polls, 89% of Palestinians support establishing a government that includes or is led by Hamas. Only around 8.5% said they favor one controlled exclusively by Fatah.
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Important Takeaways:
- The chaos in Washington, could sway Hamas to harden its stance in the hostage talks and give Iran that impression that now is the moment to increase military activity against Israel.
- Now, he is suddenly a lame duck president with only six months left in office, and there are calls for him to step down immediately in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.
- This means that the issue of retrieving the hostages and forming a military coalition against Iran could almost immediately fall into her hands.
- The leadership chaos will be most acute in the next month, given that the question of Harris replacing Biden on the ticket can only be officially decided by the Democratic National Convention on August 19-22.
- This sudden potential shift in leadership comes as Biden and his administration are in the final phase of potentially closing a hostage deal.
- The problem is not just that Harris is untested on these issues, but more that Biden is now at his weakest point during a month when Israel most needs Washington to be in a strong leadership position.
- That will create difficulties with closing the hostage deal and make Israel seem more vulnerable to Iran.
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Important Takeaways:
- Military assesses it will take months to locate all tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, but Rafah Brigade mostly dismantled; half of terror group’s military leadership killed
- The IDF believed that its intelligence indicating that Deif arrived at a compound belonging to Rafa’a Salameh, the commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis Brigade, was highly accurate, and that the pair were together in the building that was targeted with several heavy munitions.
- Salameh was killed in the strike, the IDF announced Sunday after obtaining final confirmation on the matter. It has yet to receive the same kind of information on Deif, and if he was dead, Hamas would attempt to hide the truth for some time.
- Deif was one of the chief architects of the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists broke through the border, killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
- He has been one of the figures most wanted by Israel since 1995 for his involvement in the planning and execution of many terror attacks, including bus bombings in the 1990s and early 2000s.
- The IDF has also been working to locate Hamas’s attack tunnels, which approach the Israeli border, as well as tunnel junctions that connect between various underground networks in the Strip.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel is “prepared for a very intense operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on a visit to the Lebanese border last month
- In Lebanon, Israel would face a larger, better-armed and more-professional foe, experts warn, and the threat of an even deeper military quagmire.
- Hezbollah insists it will not lay down its arms, or consider retreating from the Israeli border, until a cease-fire is in place in the Strip.
- Israeli military leaders have been drawing up plans for a Lebanon offensive for months
- Since the start of the operation in Gaza, 326 Israeli soldiers have been killed, more than four times the toll from the 2014 war against Hamas.
- To avert a Lebanon war, Israeli officials are demanding — through U.S. and European diplomats — that Hezbollah retreat about 10 miles north of the border, past the Litani River, a military demarcation agreed upon at the end of the 2006 war.
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Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu hardened his own positions on the border issue in a speech on Thursday, insisting Israel maintain control of the territory immediately along the border — known as the Philadelphi corridor — and the Rafah border crossing.
- He added that any deal must allow Israel to return to fighting in Gaza until all war objectives are achieved.
- Netanyahu added that he won’t agree to the return of armed Hamas militants to the northern Gaza Strip and said he will insist that a maximum number of live hostages be released in the first phase of the deal.
- The Israeli official involved in the talks said the prime minister does want a deal, but is willing to push talks to the brink.
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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
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Important Takeaways:
- Iran vows to back Hezbollah in fight with Israel as IRGC general renews threat of imminent missile strike
- Iran vowed on Tuesday to back the terrorist organization Hezbollah “by all means” against Israel if Jerusalem launches an offensive in neighboring Lebanon
- “All Lebanese people, Arab countries and members of the Axis of Resistance will support Lebanon against Israel,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times. “There would be a chance of expansion of the war to the whole region, in which all countries including Iran would become engaged.”
- “In that situation, we would have no choice, but to support Hezbollah by all means,” he added.
- Kharrazi noted that “the expansion of war is not in the interest of anyone – not Iran or the U.S.,” but his comments came just one day after a top Iranian commander said he was itching for the opportunity to levy more strikes against Israel
- Speaking to the families of Palestinians killed during the fight in the Gaza Strip on Monday, Brigadier General of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Amir Ali Hajizadeh said he is “hopeful” another strike will be carried out against Jerusalem following the first attack in April.
- “We are hopeful of the arrival of the opportunity for [conducting] Operation True Promise 2,” Hajizadeh said, according to Iranian-owned media outlet Mehr News Agency.
- The comments were in reference to the more than 300 drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles Tehran reportedly fired at Israel on April 14, the majority of which were stopped by Israeli and U.S. forces.
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘When America’s weak, the axis strengthens’: Fmr. Mossad official says Hezbollah fears war
- Oded Ilam, a former senior Mossad official, spoke recently with Arel Segal on his show on 103FM radio to discuss the implications of Biden’s failure in the recent presidential debate against Donald Trump and the possible escalation in the North.
- Ilam began by saying, “The Americans, although I don’t think they are anti-Israeli, continue to misunderstand the situation we are in. Biden and his administration have their hearts in the right place. The famous ‘warning’ that Biden gave to the Iranians didn’t move them at all. They attacked Israel anyway, and the American response was that the administration issued condolences for Raisi’s death. The American administration repeatedly shows weakness, which is also reflected in the ongoing negotiations.”
- “Every time Hamas does not accept a deal with Israel, we are forced to step back two more steps. It is hard for me to see a situation where Hamas allows us to write up another agreement that doesn’t include withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor,” Ilam noted. “I can assume that when America is weak, the axis strengthens. This confrontation is very significant. I saw Biden’s performance in Atlanta, where he was different than at the recent debate. He was excellent. The same team that advised him to go to the debate is exactly the same team that shapes America’s policy.”
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