Important Takeaways:
- The IDF said that they carried out an airstrike after gunmen opened fire toward IDF soldiers in southern Syria. “This morning (Tuesday), IDF troops identified several terrorists who opened fire toward them in southern Syria. The troops returned fire in response and the IAF struck the terrorists. Hits were identified,” the IDF said.
- This is an escalation along the border. The fact that there were several gunmen involved on the Syrian side could mean that threats are emerging near the border. The IDF took over a buffer zone along the border on December 8 when the Syrian regime fell. Israel’s Prime Minister has said that southern Syria must be demilitarized. Israeli politicians and officials have threatened the new government of Syria in the last two months. There have been numerous IDF strikes in Syria as well. The latest strikes targeted the T-4 air base near Palmyra which is not in southern Syria but rather in the Syrian desert.
- This is a sensitive area. It is also an area that is far from Damascus and hard for the new Syrian government to control. With Israel’s warnings to Damascus, it seems unlikely the new Syrian government will be able to control these areas with many forces, leaving a power vacuum.
- It’s not clear if elements linked to the former groups that operated in Yarmouk basin have now re-appeared. Israel’s demand that the area be demilitarized seems to mean that a vacuum in power will emerge. When there is a vacuum then many threats will enter the area. That is the problem in southern Lebanon and also in Gaza and the northern West Bank. In all these areas there are terrorists who have emerged.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s defense minister said on Friday he has instructed the military to “seize more ground” in Gaza and threatened to annex part of the territory unless Hamas releases the remaining hostages it holds.
- “I ordered [the army] to seize more territory in Gaza,” Katz said. “The more Hamas refuses to free the hostages, the more territory it will lose, which will be annexed by Israel.”
- Katz also threatened “to expand buffer zones around Gaza to protect Israeli civilian population areas and soldiers by implementing a permanent Israeli occupation of the area,” should Hamas not comply.
- He said the army “will intensify the fight with aerial, naval and ground shelling as well as by expanding the ground operation”, which he said would include implementing Donald Trump’s proposal to turn Gaza into a resort after the relocation of its Palestinian inhabitants to other Arab countries.
- The Trump administration reiterated this week its support for Israel. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying, “The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages there would be all hell to pay.”
- Netanyahu said that the strikes were “only the beginning” and that future negotiations with Hamas “will take place only under fire”.
- “Hamas has already felt the strength of our arm in the past 24 hours. And I want to promise you – and them – this is only the beginning,” the Israeli prime minister said in a video statement.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hamas has called for “mass demonstrations and a global siege on Israeli and American embassies around the globe,” according to Iran’s state media Press TV. The report on March 18 said this was “in response to the Israeli regime’s resuming its US-backed war of genocide against the Palestinian territory.”
- Hamas has faced renewed Israeli airstrikes in the last two days. It has not been able to carry out much of a response so far. It doesn’t appear to have much of a rocket arsenal left. Its lack of response could reflect its lack of an arsenal in Gaza, or it could mean it is concerned about provoking further Israeli action. Hamas likely finds it easier to encourage attacks on Israel and the US abroad. It can then deny responsibility for these attacks.
- Iran’s state media IRNA said that in New York, “thousands of people have taken to the streets of Manhattan, New York City, protesting against the renewed Israeli air campaign against Gaza and the United States’ support for it.” This appears to be part of the Hamas global campaign. “Protesters on Tuesday marched through Times Square while holding up signs and chanting slogans against the war and in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” IRNA claimed.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israeli security cabinet convened an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss a culmination of alerts over the past few weeks that indicate that Hamas has been making preparations for another invasion into Israeli territory, N12 reported.
- Separately, Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated these concerns in a meeting with the Otef Israel Forum, a group primarily composed of residents from the Gaza border region, on Tuesday morning
- “There are constant preparations being made by Hamas for an invasion [into Israel], similar to October 7,” Katz said in the meeting.
- Hamas published a statement on Tuesday saying that Israel’s allegations regarding Hamas’s preparations to launch an attack on IDF forces “are baseless and merely flimsy pretexts to justify its return to war and escalation of its bloody aggression.”
- Israel, however, has publicly said that the ongoing strikes in Gaza are not related to fears of an impending attack but are instead in response to Hamas’s unwillingness to release the hostages and refusal to advance talks.
- Eisenkot claimed that Hamas currently has over 25,000 armed terrorists, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has over 5,000, adding that the government has not advanced the war’s objectives.
- Hamas is reportedly increasing recruitment drives in Gaza and training the new recruits for combat against the IDF. In January, sources told the Jerusalem Post that Hamas is making a substantial comeback by recruiting new forces, with an increase of about 12,000 at the time.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hamas has warned that Israel’s return to war has imposed a ‘death sentence’ on the remaining hostages held captive in Gaza.
- Israeli airstrikes pounded Gaza overnight, ending the fragile two-month ceasefire as Benjamin Netanyahu vows to use more force to free hostages held by Hamas.
- At least 413 Palestinians were killed in the strikes, including Hamas prime minister Issam al-Da’alis, the terror group has claimed. At least four other Hamas officials were reportedly killed in Israel’s attack.
- Medical facilities in the region are ‘overwhelmed’ as hundreds of injured people seek care.
- The Israeli military said it hit dozens of targets overnight and warned the attacks would continue for as long as necessary and extend beyond airstrikes, raising the prospect that Israeli ground troops could resume fighting.
- Netanyahu has ordered Israeli forces to take ‘strong action’ against Hamas and threatened terror chiefs with ‘increasing military strength’.
- His office accused Hamas of rejecting ceasefire proposals and ‘repeated refusal’ to release the remaining hostages in Gaza. The terror group still holds 59 of the 250 or so hostages seized in its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
- Hamas has accused Israel of breaching the terms of the ceasefire agreement and claimed to be ‘working with mediators’ to stop the bombardment. The terror group also blamed what it described as ‘unlimited’ United States for giving the ‘green light’ for the attack and alleged America ‘bears full responsibility’ for the Gaza ‘massacre’.
- Netanyahu’s office said the operation was ordered after ‘Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages, as well as its rejection of all of the proposals it has received from US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff and from the mediators’.
- ‘Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength,’ the statement said.
- ‘We will not stop fighting as long as the hostages are not returned home and all our war aims are not achieved,’ Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Muhammad Shaheen, a senior Hamas official, was killed in a drone strike on a vehicle near Sidon, southern Lebanon, on Monday, an Israeli official confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
- Shaheen was Hamas’s head of operation within Lebanon. In his role, he tried to plan terror operations against Israeli citizens, whether within Israeli territory or during international travels.
- The IDF said that Shaheen also received funding directly from Iran to carry out these terror operations.
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Important Takeaways:
- “From Hamas’s perspective, they are making a major comeback as a dominant force in Gaza,” Dr. Michael Milshtein, a senior researcher at the Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University…
- “Their situation is not bad. It’s terrible for us to say this because we wanted to see a battered, beaten, and maybe even barely existing organization. Yesterday, the education system in Gaza announced that schools will soon reopen, even though 85% of schools no longer exist. 6,000 Hamas police officers have been deployed throughout the strip, making it clear to everyone who is in charge and signaling that there’s no point in talking about the ‘post-war era,'” he said.
- … in their view, the price was worth it. In their count, 50,000 died, and the destruction of Gaza is the justified price for the harm caused to Israel and for their national pride. I’m not justifying them, but that is their narrative, and it’s time we understand that,” he added.
- Blinken spoke about 4,000 new recruits to Hamas, and that’s just from the past few months. They will use the near future to rebuild. This means organization structures, new appointments of commanders, and attempts to locate weapons’ wherever possible.”
- Mission accomplished?
- Yesterday, Hamas waved one of the major symbols of this statement – the commander of Beit Hanoun, whom we thought we had killed, ended up being still alive.”
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Important Takeaways:
- IDF is continuing to find weapons depots, Hamas terrorists, and tunnels. Hamas’ military abilities cannot be defeated as quickly as critics of the IDF strategy would like to believe.
- The Israeli military announced it had carried out airstrikes against over 100 targets, including Hamas terrorists and rocket launching sites.
- For over a year, Israel has staged a massive military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its stated goals are to remove Hamas as a governing power in the territory and release all the hostages.
- Thousands of Israelis rallied on Saturday evening to protest the government and pressure it to reach a deal with Hamas.
- …The IDF also continued to operate in the north of the territory.
- “The area consists of structures overlooking Israeli territory and serves as a central terror hub containing anti-tank firing positions, booby traps, shafts, numerous explosives, and launch sites for targeting Israeli territory,” read a statement by the army.
- In addition, the army continues to control the Philadephi and Netzarim corridors in southern and central Gaza, respectively, aimed at blocking Hamas from being able to re-arm and re-position itself.
- …according to Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University
- “Hamas had over twenty years to accumulate a massive amount of firepower, dispersing it in many areas, including in its widespread underground tunnel network,” Shamir told The Media Line. “Combined with other terrorist organizations, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), it had approximately 30,000 fighters. This could take two to three years to get rid of.”
- “There is an estimated 40% of the tunnels still remaining, hundreds of kilometers of tunnels the Israeli intelligence was not aware of,” said Yoni Ben Menachem, an expert of Middle Eastern affairs from Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told The Media Line. “There are still very long tunnels that Israel has yet to have located, some of them with hostages inside. This requires a very big operation and a massive amount of explosives that Israel currently does not possess.”
- Hamas stunned Israel on October 7th, 2023, when it attacked the south of the country in a rampage that killed approximately 1200 Israelis and wounded thousands more. It also took approximately 250 people hostage, 100 still in captivity.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a secret raid to destroy an underground missile factory funded by Iran inside Syria prior to the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli military censors revealed on Thursday.
- The declassified photos and videos of the operation, which involved over 100 Israeli commandos from the elite Shaldag (“Kingfisher”) unit, went viral in Israel.
- In a statement, the IDF said:
- On September 8th, 2024, during a special operation by the Israeli Air Force, troops from the Shaldag Unit raided and destroyed an underground compound for manufacturing precision missiles in the Masyaf area, deep in Syrian territory.
- For years, the Intelligence Directorate conducted extensive intelligence gathering and monitoring, confirming the value of the target. In the months leading up to the operation, a plan was launched for the Israeli Air Force to destroy it.
- The soldiers landed using helicopters, with fire and intelligence-gathering support from aircraft, fighter jets, and naval vessels of the Israeli Navy. The raid’s target was an underground compound deep in Syrian territory, funded and supported by Iran. The compound was a flagship project for Iran’s efforts to arm its terror proxies on Israel’s northern border. The compound included advanced assembly lines designed to manufacture precision-guided missiles and long-range rockets, significantly increasing the supply of missiles to Hezbollah and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
- During the operation, the forces reached critical machinery for manufacturing precision missiles, including a planetary mixer, numerous weapons, and intelligence documents, which were transferred for investigation. The soldiers destroyed the compound and safely returned to Israeli territory.
- The IDF will continue to act strategically and professionally with various methods and tactics to remove threats directed at the citizens of Israel.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement: “I salute our heroic fighters for the daring and successful operation deep in Syria. This was one of the most important preventive operations that we have taken against the efforts of the Iranian axis to arm itself in order to attack us; it attests to our boldness and determination to take action everywhere to defend ourselves.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel conducted a commando raid on an underground Iranian missile production facility near the city of Maysaf in Syria in early September, the Jerusalem Post learned in later September, but was only allowed to confirm now after KAN News was permitted to publicize the IDF officially taking credit late Sunday.
- That a raid took place, but without Israeli confirmation, was first reported by Axios on September 12, with the Post receiving secret confirmation shortly after, but not permission to publicize the information.
- It appears that Israeli censor and secrecy rules regarding operations in Syria have become more flexible given the huge increase in IDF operations in Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.
- With the fall of the regime, information security officials likely view any threat of retaliation from Syria as being at a much lower risk level.
- The raid targeted two significant sites, which were the Syrian defense industry’s Scientific Studies and Research Center and the underground missile production facility run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
- The decision to carry out the strike was believed to be influenced by concerns over the ongoing war, along with the potential risk that the Iranian missile factory would begin mass-producing missiles.
- …weapons were reportedly intended to be used as a supply for Hezbollah.
- The operation occurred approximately 200 kilometers from Israeli territory and was deemed urgent to prevent the facility from reaching full production capacity.
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