Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 25-26/2023
To, Dear Youmna Gemayel: Hezbollah is a jihadist, Iranian & non Lebanese Entity, and its war with Israel is a jihadist and Iranian war, and not a Lebanese one/Elias Bejjani/October 25/2023
Saudi Arabia evacuates families of diplomats from Lebanon
Tenenti: No UNIFIL patrols were targeted or hit in fire exchanges
'On the path to Jerusalem': 13 Hezbollah fighters killed in 24 hours
Nasrallah meets senior Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures
Sami Gemayel slams govt. for 'preparing for war instead of avoiding it'
Jumblat backs extension of army chief term amid developments
Geagea dubs Bassil's initiative 'empty posturing', says nothing can be done anymore
Bou Habib meets UN official Imran Riza, expresses concern over delay in displaced persons data delivery
Security concerns: Increased demand for essential goods in Lebanon
Frangieh after meeting Bassil: What is happening in Palestine and Gaza is a crime against humanity
Israel struck Lebanon in retaliation for missile launch: military
Hamas and Hezbollah leaders meet to plan path to ‘real victory’ in Gaza
Lebanon ‘abyss’ warning as fears of wider conflict grow
Hezbollah faces huge risks if it joins war against Israel
Hezbollah Threatens U.S., Israel 40 Years After Deadly Beirut Blast
Israel Strikes Hezbollah Cells in Lebanon
On Backdrop Of Israel-Hamas War, Article In Hizbullah-Affiliated Lebanese Daily Reminds U.S. Of 1983 Beirut Bombings, Warns Against Direct Involvement: 'Lebanon Has People Expecting You'
Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah Photographed With Senior Officials From Hamas And Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Delivers First Message Since Outbreak Of War: Hizbullah Dead Are ‘Martyrs On The Road To Jerusalem’
Will Lebanon Be Safe or Sorry?/Michael Young/Carnegie/October 25/2023

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published  on October 25-26/2023
US, Russian bids on Israel-Hamas war fail at Security Council
Israel bombs Aleppo airport again and kills 8 soldiers by targeting the Daraa countryside
‘Sponge bombs’ are Israel’s new secret weapon to block Hamas tunnels
The Battle of the Tunnels is about to begin in Gaza
Biden condemns retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank
US not ruling out retaliation against Iran-backed groups after attacks on soldiers in Middle East
Netanyahu: Israel is preparing a ‘crushing’ ground invasion to doom Hamas
Fears of another Palestinian exodus reverberate across the Middle East
Ex-Hostage Recounts Hamas Mass-Kidnapping Tactics
Iranian-Backed Militias in Iraq and Syria Continue Attacks on U.S. Troops
Israeli airstrikes surge in Gaza, destroying homes and killing dozens at a time
Iran is stepping up its shadow war with Israel to boost its clout — but it could backfire
Israel accuses UN chief of justifying terrorism for saying Hamas attack 'didn't happen in a vacuum'
Israeli commander says her unit of mostly women killed 100 Hamas militants
Ankara Denies Asking Hamas Leaders to Leave Turkey
Turkey's Erdogan says Hamas is not a terrorist organisation
Qatar's PM: Hostage release talks progressing, hopeful for breakthrough 'soon'
Family of Al Jazeera journalist killed in Gaza strike: network

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 25-26/2023
A Message to Yehya Sinwar the military field commander of Hamas/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper/October 25/2023
Blood Libel against Jews: Back with a Vengeance/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/October 25, 2023
Did Hamas just prove the Abraham Accords right?/Natalie Ecanow/Washington Examiner/October 25, 2023
Biden must take Iran threat seriously — and wage economic war/David Adesnik/New York Post/October 25/2023
Can the U.S. Arm Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan at the Same Time?/Ryan Brobst and CMPP Senior Director/Insight-FDD/October 25 2023
America Needs a Decisive Israeli Victory ...That means destroying Hezbollah and striking Iran. Anything less is a major strategic defeat for Israel and the U.S/Dr. Raphael BenLevi/The Tablet/October 25/2023
Why Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas for good is unrealistic/Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/October 25, 2023
Putting the Hamas Massacre, and Hamas Denials, in Context/Matthew Levitt, Delaney Soliday/The Washington Institute/October 25/2023
Qatar’s Relations with Washington and Israel Are Being Tested/Simon Henderson/The Washington Institute/October 25/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 25-26/2023
To, Dear Youmna Gemayel: Hezbollah is a jihadist, Iranian & non Lebanese Entity, and its war with Israel is a jihadist and Iranian war, and not a Lebanese one.
Elias Bejjani/October 25/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123515/123515/
To Dear Youmna Gemayel: Please read the public saying: “If speech is silver, silence is gold”. This saying addresses your bizarre tweet in regards to the on going war between Hezbollah and Israel. It answers your tweet and all similar concepts of those who are not well-versed in political and national matters, that deal with existential issues superficially and erratically.
Do you not know, madam, that the war is between the Iranian Jihadist Hezbollah, and the state of Israel, and not a war with Lebanon, or the majority of the free and peace loving Lebanese people, from all societal and sectarian backgrounds?
Don’t you know that Hezbollah is an Iranian jihadist army that occupies Lebanon, oppresses its people, seizes and confiscates its decision making process, independence, and freedom?
Don’t you know that Hezbollah brags and takes pride in its complete affiliation to the Iranian Mullahs’ regime, and boldly considers any Lebanese who opposes it’s Iranian scheme and agenda is an agent and a traitor?
Hence, any solidarity with it, even rhetorically, is either an ignorance, stupidity, subservience, or subjugation, and the result is one: surrender and submission.
Please note that supporting the Iranian occupier, Hezbollah, in any way, and under and tag, and for any reason is a mere national crime, and an endorsement of its occupation, empowerment, and entrenchment, that allows it to kill people, and annihilate Lebanon, its identity, existence, and peace role.
Once again, your silence, and the silence of those who engage in politics only on occasions, is a million times better, than any superficial, harmful, and irresponsible rhetoric.

Saudi Arabia evacuates families of diplomats from Lebanon
Associated Press/October 25, 2023
Saudi Arabia has evacuated the families of diplomatic staff because of ongoing clashes between Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops. The Saudi move comes amid rising tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border, where Hezbollah members have been exchanging fire with Israeli troops daily for two weeks. There was no official announcement from Saudi authorities, but the move came days after Saudi Arabia urged its citizens to leave Lebanon immediately. Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the Saudi ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Bukhari, the military attache and other staff members were not with the 65 people leaving Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon. Clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli military thus far have been mostly limited to several towns along the border.

Tenenti: No UNIFIL patrols were targeted or hit in fire exchanges
NNA/October 25, 2023
UNIFIL spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, on Wednesday said that “Exchanges of fire have continued along the Blue Line today. Contrary to some reports, no UNIFIL patrols were targeted or hit in these exchanges. Our peacekeepers remain on task and continue our activities, including patrols.”

On United Nations Day, UNIFIL urges parties to cease fire along Blue Line
Naharnet/October 25, 2023
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has urged "all parties" to cease fire to prevent further harm. On the U.N. 78th anniversary Tuesday, UNIFIL did not celebrate the way it did in the past years due to the current security situation.
"One of the Organization’s main purposes is 'to maintain international peace and stability,' which is why peacekeeping missions like UNIFIL are deployed around the world," UNIFIL said in a statement. It added that "on this day each year, UNIFIL normally brings together peacekeepers, government officials, local municipal and religious officials, members of the Lebanese Armed Forces and other security agencies for a celebration at our headquarters in Naqoura. "Today, however, there will be no gathering due to the current security situation. But this does not mean our commitment to the ideals embodied in the UN Charter are any less. Today, this commitment is being shown by the men and women in blue helmets on the ground. Peacekeepers from 49 different countries are focused on a singular task – preventing escalation of the current conflict along the Blue Line and avoidance of war." UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Aroldo Lázaro made the following statement:
"Since the situation began to escalate over two weeks ago, our peacekeepers have remained in their positions performing their tasks under Security Council Resolution 1701 and subsequent resolutions. We continue to carry out patrols and other activities, including with local communities, coordinating this work with the Lebanese Armed Forces. We have actively engaged with authorities on both sides of the Blue Line to de-escalate tensions and avoid misunderstandings. "Still, the conflict has intensified over the past two weeks, and this is a real concern. We appreciate the trust that both parties have placed in our liaison and coordination mechanisms, which have helped de-escalate hostilities and prevent misunderstandings during this crisis. We must redouble our efforts to maintain the stability that we have all worked so hard for over the past 17 years. We must avoid a wider conflict that would put many more people in danger. We have already seen too much destruction, injury, and loss of life. "We urge all parties to cease fire to prevent further harm. "On this day, United Nations Day, UNIFIL and its nearly 11,000 military and civilian peacekeepers commit to doing all that we can to maintain the ideals and purposes of the UN Charter. Someday soon, inshallah, peace and stability will return to both sides of the Blue Line."

'On the path to Jerusalem': 13 Hezbollah fighters killed in 24 hours
Associated Press/October 25, 2023
Eleven Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the past 24 hours, as Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire along the border. An Israeli drone fired Wednesday two missiles at the outskirts of Kfarshouba as Hezbollah targeted the Branit barracks and another Israeli post facing Naqoura. Israel later shelled the Shebaa Farms, Kfarshouba and the villages of Ramyah and Aita al-Shaab. The Israeli army said it struck 5 groups of militants who were about to fire missiles at Israel. On Tuesday, an Israeli helicopter attack struck an empty position near the border town of Houla, after a missile fired from Lebanon hit an Israeli military position. The Israeli military said the anti-missile attack hit a position in Manara with no casualties. They added that they struck a group of militants in the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon, where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah addressed the Lebanese media outlets Wednesday with a letter, asking them to call all the Hezbollah fighters who were killed since Oct. 7 "the martyrs on the path to Jerusalem". Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, killing at least 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials. Israel's retaliatory bombing has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. Israel and Hezbollah have been since trading near-daily cross-border fire but the tit-for-tat fire has been relatively contained. More than Some 50 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, mostly combatants but including four civilians, one of them Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited Israel on Tuesday, reaffirmed calls to prevent the war from expanding into Lebanon and the wider Arab world. Macron warned Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups against opening a new front in the ongoing war, and that Paris had expressed those concerns in direct communication with Hezbollah. “To do so would be to open the door to a regional inferno from which everyone would come out the loser,” he said.

Nasrallah meets senior Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures
Associated Press/October 25, 2023
The leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, held talks on Wednesday with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures in a key meeting of three top anti-Israel militant groups amid the war raging in Gaza. A brief statement following the meeting said that Hezbollah's leader agreed with Hamas' Saleh al-Arouri and Islamic Jihad's leader Ziad al-Nakhleh on the next steps that the three — along with other Iran-backed militants — should take at this "sensitive stage." Their goal, according to the statement that was carried on Hezbollah-run and Lebanese state media, was to achieve "a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine" and halt Israel's "treacherous and brutal aggression against our oppressed and steadfast people in Gaza and the West Bank". No other details were provided. The discussions in Beirut came as the war between Israel and Hamas is now in its third week. The fighting, triggered by Hamas' deadly incursion into Israel on Oct. 7 has killed more than 5,700 Palestinians in Gaza. As the Gaza death toll spirals, tensions have also been rising along the tense Lebanon-Israel border, where Hezbollah members have been exchanging fire with Israeli troops since the day after Hamas' rampage into Israel.
For now, those exchanges remain limited to a handful of border towns and Hezbollah and Israeli military positions on both sides. Lebanese army soldiers and United Nations peacekeeping forces have deployed in large numbers. Dozens of Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the clashes so far, the group says, while the Israeli military has also announced some deaths among its ranks. Nasrallah has yet to publicly speak about the war in Gaza and clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border. However, other Hezbollah top officials have warned Israel against its planned ground invasion into the besieged territory. Israeli officials have said they would retaliate aggressively in case of a cross-border attack by Hezbollah from Lebanon. "We will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the consequences for it and the Lebanese state (will be) devastating," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while visiting Israeli troops along the border with Lebanon on Sunday. Lebanon's cash-strapped caretaker government, along regional and international figures, has been scrambling to keep the country out of the war. Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a tense stalemate. Israel sees Hezbollah as its most serious threat, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.

Sami Gemayel slams govt. for 'preparing for war instead of avoiding it'
Naharnet/October 25, 2023
Kataeb Party chief Sami Gemayel has lamented that “Lebanon is hijacked” and that “the legitimate Lebanese authorities do not have any decision in their hands,” amid the daily clashes between Hezbollah and Israel on the border. “The government is only preparing to deal with the war’s repercussions and there is not a single attempt to avoid it. This official surrender is lamentable and it is clear that the Lebanese have no decision in what is related to their future and their country’s future,” Gemayel told Al-Arabiya’s Al-Hadath television. “Hezbollah’s control would not have manifested itself like we’re seeing today had the government tackled what’s happening in south Lebanon. Instead of sending the Lebanese Army to the south and deploying it to prevent friction, prevent dragging Lebanon into the battle and implementing Resolution 1701 in cooperation with UNIFIL, we see the south abandoned and the state absent,” Gemayel decried. “There are no orders for the Lebanese Army to prevent escalation and prevent the scenes that we are seeing in the south,” he added. “What mobilizes Hezbollah and Tehran’s allies is Iran’s interest,” Gemayel pointed out. “Instead of standing idly by, let everyone press Iran to liberate Lebanon from its hegemony. The international community’s role is to stand by Lebanon’s sovereignty and press Iran to stop sending money and arms as is happening today,” Gemayel added. “We are people who believe in peace and sovereignty, not blood, wars and killing,” the Kataeb leader went on to say.

Jumblat backs extension of army chief term amid developments
Naharnet/October 25, 2023
Former Progressive Socialisty Party leader Walid Jumblat has warned that Lebanon might be “dragged into a war that might be harsher than the 2006 war.”“That’s why rapprochement is required,” Jumblat said, in an interview with the PSP’s al-Anbaa news portal. Moreover, Jumblat said that he agreed with the political figures whom he has met with over “how to take some domestic measures, such as repairing the government, some appointments, the Higher Relief Council, the Red Cross and other key practical measures, in order to support the citizen and confront the worse.”Jumblat also said that he is in favor of extending the term of Army Commander General Joseph Aoun, “even if three months remain” of his current term. “No one knows how much this crisis will protract, and of course a military council should also be appointed,” Jumblat added. He also noted that he fears for the Rafik Hariri International Airport and the Middle East Airlines, revealing that he was one of those who “advised (MEA chairman) Mohammad al-Hout to take the appropriate measures.”

Geagea dubs Bassil's initiative 'empty posturing', says nothing can be done anymore
Naharnet/October 25, 2023
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea has criticized an initiative launched by Free Patriotic leader Jebran Bassil to unify the Lebanese stance against the risk of war, dubbing it "an empty posturing". In an interview published Wednesday in L'Orient Le-Jour, Geagea admitted that the opposition cannot do anything anymore to protect Lebanon from the risk of joining the Israel-Hamas war, as he said that it is Hezbollah, and not the Lebanese state, that is taking the war and peace decision. Bassil's initiative is "a step that shows he thinks people are stupid," Geagea charged. "He has no credibility and no clear initiative."
Bassil met Wednesday with MP Faisal Karami and MPs from the national moderation bloc, as part of a tour over the military developments in south Lebanon and Gaza. On Monday and Tuesday, he met with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati and former Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat. He also spoke by phone to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The tour, according to Bassil, aims at "protecting Lebanon" and "reinforcing national unity." During his tour, Bassil said that "all Lebanese agree that they do not want war," stressing that Lebanon would defend itself against any Israeli aggression.

Bou Habib meets UN official Imran Riza, expresses concern over delay in displaced persons data delivery
LBCI/October 25, 2023
The Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, announced after his meeting with the Deputy Special Coordinator of the United Nations, Imran Riza, that "we will not understand, after the end of this month, the delay in delivering the data of displaced persons and the non-compliance with the agreement signed between us at an earlier time."He also stated, "We have had constructive dialogue regarding the displaced persons with representatives of the United Nations during our visit to Syria, and follow-up meetings are ongoing with their counterparts working in Lebanon."

Security concerns: Increased demand for essential goods in Lebanon
LBCI/October 25, 2023
Day by day, the demand for purchasing essential goods and commodities, especially food, is increasing as people rush to stock up amidst the rising security concerns in the South and Gaza. Many citizens are constantly inquiring about the possibility of the war expanding to include Lebanon. This article was originally published in and translated from the Lebanese newspaper Nidaa al-Watan. Amid confusion and fear, people are taking precautions wherever possible. The director of a shopping center told "Nidaa Al-Watan" that "this phenomenon has increased with the expansion of events in the southern regions of Lebanon, starting about a week ago."On Tuesday, the Economy and Trade Minister, Amin Salam, held a meeting with the unions of mill owners, meat producers, importers, and oil derivative manufacturers. He emphasized that measures are being taken to increase stocks in all sectors as a precaution for the worst-case scenario. In a press conference addressing the issue of food security, he said, "There is a decision to facilitate and expedite imports so that we have a larger strategic stock of wheat and flour. The ministry also has a mechanism to facilitate the redistribution of quantities between the regions, from the South to the North, Mount Lebanon, and Beirut, very quickly."He added, "We have a program that can identify the destination of wheat and flour in the regions and redistribute it according to the need."However, he expressed concerns about "the exacerbation of risks if a naval siege is imposed on us, so we are taking proactive steps to stockpile goods in the regions."The union of food importers called on the relevant ministries and departments to "take exceptional and rapid measures to expedite the clearance of imported foodstuffs at Beirut port and deliver them to their owners for storage away from any risks, given the exceptional and critical circumstances that Lebanon is going through, and to preserve the food security of the Lebanese people."What is required is full coordination and cooperation between all these bodies to create an emergency plan for the removal and rapid transport of goods to warehouses.
In the meantime, the Oil Sector Management Authority held a meeting at the Energy Ministry with a delegation from fuel import companies, and it was agreed to allocate a quantity of diesel to government and private hospitals, as well as water utilities and the communications and bakery sectors.

Frangieh after meeting Bassil: What is happening in Palestine and Gaza is a crime against humanity
LBCI/October 25, 2023
Head of the Marada Movement Sleiman Frangieh affirmed on Wednesday after his meeting with the head of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Gebran Bassil, in Bnachai that "Lebanon is more important than the presidency." "We talked about the country, and we are largely in agreement," he added after the meeting. He also said that talks "emphasized keenness on the country," adding that the resistance has shown keenness on Lebanon. "I cannot outbid the resistance on this matter. We do not care about Lebanon more than Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri and Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah do, and Bassil is with us. We must work to avert division." On another note, Frangieh stressed that "what is happening in Palestine and Gaza is a crime against humanity." For his part, Bassil pointed out that "there is great understanding on various ideas presented on how to meet the danger of war, unify efforts, and restore order to the institutions.""I am pleased with the visit of the head of the Marada Movement. In these circumstances, we overcome barriers, and there was a positive response to the ideas presented," he concluded by saying.

Israel struck Lebanon in retaliation for missile launch: military
AFP/October 26, 2023
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said late Wednesday that its aircraft struck at Lebanon in retaliation for the earlier launch of a surface-to-air missile. “A short while ago, the IDF Aerial Defense Array intercepted a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at an IDF UAV (drone),” the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement. “In response, IDF aircraft struck the source of the launch,” it added. Israel has engaged in regular tit-for-tat exchanges with the Islamist militant group Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions in southern Lebanon since the start of its war with Hamas on October 7. Its military also struck military targets inside Syria early on Wednesday in retaliation for what it said were launches toward Israel. The strikes killed eight soldiers, according to Syrian state media. World leaders have expressed concern that these exchanges could draw Israel into a broader conflict with other countries in the region, escalating its war against Hamas. Israel has been bombarding Gaza in retaliation for the surprise attack by Hamas gunmen, who poured across the border killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 222 others, officials say, in the worst attack in Israel’s history. So far, more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza, and there are fears the toll could further soar if Israel pushes ahead with a widely-expected ground invasion in a bid to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages. Hezbollah said earlier Wednesday that senior officials of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad had held talks with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah about achieving “real victory” in their war with Israel. The Hezbollah statement did not specify when or where Nasrallah met with Hamas number two Saleh Al-Aruri and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh beyond saying that it was at a undisclosed location in Lebanon.

Hamas and Hezbollah leaders meet to plan path to ‘real victory’ in Gaza
Foreign Staff/The Telegraph/October 25, 2023
Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have met to discuss a path to “real victory” in Gaza and the Palestinian territories. Wednesday’s talks in Beirut also involved the Islamic Jihad group and came as concerns over a regional escalation in the war continue to mount.
All three groups, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, are backed by Iran. Their goal, according to a statement carried on Hezbollah-run and Lebanese state media, was to achieve “a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine” and halt Israel’s “treacherous and brutal aggression against our oppressed and steadfast people in Gaza and the West Bank”. Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, agreed with Hamas’s Saleh al-Arouri and Ziad al-Nakhleh, Islamic Jihad’s leader, on the next steps that the three – along with other Iran-backed militants – should take at this “sensitive stage” in the Middle East, the statement added.
No other details were provided.
In neighbouring Syria, state media said an Israeli airstrike hit the international airport in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, damaging the runway and putting it out of service. The meeting in Beirut came as the death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, continues to climb. Hamas’s cross-border raid into Israel on Oct 7 saw its gunmen kill more than 1,400 Israelis and take more than 200 other people hostage. According to figures released by the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza, more than 6,500 people have been killed in Israeli air and artillery strikes on the enclave in response to the Hamas assault. Tensions have also been rising along the Israel-Lebanon border, where Hezbollah members have been exchanging fire with Israeli troops since the day after Hamas’s rampage into Israel. For now, those exchanges remain limited to a handful of border towns, as well as Hezbollah and Israeli military positions on both sides. More than 40 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in the clashes so far, the group says, while the Israeli military has also announced a handful of deaths among its ranks. Nasrallah has yet to publicly speak about the war in Gaza and clashes along the Lebanon-Israel border. However, other Hezbollah top officials have warned Israel against its planned ground invasion into the besieged territory. Israeli officials have said they would retaliate aggressively in the case of a cross-border attack by Hezbollah from Lebanon.
While visiting Israeli troops along the border with Lebanon on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “We will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the consequences for it and the Lebanese state [will be] devastating.”
Suspicions over Iran’s involvement
Lebanon’s cash-strapped caretaker government, along with regional and international figures, has been scrambling to keep the country out of the war. Hezbollah and Israel fought a month-long war in 2006 that ended in a tense stalemate. Separately on Wednesday, Israeli warplanes also struck Syrian army infrastructure in response to rockets fired from Syria, an ally of Iran, said the Israeli military. Syrian state media said Israel had killed eight soldiers and wounded seven more near the south-western city of Deraa, and hit Aleppo airport. Israel did not accuse the Syrian army of launching rockets but remains suspicious of Iran, its arch-enemy, which has a significant military and security presence in Syria. Iran has sought regional ascendancy for decades and backs armed groups in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, as well as Hamas. It has warned Israel to stop its onslaught on Gaza. Israel frequently targets airports and sea ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran reaching Tehran-backed terrorist groups, including Hezbollah. Thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the region joined Syria’s 12-year civil war, helping tip the balance in favour of president Bashar Assad’s forces.

Lebanon ‘abyss’ warning as fears of wider conflict grow
Arab News/October 25, 2023
BEIRUT: Lebanon risks “plunging into the abyss” amid fears of a wider war over the Israel-Hamas conflict, a senior Lebanese business leader has warned. Mohammed Choucair, head of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, said that stockpiling of food is threatening supplies, while industrial activity in the country has been cut by more than a third because of a fall in domestic and international orders. He appealed to “all political forces and officials to take necessary measures to prevent the national economy and the country from plunging into the abyss, as a result of the possibility of the war in the Gaza Strip expanding to Lebanon.”Choucair said hotel occupancy rates in Lebanon have fallen to below 10 percent, with most events and conferences canceled, while the nightlife sector is all but paralyzed. The business chief’s warning came as Hezbollah militants and Israeli forces continued skirmishing on Lebanon’s southern border. Hezbollah said on Wednesday that two of its members had been killed in clashes with the Israeli army, pushing the group’s death toll to 36 since Oct. 8. Andrea Tenenti, spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping force, said that exchanges of fire continued along the Blue Line on Wednesday, but added that no UNIFIL patrols were targeted or hit in the hostilities. “Our peacekeepers remain on task and continue their activities, including patrols,” he said. Israel said that five Hezbollah cells were eliminated in southern Lebanon after attempting to shell Israeli forces. For the second day, Hezbollah targeted the Israeli military site of Jal Al-Alam with a guided missile and shelled another Israeli military target in the western sector of the border. The Israeli army responded by shelling southern border towns, hitting homes. A military observer told Arab News that Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been in “a state of war for the past 18 days.”He described Hezbollah’s losses as “modest” considering the terrain and advanced technology used in the military operations. “The Israeli side does not transparently disclose its losses, while Hezbollah says it has carried out operations destroying the Israeli army’s monitoring devices and sensors along the Blue Line,” the observer said. Israel is believed to have stationed up to 150,000 troops on its northern border with Lebanon. But any widening of the Gaza Strip conflict by Israel would require “a regional and international political decision, and many considerations have not been met so far,” the oberserver said.

Hezbollah faces huge risks if it joins war against Israel
The Telegraph/Wed, October 25, 2023
There have been huge questions over why Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has kept his silence since Hamas's attack on Israel. Now, images have appeared of him holding a meeting with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Lebanon. It's hard to decipher what it means beyond the fact that he is now visible. According to reports by Hezbollah media, the meeting was to discuss the ongoing situation and the response by the "axis of resistance". Follow live: Israel warns Lebanon and Syria of 'damning strikes'. Hezbollah has officially sent contradictory messages about what it will do next.
On the one hand, it's signalled it will expand its attacks on Israel if there's a ground invasion. On the other, it's messaged that it does not seek escalation. What is clear is that the situation remains the most tense it's been since the "Summer War" of 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought for 34 days. The question now is this: are we about to see another major conflict that would have huge regional and global implications? Israel is certainly preparing for a second front opening up - armour is on the move in the northern sector and positions are being reinforced - that is to be expected.
Hezbollah sources also say they are readying for the worst - there have already been a number of clashes and exchanges of fire across the border. Worrying times, but not necessarily a precursor to war. It could simply be a show of solidarity and a way of keeping Israeli forces busy in the north that will stop of a major escalation. But, it could also be a holding pattern before a major attack, with the decision to launch maybe contingent on how far Israeli forces go in Gaza. If another war broke out, there's good reason to think it would be far worse than the last - and for that reason it may be avoided with both sides holding back, as a way of containing clashes just to the border region. Hezbollah has lost huge numbers of fighters in Syria. Its actions there were also hugely unpopular in the Arab world - damaging its reputation. If it did overtly join the fight now, it could help lift it from the pit of sectarianism. But the risk of doing so is huge. Hezbollah has lost a great deal of support in Lebanon and the country can ill afford another war with Israel. Most Lebanese are reeling from the effects of a profound economic crisis - a conflict initiated by Hezbollah would have very little support. The risk though of accidental escalation or miscalculation is very real - and that is why this is a very dangerous moment.

Hezbollah Threatens U.S., Israel 40 Years After Deadly Beirut Blast
FDD/October 25, 2023
Latest Developments
October 23 marked the 40th anniversary of the suicide bombing that took the lives of 241 U.S. peacekeepers in Beirut, 58 French servicemembers carrying out the same mission, and six civilians. Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini approved the operation in advance, which was carried out by Tehran’s Lebanese partners — who would unveil themselves as Hezbollah in 1985.
Amidst days of anti-American and anti-Israel protests in Lebanon, U.S. Ambassador to Beirut Dorothy Shea asserted, “we reject, and the Lebanese people reject, the threats of some to drag Lebanon into a new war. We continue to renounce any attempts to shape the region’s future through intimidation, violence, and terrorism – and here I am talking about not just Iran and Hizballah, but also Hamas and others, who falsely paint themselves as a noble ‘resistance,’ and who most certainly do not represent the aspirations – or the values – of the Palestinian people, while they try to rob Lebanon and its people of their bright future.”
Expert Analysis
“Iran’s role in the murder of 241 U.S. peacekeepers, 58 French troops, and six civilians has never been in doubt despite Iran’s many public denials. As time passes, some former Iranian leaders have become brazen enough to take responsibility for this mass murder. In an interview on state television last month, Ayatollah Khomeini’s then representative in Lebanon, Sayyed Issa Tabatabai, admitted his role in the ‘martyrdom operations.’ If we don’t hold Iran accountable in ways that reverberate in the mind of today’s supreme leader, we will continue to face Iran’s mass atrocities as we are seeing unfold in Israel and Gaza.” — Toby Dershowitz, FDD Senior Vice President for Government Relations and Strategy
“‘The 40th anniversary of the Beirut bombing underscores how the Tehran regime has relied on terror since its founding. It had no reservations then about having Hezbollah slaughter American and French peacekeepers, just as it has none today about enabling the Hamas massacre of Israeli men, women, and children. From day one, ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’ have been policies, not just slogans.” — David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research
Iranian Official Confesses to Iran’s Role in the Beirut Bombing
During an interview with the official IRNA news agency published on September 23, Sayyed Issa Tabatabai, Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei’s representative in Lebanon, who at the time of the bombing served as the representative in Lebanon of then Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, said: “I received from Imam Khomeini the fatwa [ordering] martyrdom operations against the Americans,” “I … provided what was needed in order to [carry out] martyrdom operations in the place where the Americans and Israelis were,” and “he confirmed this three times…”
U.S. Court Held Iran Legally Culpable in Beirut Bombing of Marine Barracks
Two decades ago, Federal Judge Royce Lamberth found that “the complicity of Iran in the 1983 attack was established conclusively.” Lamberth’s finding was part of his ruling in Peterson vs. Islamic Republic of Iran, a case brought by the families of the victims of the Beirut bombing. Lamberth held Iran legally accountable for the bombing and the murder of the U.S. servicemembers.
Testimony from Admiral James Lyons, a deputy Chief of Naval Operations from 1983 to 1985, played a key role in the decision. Lyons said he was alerted in September 1983 to a U.S. intercept of communications between Iranian intelligence and Tehran’s ambassador in Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashemipour, in September 1983. The message to Mohtashemipour, who served as a liaison to Tehran’s Lebanese partners and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, called for “a spectacular action against the United States Marines.” The attack, Lamberth wrote, was the “largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth.”
Hezbollah Maintains Dangerous Arsenal in the Region
Hezbollah reportedly has approximately 150,000 rockets and missiles, most with a range of a few dozen kilometers, though some assessments say a substantial number can reach targets located hundreds of kilometers from Lebanon. It has launched rockets into Israel from Lebanese territory including in recent days. Once a militia that operated in the shadows and had few supporters, today Hezbollah effectively controls Lebanon.

Israel Strikes Hezbollah Cells in Lebanon
FDD/October 25, 2023
Latest Developments
Israeli aircraft struck a pair of Hezbollah cells in Lebanon on October 23, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. According to the IDF, Hezbollah fighters had been preparing to launch anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and rockets toward Israel. One cell was located near the Israeli town of Mattat, the IDF said, while the other was in a disputed strip of land to the northeast, known as Har Dov in Israel and as Shebaa Farms in Lebanon.
Expert Analysis
“Iran and Syria have provided advanced weapons systems such as ATGMs, rockets, mortars, and Explosively Formed Penetrators to a variety of Shia militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Hezbollah and other terror groups have used these weapons with deadly effect against Israel, the United States, and a host of countries in the Middle East.” — Bill Roggio, FDD Senior Fellow
“Hezbollah has employed its guided missiles as the leading form of assault against Israeli targets since the war began. Despite the potency of this method, it has also posed a significant risk to the guided missile teams, subjecting them to Israeli drone attacks that have resulted in the loss of approximately 35 members of Hezbollah.” —Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal
Hezbollah’s ATGM Arsenal
Hezbollah possesses an assortment of ATGMs and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), chiefly of Russian origin and supplied by Syria or Iran. The group’s most advanced Russian-made ATGM is the Kornet, which NATO calls the AT-14 Spriggan. Developed in the 1990s, the Kornet is a SACLOS (semi-automatic command to line of sight) laser-guided missile. Its basic version has a maximum range of around five kilometers. Hezbollah acquired the Kornet prior to the 2006 Second Lebanon War, likely from Syria.
Hezbollah has also received Iranian-made ATGMs reverse-engineered from Russian and Western systems, likely including a Kornet knockoff called the Dehlaviyeh. In August 2023, the group unveiled the Tharollah, designed to launch two Kornet missiles in quick succession. The Tharollah resembles a similar Iranian-designed dual-launcher system for the Dehlaviyeh. Likewise, Hezbollah has previously used Tube-Launched, Optically Tracked, Wireless-Guided (TOW) ATGMs provided by Iran. Before the 1979 revolution, Tehran received U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW ATGMs, which it reverse-engineered to make the Toophan, subsequently supplied to Hezbollah. The terror group has also reportedly used European-made Milan ATGMs.
Hezbollah’s Use of ATGMs Against Israel
During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Hezbollah anti-tank units skillfully employed ATGMs and RPGs in “swarm” ambushes against Israeli armor and positions. These weapons accounted for most of the casualties suffered by Israeli ground forces. The IDF struggled to locate well-concealed Hezbollah ATGM positions firing from range.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, Hezbollah has conducted numerous ATGM attacks against Israeli troops and positions near the Israel-Lebanon border. One attack, carried out on October 20, killed an Israeli-American dual citizen. Israel has responded with airstrikes targeting Hezbollah. The Israeli government has ordered civilians to evacuate towns near the Israel-Lebanon border in anticipation of further Hezbollah escalation.

On Backdrop Of Israel-Hamas War, Article In Hizbullah-Affiliated Lebanese Daily Reminds U.S. Of 1983 Beirut Bombings, Warns Against Direct Involvement: 'Lebanon Has People Expecting You'
MEMRI/October 25, 2023
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On October 23, 2023, the Hizbullah-affiliated Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily published[1] an article titled "Forty Years After Bloody Escape of U.S. From Lebanon, Washington Threatens to Send Marines: Welcome!" Written by Karim Al-Amin, the article reviews the main events that accompanied the military presence of the U.S. in Lebanon since 1958, in light of the dispatch by the U.S. of several warships to the Eastern Mediterranean, augmentation of U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft squadrons in the region, and provision of munitions and other equipment to the Israel Defense Forces to assist in its ongoing war with Hamas, which began with the latter's October 7 surprise attack against the Jewish state. Framed as a historical review, the article focuses on "one of the most important operations of resistance to the American occupation in the region," namely, the October 1983 truck bomb attacks against American and French barracks in Beirut belonging to the Multinational Force in Lebanon, in which 241 U.S. and 58 French forces were killed. Although the group has never officially claimed responsibility, the attacks were widely blamed on Hizbullah. The article lists several additional attacks against U.S. forces and interests in Lebanon in 1983, including several against Marines forces and an assault against the U.S. embassy in Beirut, noting that these attacks led then U.S. President Ronald Reagan to move U.S. forces from the Lebanese capital to warships off the coast in February 1984, only to complete withdraw them two weeks later. The Al-Akhbar daily mentions that after initially accusing Russia and Syria of masterminding the attack, after a few years the U.S. began to pin blame on "the jihadis close to Iran," claiming that "the groups which Hizbullah returned and was founded from" had perpetrated it and singling out senior Hizbullah leader Imad Mughniyeh. Noting that former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the attacks as "the biggest terrorist attack against the U.S. before September 11," the article disputes former U.S. President George H.W. Bush's description of the perpetrators as "a group of treacherous, cowardly terrorists," pointing out that even Rumsfeld said: "I do not think that a group of people prepared to drive a truck, blow it up, and kill themselves is a group of cowards."Referring to the current situation in the area, the author writes: "Forty years after one of the most important operations of resistance to the American occupation in the region, the U.S. leaders are repeating the same show-off scenario. A few days ago, the U.S. announced that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered 2,000 American soldiers to prepare for the possibility of participating in the war alongside Israel. Specialists said that this group of militaries would not perform combat missions, only logistical support, but more soldiers might be sent in the future to perform combat missions. If the U.S. decides to directly enter the ongoing war, Lebanon and the region have people expecting their arrival, including Lebanese adhering to the campaign by the Ministry of Tourism, greeting them: 'Welcome.'"
[1] Al-akhbar.com, October 23, 2023.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah Photographed With Senior Officials From Hamas And Palestinian Islamic Jihad; Delivers First Message Since Outbreak Of War: Hizbullah Dead Are ‘Martyrs On The Road To Jerusalem’
MEMRI/October 25, 2023
The following report is now a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here.
On October 25, 2023, the website of the Hizbullah-affiliated Al-Manar TV channel published a first photograph and a first message from Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas, and the advent of a security escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border. These reports focus on the meeting held by Nasrallah with senior officials from Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and on a letter he sent to elements in his organization responsible for the dissemination of information. Both reports highlight the coordination between the members of the axis of resistance in three arenas: Gaza, the West Bank, and the Israel-Lebanon border. They also reveal Hizbullah’s contribution to the Palestinian struggle “on the road to Jerusalem.”
The following are the details from the reports:
On October 25, 2023, Hizbullah’s Lebanese Al-Manar TV channel reported that Nasrallah had met with PIJ leader Ziyad Al-Nakhalah and Hamas Political Bureau Deputy Chairman Saleh Al-Arouri, although no information was provided about where or when the meeting took place.
Al-Manar stated that the three men discussed the recent developments in the Gaza Strip and on the Lebanon border with “occupied Palestine,” and also the necessary steps to be taken by the members of the axis of resistance to achieve “real victory by the resistance in Gaza and in all of Palestine,” and to bring an end to “the treacherous and barbaric aggression” against the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to the report, the three agreed to continue their coordination and ongoing daily monitoring of developments. The report was published with a photograph of the meeting between the three men.[1]
Also on October 25, Al-Manar published a letter that it claimed to have received from Nasrallah on the same day, written and signed by him and addressed to “the relevant brothers in the Hizbullah units and information institutions.” In the letter, Nasrallah instructs its recipients that in the materials they publish they should refer to the members of the organization who have been killed since October 7, 2023, as “martyrs on the road to Jerusalem.” He wrote that that description “is in accordance with the true character of the campaign currently being waged with the Zionist enemy since October 7 with Al-Aqsa Flood, and also to stress the identity of the victims who are sacrificed for the sake of Allah on the border of Lebanon with occupied Palestine.”[2]
It is notable that in an interview with the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen satellite channel on October 22, the Lebanese Hizbullah legislator Hassan Fadlalla said that Nasrallah is personally overseeing the military operations against Israel and that, “Nasrallah's lack of media appearance is part of managing the battle based on wisdom and courage.” He added that, “When Nasrallah realizes that managing the battle requires his appearance [in the media], he will do so.”[3]
[1] Almanar.com.lb, October 25, 2023.
[2] Almanar.com.lb, October 25, 2023.
[3] See MEMRI JTTM Report: Hizbullah MP: Hassan Nasrallah Is Personally Overseeing The Confrontation With Israel; He Will Make Media Appearances, October 23, 2023.

Will Lebanon Be Safe or Sorry?
Michael Young/Carnegie/October 25/2023
If the Israelis enter Gaza, there are a range of options that Hezbollah might adopt to maintain its protective shield on Iran’s behalf.
October 25, 2023
Many Lebanese are playing a morbid game these days—assessing the probability that their country will be destroyed if Hezbollah enters the conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. On several occasions the Israelis have warned that in any future war with Hezbollah, they would send Lebanon “back to the stone age.”
The assumption is that once Israel begins a ground invasion of Gaza, the prospect of a Lebanon conflict will greatly increase. Backing this up are reports that Iran has warned Israel that if such an operation were to go ahead, Iran would intervene. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was even more specific in his public statements, for example when he told Al-Jazeera, “If the measures aimed at immediately stopping the Israeli attacks that are killing children in the Gaza Strip end in a deadlock, it is highly probable that many other fronts will be opened. This option is not ruled out and this is becoming increasingly more probable.”
However, the real question is not whether Hezbollah will escalate against Israel if an invasion goes ahead, but how it does so and for what purpose. A southern Lebanese front has already been opened, though both Hezbollah and Israel are caught up in a sort of Kabuki dance, where each side is carefully measuring its actions and reactions to avoid a situation that may spin out of control and spread to the region.
So, can Lebanon dodge a bullet if Hezbollah responds to an Israeli entry into Gaza? Let’s answer with a question: Why has Iran supplied Hezbollah with between 150,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles? The Iranians have used Hezbollah’s arsenal to deter Israel from attacking Lebanon, but more importantly to prevent Israel or the United States from striking Iran—the mother ship from which regional power and influence flows. While Lebanon is valued as the place where Tehran’s most effective proxy is based, it is not more important than Iran itself.
If we accept this premise, then we have to interpret Abdollahian’s comments in light of Iran’s strategy to use its regional proxies as shields to safeguard its own security. And doing so begs the following question: Is Iran willing to sacrifice Hezbollah in order to save Hamas, especially if a ruinous Lebanon war neutralizes Hezbollah’s deterrence capacity for a decade or even longer?
Why would that happen? Because there is very little support in Lebanon for a war against Israel in defense of Hamas. If Hezbollah were to enter such a war, Lebanon’s devastation would turn most communities, perhaps even large segments of the Shiite community, against the party for its catastrophic strategy of unilaterally hitching the country’s fate to the Palestinian cause. Given that Lebanon is still in the midst of a major economic and financial breakdown, it may be unable to emerge from a war as a functional entity. There are real risks that the country would not hold together and that sectarian strife could follow, which would cause an overwhelming burden for Hezbollah that lasts for years. This could severely cripple the party’s deterrence capabilities on behalf of Iran.
Assuming all this, and if we can agree that Hezbollah does not want to reach this stage, let’s imagine this scenario: Israel enters Gaza and is drawn into street battles in which it kills many more civilians than it is doing today, but also meets tough resistance from Hamas. What would happen then? Most probably, Hezbollah would raise the level of cross-border bombings, but still remain below the threshold of all-out hostilities by not targeting Israeli strategic sites, such as ports and airports, as well as cities. This may very well compel Israel to avoid doing so too. Why? Because the Israelis would probably face significant U.S. pressure to avoid provoking a regional conflict, even as they also understand the potential risks of fighting a two-front war, or possibly even a four-front war if Iran and its proxies begin bombing from Syrian territory and the West Bank erupts in its turn.
In fact, it’s highly probable that if there is an escalation, Iran and Hezbollah would widen the front by also bombing Israel from Syria. That two rockets were fired from Syria at the Golan Heights on October 24 was a sign of what may be coming. Carnegie’s Kheder Khaddour has told me that pro-Iran militias in northern Syria have been deployed southward for a possible confrontation with Israel. Israel has bombed Damascus and Aleppo airports several times, in anticipation that they might be used to resupply pro-Iran militias in a conflict.
The advantages to Hezbollah of widening the front are obvious. If Iran and its proxies use the Syrian front to escalate to higher levels than they do from Lebanon, this might hand them greater leverage over Israel, while also averting Lebanon’s annihilation. Syria, given its destructive conflict since 2011, is perhaps less vulnerable to the consequences of Israeli retaliation than is Lebanon. Moreover, it may not be as vital in Iran’s deterrence architecture.
Assuming that the cross-border fighting stabilizes at this higher level for a time while Israel pursues its advance into Gaza, Hezbollah’s main purpose would be to draw Israeli forces away from Gaza, rather than escalate to hitting cities and strategic targets. After all, missiles on Tel Aviv and Haifa will not halt a Gaza offensive; but creating an impression that Hezbollah might attack in Galilee would force Israel to divide its military, thereby easing the pressures on Gaza.
But what happens if Israel’s army reaches a stage where it actually poses an existential threat to Hamas? While many assume that this would be a turning point in which Hezbollah would resort to its big guns, this proposition merits investigation. It does so for precisely the reason raised at the outset: By provoking massive Israeli retaliation against Lebanon, Hezbollah could create an angry backlash in the country that ultimately leaves Iran without a protective Hezbollah shield, in that way making it much more vulnerable to Israeli or U.S. attacks.
Might Hezbollah go ahead anyway and reach the highest level of escalation? Perhaps. Miscalculation or recklessness is common in situations of passion like the one we are in. However, what we are seeing daily in southern Lebanon is the opposite. Both sides are strenuously respecting the established rules of engagement. Therefore, is Lebanon out of the woods? Certainly not. But it would mean that Iran and Hezbollah, if they eschew a full-scale assault against Israel, have injected flexibility into their so-called dialogue of deterrence with the Israelis, whose consequences or realities the other parties in the Axis of Resistance, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, will have to consider in their future operations against Israel.
These realities may be based on a basic rule: Iran and Hezbollah will back you up for as long as they can, but not if this threatens their own survival, and not if it eliminates the shield Tehran has put in place to protect the Islamic Republic.
**Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 25-26/2023
US, Russian bids on Israel-Hamas war fail at Security Council
AFP/October 25, 2023
UNITED NATIONS, US: The UN Security Council on Wednesday failed again to take action on the Israel-Hamas war, with Russia and China vetoing a US-led draft resolution and a text led by Moscow drawing insufficient support. The rival powers went ahead and put forward texts doomed to defeat despite what diplomats said was a last-ditch effort led by France to delay a vote and work toward consensus. The United States, Israel’s historic backer which exercised its own veto last week, put forward a resolution that would support “humanitarian pauses” to let aid into the blockaded Gaza Strip and back the right of “all states” to self-defense within the confines of international law. The US-led draft did not call for a full cease-fire. Russia put forward its own proposal that sought “an immediate, durable and fully respected humanitarian cease-fire” and “condemns all violence and hostilities against civilians.”Ten countries backed the US resolution but Russia and China exercised their veto power. The United Arab Emirates, whose relations with Israel have warmed markedly since normalization in 2020 but represents the Arab bloc, also voted in opposition, with the other two countries, Brazil and Mozambique, abstaining. “It has became clear from that the US simply doesn’t want UN Security Council decisions to have any kind of influence on a possible ground offensive by Israel in Gaza,” said the Russian representative, Vassily Nebenzia. “This extremely politicized document clearly has one aim — not to save civilians but to shore up the US political position in the region,” he said. The US ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, insisted that the United States had incorporated feedback from the rest of the world since its veto. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, promoting the resolution during a high-level Security Council session on Tuesday, spoke of “humanitarian pauses” even while ruling out a formal cease-fire. “The United States is deeply disappointed that Russia and China vetoed this resolution,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “We did listen to all of you.” She accused Russia, often on the receiving end of criticism since its invasion of Ukraine, of “cynical and irresponsible behavior” for putting forward its own text “with zero consultations” and “a number of problematic sections.” Only Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates and Gabon voted for the draft resolution. The United States and Britain voted no, with the other nine countries including US allies France and Japan abstaining. The UAE ambassador, Lana Nusseibeh, said that the Security Council needed to respond “tangibly” to the dire situation in Gaza. At the high-level session Tuesday, “we heard dozens of statements imploring this council to assign the same value to Palestinian life as it does to Israeli life,” she said. “We cannot allow any equivocation on this point. There is no hierarchy of civilian lives.” With the Security Council deadlocked, the broader UN General Assembly is scheduled to debate the war on Thursday and Friday. Resolutions from this body representing all UN members, with no one holding veto power, are non-binding. Still, Arab countries are working on a resolution that could be voted on this week, diplomats said. This draft seen by AFP urges an immediate cease-fire and unhindered access for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza. Israel has been bombarding since October 7 when Hamas gunmen poured across the border killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 222 others, officials say, in the worst attack in Israel’s history. So far, more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, and there are fears the toll could further soar if Israel pushes ahead with a widely expected ground invasion in a bid to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages.

Israel bombs Aleppo airport again and kills 8 soldiers by targeting the Daraa countryside
Damascus/ِِAgencies/October 25, 2023
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israel renewed its air aggression against Syrian territory, bombing Aleppo International Airport, saying that the bombing led to damage to the airport’s landing strips, with no information about human losses so far, pointing out that the airport would thus remain out of service, indicating that Israel was It bombed the airport three days ago and put it out of service, pointing out that this is the fourth time the airport has been bombed in about two weeks. Meanwhile, eight soldiers were killed and seven others were injured as a result of an Israeli bombardment that targeted several points in the Daraa countryside at dawn yesterday, and a Syrian military source stated, “At approximately one hour and 45 minutes in the morning, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of our points.” Military in the Daraa countryside,” explaining that the aggression led to the death of eight military martyrs and the wounding of seven others, in addition to some material losses. For its part, the Israeli occupation army announced that it bombed sites of the Syrian army’s military infrastructure the night before yesterday, and Hebrew media outlets, including the newspapers “Yedioth Ahronoth” and “Haaretz,” quoted a spokesman for the Israeli occupation army as saying that “Air Force fighters responded to the army.” The Syrian government struck military infrastructure facilities and missile launch sites, following the missile attacks towards Israel the night before last.

‘Sponge bombs’ are Israel’s new secret weapon to block Hamas tunnels
Dominic Nicholls/The Telegraph/October 25, 2023
Israel will use novel “sponge bombs” as it fights through the network of Hamas tunnels under Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been testing the chemical bombs, which contain no explosives but are used to seal off gaps or tunnel entrances from which fighters may emerge. The IDF has not commented on the use of the so-called “sponge bombs”, which create a sudden explosion of foam that rapidly expands and then hardens. Its soldiers were seen deploying the devices during exercises in 2021. The army has set up a mock tunnel system at the Tze’Elim army base near the border with Gaza. Troops are likely to face a bloody battle through the tunnels known as the “Gaza Metro” when they launch their expected ground invasion. The network is thought to be hundreds of miles long and dense with traps. It is where Hamas has taken many of the 200 hostages and where its leaders will hope to survive the coming war. Israeli soldiers blinded mishandling new “bomb” The “sponge bomb” would prevent soldiers being ambushed as they move further into the network, sealing off gaps through which Hamas could attack. Contained in a plastic container, the specialist devices have a metal partition separating two liquids. Once this barrier is extracted, the compounds mix as the soldier positions the “bomb” or throws it further ahead. Specialised teams in the IDF’s engineering corps have been grouped into tunnel reconnaissance units and equipped with ground and aerial sensors, ground penetrating radar and special drilling systems to locate tunnels.
They have also been issued with special equipment to see when underground. Standard issue night vision goggles need an element of ambient light to work effectively, but with all natural light blocked out when moving underground, troops will rely on thermal technology to see in the total darkness. Novel radios, optimised for working in the extreme conditions experienced underground, have also been developed. There are potential complications with the underground arsenal, however. The “sponge bomb” - technically a liquid emulsion - is hazardous to work with, and some Israeli soldiers have lost their sight through mishandling the mixture. Israel may also use robots and drones to help when navigating the tunnels - but so far, there have been difficulties operating these underground. Some of the robots will be controlled by wires spooling out of the rear of the device. Others will rely on standard radio waves, but will need a series of repeater nodes to be dropped off en route as radio signals degrade quickly underground.
Micro-drones for reconnaissance, capable of being held in the palm of a hand, may also be used but will similarly suffer as the radio signal weakens. The Israel-based Roboteam technology company has developed IRIS, a small, throwable drone that can be driven on large wheels via remote control. Known by special forces as a “throwbot”, it relays images back to a controller, operating the device from a position of safety. Some devices can have weapons attached so that if enemy combatants are seen, the controller can detonate explosives. Alongside the IRIS, it has developed the MTGR, a “micro tactical ground robot” that can climb stairs and is designed to be operated by soldiers in buildings and caves. John Spencer, a former US major who chairs urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, says subterranean fighting is “more like fighting underwater than fighting in buildings”. “Nothing that is used on the surface works in the same way or with the same efficiency underground. “Specialised equipment is needed to see, to breathe, to navigate, to map the space, to communicate and to deploy lethal means.”
Targeting the tunnels risks civilian lives
Hamas has integrated underground warfare into its overall military strategy.
Tunnels, some started decades ago, are no longer just places of refuge or concealment, but are integral parts of a wider plan to prepare the ground for ambushing Israeli forces above. Many stretch under civilian structures, with entry and exit points in dwellings and other non-military buildings, making it extremely difficult for Israel to attack them without inviting international condemnation. A “standard” tunnel is about 2m high and 1m wide, which enables them to be built quickly. They are sometimes reinforced with concrete and metal but are not especially sophisticated. Others however, have power, water and ventilation and are used for command centres and rest stations, weapons storage, infiltration into Israel and routes to secret rocket launching sites. In some parts there is even thought to be a small rail system for the transportation of weapons and building equipment. The last major attempt to destroy the system was in 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, but the network has been rebuilt since. Military commanders in the IDF must decide if they want to render the structures useless, by pouring in concrete for example, as they did with the tunnels dug by Hezbollah in the north of the country. Alternatively, they may need to keep the structures intact, clearing out Hamas fighters as they move through the system searching for the estimated hostages. The “normal” military responses to tunnels, of using explosives to destroy them or flooding to render them useless, is probably not practical.

The Battle of the Tunnels is about to begin in Gaza
Edward N Luttwak/The Telegraph/October 25, 2023
The leaders of Hamas know that once the Israeli counter-offensive starts they will lose their greatest asset: the interconnected tunnels in which their missiles are assembled and taken to launch openings, ready for fire into Israeli territory.
These underground networks have many uses, with everything from weapons drills hidden from overhead balloons or synthetic aperture radars (which produce photo-like images in all degrees of visibility) to makeshift headquarters and even rest areas protected from air strikes. Built with the cement and rebar donated by the European Union, Qatar and both Islamic and Western charities “to build housing for refugees”, and delivered to Gaza through the Israeli port of Ashdod – Israeli governments that tried to limit the cement imports were barraged with “human rights” demands – the tunnel network has grown exponentially over the past decade. Israeli soldier-analysts even refer to it as “the Underground”, in reference to London’s labyrinthine tube network. The discovery that Hamas was going all out to build its tunnels was also the start of the Israeli army’s education in the arcane art of finding, conquering and quickly demolishing tunnels .Its first lesson was that tunnel warfare is not for amateurs, nor even for highly accomplished but generic “commandos” including the top echelon Sayeret Matkal – it requires very specific detection and monitoring skills and gear, ultra close-combat weapons (even compact assault rifles are too long), the use of specialised shields and respirators, as well as the very quick reaction times that all first-rate soldiers require. Hamas knows from previous experience that the closer the range, the greater is the qualitative gap between their men and first-line Israeli infantry (it was Arik Sharon, who ended up as Prime Minister after a brilliant military career, who first discovered in the 1950s that Israelis had an edge in close combat). Even in its hyper-successful surprise raids that took full advantage of Israel’s grossly over-confident reliance on high-tech observation towers and absurdly few troops, Hamas lost more than a thousand killed by civilian home guards with their pistols and submachine guns, aided by the handful of soldiers present.
Knowing the odds, Hamas is now doing all it can to delay Israel’s tunnel offensive by releasing hostages in pairs, after lengthy talks for each batch. If the current rate of release – two at a time – continued with 200 more to go, the offensive would be delayed until the following year.
In addition to the excruciating wait, with 360,000 reservists recalled to duty in addition to the 160,000 on active duty (the entire British army numbers 80,360 including the Ghurkas and the US Army 452,689), there is the very practical matter of keeping a great part of Israel’s labour force away from its jobs, and parents away from their families. At least for those problems, the solution has been found in the very thing that makes Israel so vulnerable: it is a very small country, so that batches of troops released from their unit deployments facing Gaza can be allowed to go home to live and work, yet still be back in hours if called to launch the offensive. They are certainly not needed now that the defenses are wide awake, with guard units all along the perimeter: where they should have been all along. Overconfidence is an Israeli trait. When the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal on October 1973 with tens of thousands of reservists, just 411 Israeli reservists were holding 17 Canal-side forts. The intensely frustrating delay in launching the offensive does not preclude all offensive action. Both the Israeli Army and the Shin Bet security service have units of skilled individual fighters who speak perfect Palestinian-accented Arabic. With all the confusion caused by the bombing, they have been able to blend in inside the in order to look for Hamas leaders. So far the names of 18 Hamas commanders and political chiefs successfully killed have been published, with the mini-campaign set to continue.
The Hezbollah shi’a army across the Lebanese border, with its estimated massive supply of 150,000 rockets (for context, the total launched from the Gaza Strip is under 8,000) that could quickly overwhelm Iron Dome’s capabilities, has so far refrained from backing up its vehement support for Hamas. But there are two exceptions to this non-engagement. One was a brief bout of machine gun fire which killed a young reservist just arrived from his US family home, with the other being the launch of some rockets by Palestinians harboured in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s vehement leader Nasrallah and his Iranian paymasters keep calling for Israel’s destruction (along with “death to the USA”), but neither have reacted to Israel’s actual destruction of the freight terminals in the Aleppo and Damascus airports that Iran uses to deliver weapons to Hezbollah. At this point it is impossible to say if Nasrallah’s plan is to start the rocket barrages when Israel starts its offensive into Gaza, or whether he has another starting point, or whether he is deterred by the vulnerability of his Shi’a supporters in Southern Lebanon to Israel’s artillery, mortars, and airpower – which last time in 2006 left southern Beirut in ruins along with Hezbollah headquarters and barracks. After that war, Nasrallah, with commendable honesty, declared that he would never have started the war had he known what the Israeli force would do to the houses of his followers (to mitigate their fury, Hezbollah officials went around with bags of US dollars supplied by Iran to pay for some of the damage). It is not unreasonable to expect that the only leader in the region who does care for his supporters – Hamas gladly sacrifices its followers to its cause – will not expose them to another devastating bombing campaign, just to launch rockets against Israel. For now, the conflict is focused on Hamas. If Israel concentrates its efforts on destroying Gazan tunnels, they’ll find themselves almost totally powerless.

Biden condemns retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank
WASHINGTON (AP)/October 25, 2023
President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke out against retaliatory attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. He also said he was redoubling his commitment to working on a two-state solution to end the decadeslong Israel-Palestinian conflict. Biden said the attacks by settlers amounted to "pouring gasoline" on the already burning fires in the Middle East since the Hamas attack. “It has to stop, and it has to stop now,” Biden said at the start of a news conference with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who was being honored with a state visit to Washington. Settler violence against Palestinians has intensified since the Hamas attack, and Palestinians have been killed by settlers, according to Palestinian authorities. Rights groups say settlers have torched cars and attacked several small Bedouin communities, forcing them to evacuate to other areas. The West Bank Protection Consortium, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations and donor countries, including the European Union, says hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly displaced in the West Bank due to settler violence since Oct. 7. That’s in addition to over 1,100 displaced since 2022. Deadly violence has been surging in the West Bank as the Israeli military pursues Palestinian militants in the aftermath of the Hamas attack from Gaza. The violence threatens to open another front in the 2-week-old war, and puts pressure on the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank and is deeply unpopular among Palestinians, in large part because it cooperates with Israel on security matters. Biden again condemned the brutality of the Hamas attack that killed 1,400 Israelis and said that he was convinced that Hamas was driven in part by a desire undo U.S.-led efforts to normalize Israeli relations with some of its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. The president also said that after the Israel-Hamas conflict comes to an end, Israeli, Palestinians and its partners must work towards a two-state solution.
“Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity and peace,” Biden said. The Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 6,500 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in retaliatory strikes. Biden said that it was critical for Israel to move carefully in its response to minimize civilian deaths. “Israel should be incredibly careful to be sure that they’re focusing on going after the folks that are propagating this war,” Biden said.

US not ruling out retaliation against Iran-backed groups after attacks on soldiers in Middle East
ABC/October 25, 2023
The U.S. retains the ability to defend itself and hasn't ruled out retaliatory operations after the Pentagon said American forces were attacked by Iran-backed militants at least 13 times in the Middle East in the last week, President Joe Biden said Wednesday. "My warning to the ayatollah [is] that if they continue to move against those troops, we will respond, and he should be prepared," Biden told reporters, referring to Iran's supreme leader. Pentagon officials have echoed that. "We will always maintain the inherent right of self-defense. And if there is a response, should we choose to have one, we would do that at a time and place of our choosing," Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. "We are preparing for this escalation both in terms of defending our forces and responding decisively," he said. There is precedent for a potential military response: In recent years the U.S. has conducted retaliatory airstrikes targeting Iran-backed groups in Iraq following previous attacks on U.S. military bases. Tensions have been rising in the Middle East in the wake of a Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7 which killed more than 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.
Israel subsequently launched a war on Hamas in Gaza, the neighboring Palestinian territory controlled by the extremist group. More than 6,500 people have since been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry that is run by Hamas. ABC News has not independently confirmed this casualty figure.
Leaders from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group, and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah -- all of whom, the U.S. says, are sponsored by Iran -- reportedly met in Beirut on Wednesday.
Amid the unfolding conflict, the U.S. has surged military assets to the Middle East both in support of Israel's response to Hamas and as a deterrent to other countries, like Iran and their proxies, becoming involved, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Sunday on ABC's "This Week.""We're concerned about potential escalation. In fact, what we're seeing is the prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region," Austin told "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. One of the American warships, the USS Carney, last week shot down multiple missiles and drones as they crossed the Red Sea after being launched by Iran-backed Houthis from Yemen, the Pentagon has said. Ryder said on Wednesday that the missiles had the capability of reaching Israel, though the U.S. hasn't concluded who the target was. Two U.S. officials told ABC News around 20 service members have sustained minor injuries, such as cuts and tinnitus, in the 13 attacks by the Iran-sponsored militias in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. The attacks have included one-way drone assaults and rocket launches, according to the Pentagon. In the U.S. view, Iran bears responsibility because they have funded and supplied these militias, Ryder said Tuesday. Ahead of any potential retaliatory moves, the U.S. has also sought to tamp down fears that the Israel-Hamas war could spiral out in the Middle East -- in the kind of escalation not seen there in decades. "The United States does not seek conflict with Iran. We do not want this war to widen," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. "But if Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake: We will defend our people, we will defend our security -- swiftly and decisively."

Netanyahu: Israel is preparing a ‘crushing’ ground invasion to doom Hamas
Ben Farmer/The Telegraph/October 25, 2023
Benjamin Netanyahu vowed he would secure 'a crushing victory over our enemies'
Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza, its prime minister has said as he cast the coming war in biblical terms.
Benjamin Netanyahu used a prime-time television address to say Israel’s “hellfire” had “already eliminated thousands of terrorists”, adding that every single member of Hamas was “doomed” and “this is only the beginning”.It was the first time the Israeli leader had explicitly referenced a ground invasion but he would not be drawn on the timing of any operation, insisting only that he, his war cabinet and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would make the decision when to begin. He also made no mention of a humanitarian ceasefire despite growing international calls to help civilians trapped in dire conditions inside Gaza. “It is my responsibility” to lead Israel to “a crushing victory over our enemies,” he said. “We will realise the prophecy of Isaiah 60:18 – ‘Violence shall no more be heard in your land’.”The biblical verse refers to a holy city of Zion being created in Israel for an oppressed people. “Light will defeat darkness,” he added.
Mr Netanyahu, who struck a defiant tone throughout his brief speech, has been facing questions over when Israel will invade.
The IDF are reportedly pushing for the green light as soon as possible, while media outlets close to the prime minister have said he is concerned that a ground invasion of Gaza will open up a second front with Hezbollah.
“I will not elaborate on when, how or how many,” Mr Netanyahu said.
“I will also not elaborate on the various calculations we are making, which the public is mostly unaware of and that is how things should be.” However, Mr Netanyahu did for the first time acknowledge that he would have to personally give “answers” for security lapses exposed by the Oct 7 attacks when hundreds of Hamas fighters stormed into Israel killing 1,400 people.
There were also reports on Wednesday that Israel had agreed to delay a ground offensive so that the United States could set up air defences to protect troops from missiles and rockets in the region.
The Pentagon is rushing to deploy air-defence systems to protect Americans in Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Wall Street Journal reported. Israel has reportedly agreed to hold off until the defences are in place, which could be as soon as this week. Washington believes US military sites around the Middle East will be targeted by various militant groups once the Israeli push begins. In his speech, Mr Netanyahu urged Palestinian civilians living in Gaza to move south, away from the danger of the impending invasion, and called on Israeli citizens to carry arms. He said Israel was doing everything it could to free more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas. But he did not allude to any further deal to free hostages through negotiations, amid reports that Qatar was hoping to secure the release of 50 captives in the near future.
Sources briefed on the negotiations had told The Telegraph that the Gulf state hoped a deal could be struck as early as Wednesday.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said his country had received “several pieces of information which allow us to have hope in the coming hours”.
Joe Biden said after Mr Netanyahu’s speech that Israel had the right to respond to the Hamas attack but had to do “everything in its power” to protect civilians.
He also reiterated calls for a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis once the current conflict subsides. Mr Biden said he did not believe the Palestinians were telling the truth about casualties suffered in the Israeli campaign.
The enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry says more than 6,500 Palestinians have been killed in retaliatory strikes by Israeli forces. Nevertheless, Mr Biden said Israel should be “incredibly careful” to ensure it was targeting the right people. The US president also denied he had told Mr Netanyahu to hold off on any offensive, but said “if it’s possible to get these folks out safely, that’s what we should do”.
Earlier in the day, Mr Macron said he believed it would be an “error” if Israel launched a “massive ground intervention” in Gaza.
He told reporters in Egypt: “France recognises Israel’s right to defend itself. Regarding a ground intervention, if it is entirely targeted against terrorist groups, that is a choice that it has, but if it is a massive operation that would endanger civilian populations, in that case I think it would be an error for Israel.” Meanwhile, the UK said it had been discussing “humanitarian pauses” with other European nations to allow aid into Gaza, but it rejected a “wholesale ceasefire,” claiming it would only benefit Hamas.
Rishi Sunak told Parliament that a Royal Air Force plane carrying 21 tons of aid for Gaza had left the UK to travel to Egypt Wednesday morning. The Prime Minister did not say how and when the aid would be delivered from Egypt to Gaza.
“We will continue to do everything we can to increase the flow of aid, including fuel, into Gaza,” Mr Sunak said. Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, said he had asked his Israeli counterpart to “ensure there isn’t military action being taken particularly around that Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt, so that we can get that humanitarian aid in”. In an interview with ITV, Mr Shapps also called on António Guterres, the UN’s secretary-general, to “withdraw” remarks that suggested Israel’s “suffocating occupation” was linked to the Hamas Oct 7 attack.
“I certainly thought his remarks were incredibly inappropriate,” he said.
Israel said it had denied a visa request from the British United Nations aid chief in response, while Mr Sunak said he disagreed with Mr Gutteres’s comments.
Downing Street said: “Obviously we don’t agree with that characterisation put forward. We are clear that there is and can be no justification for Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack which was driven by hatred and ideology.”
On Wednesday, Mr Guterres said it was “false” to suggest he had in any way sought to justify the barbarism of Hamas. It came as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, said Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but was fighting for its territory. Mr Erdoğan said: “It is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”He also criticised Western powers who had voiced support for Israel’s retaliation against Hamas, saying “Western tears shed for Israel are a manifestation of fraud”. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, called the comments “grave and disgusting and did not help with de-escalation”. Any ground offensive against the densely populated enclave is expected to bring fierce urban fighting and heavy casualties for combatants and trapped civilians. Israeli troops trying to clear Hamas’s extensive tunnel system below Gaza are expected to use hi-tech new weapons including “sponge bombs” containing a chemical compound that seals passages. Specialised teams in the IDF’s engineering corps have been equipped with the novel devices, which use foam that rapidly expands and then hardens.

Fears of another Palestinian exodus reverberate across the Middle East
Nada Bashir, Celine Alkhaldi and Nadeen Ebrahim, CNN/October 25, 2023
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.
Through the narrow streets of the Jabal Al-Hussein refugee camp in the Jordanian capital Amman, the mood is clear. “Palestine! No America, No America… Palestine,” a local fruit seller shouts amid the market crowds. Established more than seventy years ago by the United Nations, the community is now home to more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees, descendants of some of the more than 700,000 who were expelled or fled their homes in what is now Israel following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Israelis call it the War of Independence. To Arabs, that event is known as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Families in this camp, now a built-up urban community, know exile all too well, denied the right to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel. According to the United Nations, there are now some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of them descendants of that 1948 generation of exiles. These refugees say it is a life sentence of separation from family, friends, and their homeland. And for those with loved ones still in Gaza, they say it is a sentence to the cruelest form of anguish.
Israel launched a massive air offensive on the enclave that is home to more than two million Palestinians after Hamas militants from Gaza killed 1,400 people in a brazen attack inside Israel on October 7, and kidnapped more than 200. Camp resident Abdel-Munim Dababsheh, 49, says his family moved to Jordan after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. He says he left behind most of his family. He has lost several family members in successive Israeli wars in Gaza, he says. His mother was killed in 2009 and his sister in 2012, and his aunt and oldest daughter died in the latest round of Israeli airstrikes. “At any given moment, I could get a phone call telling me that my sister and her children have also been killed. At least 2,789 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza in the past 15 years, according to the United Nations, often in operations Israel says were launched to target Hamas and other militant groups.
The overall death toll in Gaza from the current conflict is now at more than 5,000, according to Palestinian health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, just over two weeks since Israel launched its relentless air campaign.
Despite the rising civilian death toll and the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, Israel has vowed to intensify its aerial bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip, and expand it to a multi-pronged operation in the coming days, as it says it seeks to wipe out Hamas, which has been designated by Israel, the European Union and the US as a terrorist organization. And with Israel’s thousands of punishing strikes, the fear of history repeating itself – of another Nakba – is being felt across the region.
While Israel has not said it aims to evict Gazans to Egypt or elsewhere, fears of such prospects arose after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) asked Gazans to evacuate the strip’s north and move southwards, as their military operation continued, as well as after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was in talks with Egypt and Israel to establish a humanitarian corridor in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula for Americans and other civilians fleeing Gaza. On Sunday, Blinken said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Israel has “absolutely no intent” to run Gaza. But the prospect of hundreds of thousands more Palestinians being forcibly displaced to neighboring countries, or even further afield, is being condemned across the Arab world. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said last week that a transfer of Palestinians from Gaza would likely be followed by a similar “expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan.” Jordan’s foreign minister later said such a move would be considered a declaration of “war.”Commentators on Arab media outlets have warned that Israel may be planning to de-populate the Gaza Strip of Palestinians and even re-occupy it.
‘Collective shame’
But some Palestinians would rather die than be made refugees once again.
“Of course, no one wants to go to Egypt. It’s impossible. My relatives refuse it, I refuse it. This is displacement. Gaza is their home. They will stay there even if it means being wiped out by an airstrike,” Dababsheh says of his relatives. Palestinians, he says, won’t accept being displaced this time. “The new generation will not allow it,” he says. “They put their foot down.” Of Gaza’s more than 2 million people, 1.7 million are refugees, according to UNRWA. “The Israelis were always adamant about no return of refugees, and that’s why the Palestinians cling to… the right of return,” Jordanian Senator Mustafa Hamarneh says, adding that 75 years later, the Arab world has still not recovered from the loss of the Palestinian homeland. “I don’t think the West realizes the depth of the collective shame we feel as a result of 1948 and the sense of injustice that has been inflicted upon us that we need to correct this. There is a very deep sense of shame, that what happened to us in 1948 shouldn’t have happened,” Hamarneh says. “Any new mass eviction of Palestinian refugees, for us, is a repeat of 1948.”Israeli officials have said they have “no interest” in reoccupying Gaza. Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops from the territory and pulled out Jewish settlers in 2005. The struggle of the Palestinians is felt especially keenly in Jordan, where more than half of the population is either Palestinian or of Palestinian descent – including more than two million Palestinian refugees.
But that passion for the Palestinian cause resonates across the Arab world that is home to more than 450 million people. In a fiery exchange with CNN’s Clarissa Ward at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza that went viral on social media last week, an Egyptian activist shouted that despite attempts to “divide” Arabs, “we stand with the Palestinians, and we stand with Arabs.”The activist, Rahma Zein, was one of many Arabs around the region impassioned by the war, bloody images from which have made their way to almost every Arab news channel and social media platform.
For more than two weeks now, protests in solidarity with the Palestinians have erupted in countries including Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait and Iran. Hundreds of thousands have also taken to the streets of several European capitals and US cities, all calling for an end to Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza strip, and to the 17-year blockade of the territory. Young people from across the Arab world have chanted the very same rallying cries their parents and grandparents chanted before them. This is a multi-generational cause which, more than 75 years since the dispossession of the Palestinians, has not diminished in salience in the region.
“For much of the Arab world, the question of Palestine represents the last colonized Arab people trying to gain their freedom,” said H.A. Hellyer, an international security studies expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute in London. While Arab states have tended to focus on problems closer to home in recent years, the latest war “has driven the Palestine question back onto the agenda,” he said. For many protesters, the demonstrations are not an expression of support for Hamas, nor an expression of indifference to the killing of Israeli civilians. Many protesters say they believe this crisis began long before the October 7 attacks, citing what they say is decades-long Israeli oppression of the Palestinians.
In the Iraqi capital Baghdad, which saw hundreds of protesters take to the streets over the weekend, 45-year-old Ahmed El-Saied said that in recent years Western governments compelled Arab states and their populations to forget the Palestinian issue, especially as Arabs grappled with “internal and sectarian conflicts.”In Egypt, where mass protests were allowed Friday for the first time in a decade, Alya, who took part in the protest, said that the recent wave of Arab normalization deals with Israel brought on a sense of “defeatism.”
“What we saw after October 7, however, was a shocking reminder to ourselves and the world that actually, this entire situation hasn’t been normalized,” said Alya, who only gave her first name due to fear of reprisal from the authorities.
‘They would rather die in Gaza than move’
Analysts say Arab fears of another displacement of Palestinians are particularly heightened due to inflammatory rhetoric that has come from some members of Israel’s right-wing government in the past. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in 2017, as a member of parliament, wrote in an essay that emigration of Palestinians should be encouraged and incentivized, adding that the notion that emigration is cruel is “absurd.” The process, he argued, should not be “a cruel expulsion” but be done in a manner that is “planned, willing, and based on a desire for a better life.”More recently, he caused an outcry in March after calling for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “erased” following the murder of two Israeli settlers in the town in a Palestinian attack, which led to revenge rampages by Israeli settlers that one of Israel’s top military generals later called a “pogrom.”
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir was convicted of anti-Arab racism by an Israeli court decades before joining the government and was once a follower of Meir Kahane, a Jewish fanatic who openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians. Ben Gvir’s wife, Ayala Nimrodi, has been cited as saying she wishes to “get rid of” the Palestinians.
When asked about the rhetoric of his right-wing coalition partners, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it is his hands that are “on the wheel.”
Hellyer said that this kind of rhetoric has given Arabs good reason to fear that the expulsion of Palestinians may indeed be on the table. “I don’t think it’s unusual (that) many in the Arab world would take them seriously at their word, especially considering the reality that in every previous situation where Palestinians left Palestinian territory, they were never allowed to go back,” Hellyer said.
Hanya Sabawi, a Palestinian who left Gaza as an infant but whose family remain in the enclave, told CNN she doesn’t know whether her family will have homes to go back to.
“And the biggest fear of course, is that they’re going to be evacuated and turned into refugees. This is what everyone is now openly talking about, as if they didn’t matter,” she said. “They don’t want to move. They would rather die in Gaza than move.”
CNN’s Claudia Otto and Aqeel Najim contributed to this report.
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Ex-Hostage Recounts Hamas Mass-Kidnapping Tactics
FDD/October 25, 2023
Latest Developments
An elderly Israeli woman freed from Hamas captivity on October 23 reported that the Palestinian terrorist group had clearly prepared in advance for mass-kidnappings. The hostage, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, was released along with 79-year-old Nurit Cooper. Their husbands are still missing and presumed to remain in captivity. After receiving medical attention, a frail and wheelchair-bound Lifshitz described her ordeal to reporters as “hellfire, a situation that we did not think or know we could find ourselves in.”
The terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7 were determined to kidnap and murder as many people as possible. They attacked a music festival and systematically killed people in small communities along the border. Documents found on the terrorists reveal they carried an “abduction manual” with instructions on harming and taking hostages. In the wake of her release, Lifshitz’s testimony sheds light on the Hamas abuse of hostages and also on the terrorist group’s network of tunnels under Gaza.
Expert Analysis
“This account puts to rest the pernicious theories about Hamas somehow stumbling upon a bonanza of mass-murder and abductions because of Israel’s failure to stop the October 7 attack. Just as the Palestinian terrorist group has clearly spent years — and untold sums of stolen aid money and Iranian terrorist funding — digging a veritable city of bunkers below ground, taking hostages in large numbers was clearly part of its strategic plan.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO
“Hamas has decided to slowly release several hostages in the wake of its genocidal attack as a way to gain leverage with the West. All of the 220 hostages, including 30 children, must be released and international organizations must have access to them immediately to check on their well-being.” — Seth J. Frantzman, FDD Adjunct Fellow
A Harrowing Ordeal
A veteran peace activist, Lifshitz said she was seized at her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, splayed over a motorbike, and carried back over agriculture fields into the Gaza Strip through a section of the fence that had been blown up by the Palestinians. En route, she said, her captors stole her jewelry and watch and hit her in the ribs, making it hard for her to breathe.
Off-loaded at a tunnel opening, Lifshitz was forced to walk “for two or three hours” through an extensive and humid warren of underground passages. She reached a cavern where she was initially kept among a group of 25 hostages. They were then subdivided into groups of five and placed into separate rooms, each hostage under guard and with a medic present, she said.
Captives and captors ate together and occasionally conversed, she said, though political discussions were avoided. A doctor also came to inspect the hostages every two or three days and provided “more or less” any prescription medicines required. “We lay there on mattresses. They took special care about the sanitary side of things, to ensure we did not, God forbid, end up falling ill in their hands,” she said.
“They seemed prepared for this. They prepared for this for a long time.”
Israel’s Government Responds
Israeli government officials have released the following statement:
“Hamas has adopted Nazi psychological warfare methods for shaping public opinion.
“Just like the Nazis held orchestrated visits for the Red Cross in a “clean” concentration camp in order to present themselves to the world as humane, Hamas—while slaughtering babies, raping women and shooting children—tries to present itself as humane by releasing a handful of the people that they kidnapped and whom they supposedly treated.
“We must never buy into Hamas propaganda.
“Hamas is worse than ISIS.”
Hamas Has Held Hostages in the Past
Hamas has taken hostages in the past. In 2006, Hamas attacked an IDF position and took IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit hostage for five years. In 2014, Hamas killed IDF Lieutenant Hadar Goldin and Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul and holds their bodies to this day. In addition, Hamas has held two Israeli citizens, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, since 2014.

Iranian-Backed Militias in Iraq and Syria Continue Attacks on U.S. Troops
FDD/October 25, 2023
Latest Developments
An Iran-backed Shiite militia attacked U.S. forces at a base in southeastern Syria on October 23 as similar attacks across Iraq and Syria have increased in the past two weeks. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq — a terrorist group armed and funded by Iran — claimed that its members attacked the al-Tanf military base using two drones. Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed that U.S. forces thwarted two suicide drones at al-Tanf and that no American personnel were injured.
Ryder added that the United States has seen increased rocket and drone attacks against coalition bases in Iraq and Syria. On October 22, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed concern about a broader escalation in attacks on American forces in the region in the days ahead. On October 23, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “We know that Iran is closely monitoring these events, and in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict for their own good, or for that of Iran.”
Expert Analysis
“There have been numerous Iran-backed attacks against our troops this week with no response from U.S. forces. The United States has responded in only a handful of the nearly 100 times its forces have come under fire in Iraq or Syria since the start of the Biden administration. The United States should respond to each attack in a similar manner to when U.S. forces neutralized 500 pro-Syrian government forces and Wagner group mercenaries at the Conoco gas fields in 2018, killing more than half of the attackers within a few hours.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO
“Tehran has brushed aside the Biden administration’s warnings and is testing the United States. Washington should ensure our troops have both the means and the permission to defend themselves and make terrorists regret that they attacked U.S. forces. If not, we should not be surprised if Tehran escalates its aggression.” — Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power
“Just as Iran, as a supplier and trainer of Hamas, was responsible for the attack on October 7, it is also responsible for the actions of its proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The Department of Defense needs to both surge defensive systems to protect U.S. forces and actually hold Iran accountable for its actions. Rhetoric alone will only encourage further bad behavior.” — Mark Montgomery, FDD Senior Fellow and Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation
Attacks on U.S. Forces Increased Since Gaza War
The latest attack comes less than a week after Iran-backed militias attacked al-Tanf on October 19, causing minor injuries. On October 22, militias attacked al-Asad air base in western Iraq with rockets after two drones attacked the same base on October 17. On October 18, the Islamic Resistance took responsibility for a drone attack on al-Harir airbase in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish province of Erbil. Shiite militias also targeted the Conoco gas field in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor, where a small contingent of U.S. special forces is based.
Approximately 900 U.S. soldiers remain in Syria and approximately 2,500 in Iraq to support efforts to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS). Ryder did not clarify whether the United States will respond to the latest incidents, stating, “Any response, should one occur, will come at a time in a matter of our choosing.”
Iran’s Terror Network in Iraq and Syria
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq is a network of shadowy Iraqi militia groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “Islamic Resistance” is a euphemism used by Iranian-backed groups to refer to each other, including groups outside of Iraq, such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. Since the war in Gaza began on October 7, several Shiite militias have issued direct threats to U.S. interests in Iraq and across the Middle East. The groups, known as Popular Mobilization Units, swear allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader and have killed more than 600 American troops since 2003.

Israeli airstrikes surge in Gaza, destroying homes and killing dozens at a time
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP)/October 25, 2023
Israel escalated airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, crushing families in the rubble of residential buildings, as health officials said hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the past day and medical facilities were shut down because of bomb damage and lack of power.The massive air bombardment continued through the night as Israeli jets hit sites across Gaza, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said. The soaring death toll from the bombardment is unprecedented in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It augurs an even greater loss of life in Gaza once Israeli forces backed by tanks and artillery launch an expected ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas militants. Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the territory following the devastating Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on towns in southern Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said Israeli airstrikes killed at least 704 people over the past day, mostly women and children. The Associated Press could not independently verify the death tolls cited by Hamas, which says it tallies figures from hospital directors. In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that the U.S. also could not verify that one-day death toll. “The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, and I think that all needs to be factored into anything that they put out publicly.” Israel said Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they prepared to fire rockets into Israel and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. Israel reported 320 strikes the day before. Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Israel, for its part, has vowed repeatedly since the massacre to crush Hamas. On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told the U.N. Security Council that the proportionate response to the Oct. 7 attack is “a total destruction to the last one” of the militants. “It is not only Israel’s right to destroy Hamas. It’s our duty,” he said.
The Israeli military said it thwarted an assault by a group of Hamas underwater divers who tried to infiltrate Israel on a beach just north of Gaza. They were attacked by air, naval and ground forces. Across central and south Gaza, where Israel told civilians to take shelter, there were multiple scenes of rescuers pulling the dead and wounded out of large piles of rubble from collapsed buildings. Graphic photos and video shot by the AP showed rescuers unearthing bodies of children from multiple ruins. A father knelt on the floor of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah next to the bodies of three dead children cocooned in bloodied sheets. Later at the nearby morgue, workers prayed over 24 dead wrapped in body bags, several of them the size of small children. Buildings that collapsed on residents killed dozens at a time in several cases, witnesses said. Two families lost a total 47 members in a leveled home in Rafah, the Health Ministry said. A strike on a four-story building in Khan Younis killed at least 32 people, including 13 members of the Saqallah family, said Ammar al-Butta, a relative who survived the airstrike. He said there were about 100 people sheltering in the building, including many who had evacuated from Gaza City.
“We thought that our area would be safe,” he said.
Another strike destroyed a bustling marketplace in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, witnesses said. AP photos showed the floor of a vegetable shop covered with blood. In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more people remained buried. The legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage where workers dug through the dirt, concrete and rebar.
The Health Ministry says more than 5,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war, including some 2,300 minors. The figure includes the disputed toll from an explosion at a hospital last week.
The fighting has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack, according to the Israeli government.
As the death toll in Gaza spirals, and fuel supplies dwindle, the number of facilities able to deal with casualties is shrinking. More than half of primary health care facilities, and roughly 1 of every 3 hospitals, have stopped functioning, the World Health Organization said. Overwhelmed hospital staff struggled to triage cases as constant waves of wounded were brought in. The Health Ministry said many wounded are laid on the ground without even simple medical intervention and others wait for days for surgeries because there are so many critical cases. While Israel has allowed a small number of trucks filled with aid to enter, it has barred deliveries of fuel to Gaza to keep it out of Hamas' hands. The U.N. said its operation distributing aid will halt Wednesday evening if it does not receive fuel.
To make room for the dead, cemeteries have been forced to excavate and reuse old plots. Families have dug trenches to bury multiple bodies at a time.
“Bodies pour in by the hundreds every day. We use every empty inch in the cemeteries,” said Abdel Rahman Mohamed, a volunteer who helps transfer bodies to Khan Younis’ main cemetery. Israel says it does not target civilians and that Hamas militants are using them as cover for their attacks. Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the start of the war, according to Israel, and Hamas said it fired a fresh barrage on Tuesday. On Monday, Hamas released two elderly Israeli women who were among the roughly 220 people Israel says were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack and forced into Gaza. Appearing weak in a wheelchair and speaking softly, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz told reporters Tuesday that the militants beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it hard to breathe as they kidnapped her. They drove her into Gaza, then forced her to walk several kilometers (miles) on wet ground to reach a network of tunnels that looked like a spider web, she said. Once there, she said, she was treated well, fed and given medical care.
Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper were freed days after an American woman and her teenage daughter were released. The Israeli military dropped leaflets in Gaza asking Palestinians to reveal information on the hostages’ whereabouts. In exchange, the military promised a reward and protection for the informant’s home. Iranian-backed fighters around the region are warning of possible escalation, including the targeting of U.S. forces deployed in the Mideast, if a ground offensive is launched. Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire almost daily across the Israel-Lebanon border.

Iran is stepping up its shadow war with Israel to boost its clout — but it could backfire
Tom Porter/Business Insider/October 25, 2023
Iran is keen to take advantage of Hamas' terrorist attacks on Israel. But it appears wary of provoking a wider, regional war. However, events could spiral, and Iran could feel compelled to wade into the conflict. Amid the war between Israel and Hamas, US officials warned this week that Iran-backed militias were planning to step up attacks on US bases in the Middle East. There are "red lights flashing everywhere," a US official in the region told CNN. Iranian proxies are trying to take advantage of the chaos unleashed by the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, analysts told Insider, to further damage Israel and boost its clout in the region. But Iran is walking a tightrope, and although it appears keen to damage Israel through its network of militias and proxy groups, it's wary of blowback from the US and Israel.
Hamas' terror attacks are part of a broader plan
Israel and Iran have long been engaged in a shadow war in the Middle East, with both countries involved in a gradually escalating pattern of hostile action.
As part of this covert war, Iran has funded and trained a network of militias stretching across the Middle East. These militias have been used as proxies to wage war against its regional foes. Among the most notable are Hamas, the Gaza-based group that launched the October 7 terrorist attacks, and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia that launched rocket attacks against Israel in recent days. Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 Israelis in the October 7 attacks, injured more than 5,400, and kidnapped over 200 people, according to Israeli officials. The retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have killed more than 5,000 and injured more than 15,000, according to Palestinian officials. Reports in The Wall St Journal and The New York Times claimed that Iranian officials appeared to have had involvement in planning and approving the attacks by Hamas — though other experts are skeptical of direct Iranian involvement.
But regardless of whether Iran had a direct role in instigating the violence, it will likely have welcomed the results, say experts. Analysts say that the Hamas attacks were likely aimed at derailing talks to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iran's main regional foes. The discussions were launched as part of the Trump administration's Abraham Accords, which aimed at repairing diplomatic ties between Israel and regional powers while sidestepping the vexed issue of a Palestinian state.
"Iran regard Israel as a threat and therefore, any form of rapprochement, normalization in relations between Israel and other states across the region — particularly those geographically close to Iran — represents a threat to Iran," Tobias Borck, an analyst at UK-based think tank The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Insider.
He cautioned against linking the October 7 attacks to a masterplan by Iran to derail the talks but said Tehran would likely have welcomed the ramifications. The waves of airstrikes Israel unleashed on Gaza in response to the October 7 attacks have enraged the Arab world, and seemingly scuppered the Israel-Saudi talks. And Iran and Hezbollah have sought to stir the rage further, calling for protests and attacks on Israel. Iran has threatened Israel with the prospect of a wider regional war if it invades Gaza, reported Al Jazeera.
But Iran faces a dilemma  Iranian officials have told Reuters that Iran faces a dilemma in its response to the Israel-Hamas war. If it doesn't respond, its strategy for regional ascendancy based on rallying the region around opposition to Israel will have been badly damaged. But if Iran acts and is proven to be behind attacks on Israel, it could provoke a direct confrontation with Israel and the US, which Iran is ill-equipped to fight. The US has deployed two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region to deter aggression by Iran and Hezbollah, and Iran's leaders know they would be badly outmatched in a direct clash with the superpower. "I think the Iranians probably want this conflict to be limited to Gaza, and the West Bank," Alex Vatanka, an expert on Iran at the US-based Middle East Institute, told Insider. "From Iran's perspective, an Israel sucked into guerilla warfare in Gaza and the West Bank is enough for now: it keeps Israel busy and shaken and distracted to go after Iran while also making the expansion of Abraham Accords into an impossibility since Arab leaders would have to distance themselves from Israel." Another factor holding Iran back is its close ties with China, one of the few global powers with which it retains strong economic ties. China has sought to use the Israel-Hamas war to its advantage, declaring support for a Palestinian state and refusing to criticize Hamas in an apparent bid to gain favor among Arab states. It is in the unusual position of having close ties both with Iran and Israel, and has offered to use its ties to help broker peace between them. But China is likely wary of a wider conflict in the region, that could undermine the trade links it's formed and slow the flow of Middle Eastern oil. It's likely that it's placing pressure on Iran not to escalate the conflict. "China is primarily an economic actor in the Middle East and its interests in the region are threatened if the conflict escalates," Jonathan Fulton, an analyst at The Atlantic Council, told Insider. "Iranian behavior is a key factor in whether this remains contained or spreads into a wider regional war. Since China is Iran's most consequential partner I expect it is highly motivated to keep Iran from any actions that would further destabilize the region." But despite the limits faced by Iran if it escalates the war, events could spiral beyond its control. If the Israeli invasion of Gaza results in large numbers of civilian casualties, hardliners in Tehran could place huge pressure on Iran to enter the conflict. Borck characterized the situation as an "unpredictable dynamic that is driven by headlines, driven by TV imagery, driven by social media footage," of real or alleged civilian casualties. "And at some point, you know, maybe some extreme or more hardline elements within Tehran, or for that matter Hezbollah, just say like, if we don't go now, how can we ever present ourselves as the great resistance to Israel? And I think that is the dangerous moment," said Borck.

Israel accuses UN chief of justifying terrorism for saying Hamas attack 'didn't happen in a vacuum'
JERUSALEM (AP)/October 25, 2023
Israeli officials were outraged Wednesday over U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' comment that the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel “did not happen in a vacuum,” calling it justification for terrorism. Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a scheduled meeting with Guterres while Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, said the U.N. chief “failed the test.” “I will not meet with the UN secretary-general. After the October 7 massacre, there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet!” Cohen posted Tuesday on social platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Israel's envoy to the U.N. Gilad Erdan called for his resignation, saying Israel must rethink its relations with the world body. “We will refuse to grant visas to U.N. representatives. We have already refused to give one to Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths,” Erdan told Army Radio, accusing Guterres of justifying a slaughter. “It’s time to teach them a lesson.”Israel historically has had tense relations with the U.N., accusing it of being biased against it. On Tuesday, Guterres addressed a special Security Council meeting on the Israel-Hamas war that was sparked by the militant group’s Oct.7 attack, which left at least 1,400 Israelis dead, and more than 220 taken hostage. Israeli airstrikes have destroyed large swaths of the Gaza enclave, leaving at least 6,500 Palestinians killed, including over 2,700 children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The U.N. chief told the council that he "condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented 7 October acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.” “Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians — or the launching of rockets against civilian targets,” he said. But his contextualization of the attack created an uproar in Israel. It was important, Guterres said, to acknowledge that “the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” he said. On Wednesday, Guterres tried to walk back the comments, tweeting: “The grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the horrific attacks by Hamas. Those horrendous attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” But Israel was not mollified. “The slaughter of Jew by Hamas on October 7th was genocidal in its intents and immeasurably brutal in its form,” Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan said in a statement. He said that it tests the sincerity of world leaders who came to Yad Vashem and pledged “Never Again.” ”Those who seek to ‘understand,’ look for a justifying context, do not condemn the perpetrators, and do not call for the unconditional and immediate release of the abducted – fail the test. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres failed the test.”

Israeli commander says her unit of mostly women killed 100 Hamas militants
Sophia Ankel/Business Insider/October 25, 2023
Female soldiers with the Israeli Defence Forces fought back Hamas militants on October 7. The soldiers killed around 100 Hamas militants, their commander told the Jerusalem Post.The commander said the soldiers "emerged as heroes." An Israeli commander told the Jerusalem Post that her battalion, made up of mostly female soldiers, killed around 100 Hamas militants during the terrorist attacks on October 7. Israeli Caracal commander Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda told the outlet the women "emerged as heroes" for their actions near the Gaza Strip. On the morning of October 7, Ben-Yehuda said she received a message reporting an infiltration of heavily armed militants near the kibbutzim of Sufa and Nirim. Not yet knowing the extent of the attacks, she told her soldiers: "Stay alert. We might cross paths. We are a strong squad," according to the report. Upon arrival in the Sufa kibbutz, Ben-Yehuda said she saw how big the Hamas infiltration was. "We are going out to eliminate terrorists. Infiltration into Israel is happening, and it's spreading," she told her battalion, according to the Jerusalem Post. Combat between the battalion and the militants lasted nearly four hours, she said. It took the Caracal battalion about 14 hours to secure the base alongside other units, the outlet said. The Caracal Battalion, which is tasked with protecting Israel's border, is one of three mixed-gender combat units. It was established in 2004 for the purpose of incorporating women in service into combat units. Two-thirds of its members are women, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). None of her squad members were killed, though Ben-Yehuda herself came very close to being shot at point-blank range, she told the outlet. "Their training and performance on the battlefield have erased any doubts. They fought bravely, saved lives, and emerged as heroes," she told the Jerusalem Post. "There are no more doubts about female combat soldiers, who have triumphed in every encounter with terrorists," she said, Ben-Yehuda added that her battalion is now "preparing for any potential ground maneuvers to ensure the safety of the southern Gaza border area and the Egyptian border."Israel is one of only a few countries where military service is compulsory for women. In the IDF, they serve a variety of roles, including in elite search and rescue and combat engineering units. During its surprise terrorist attacks, Hamas militants took more than 200 people hostage and left more than 1,300 Israelis and foreign nationals dead, according to Israeli officials. Israel has since responded with relentless airstrikes on Gaza, which Palestinian officials say have killed at least 5,000 people at the time of writing.

Ankara Denies Asking Hamas Leaders to Leave Turkey
FDD/October 25, 2023
Latest Developments
Turkey’s government has reportedly asked key Hamas leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, to leave Turkey. Ankara has denied this, stating “the allegations that ‘Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered senior Hamas officials to leave Turkey immediately’ are completely false,” likely wanting to avoid condemnation by pro-Hamas domestic constituents. Ankara is a material supporter of Hamas and has harbored Hamas’ top leadership in Turkey since 2011. According to reporting from Al-Monitor, Haniyeh was in Turkey on October 7 but was “sent away” after footage emerged showing Haniyeh celebrating the terror attacks in Israel.
Expert Analysis
“Erdogan wants to have his cake and eat it. At a superficial level, he has been attempting to repair ties with Israel since 2022 to boost Turkey’s image with Washington. On a substantive level, he has continued to nurture Hamas’ status in Turkey, allowing the organization to recruit members, fundraise, and use Turkey as a base to coordinate terror attacks in the region. The alleged request asking Hamas leaders to leave Turkey is a drop in the bucket, as it fails to address Ankara’s continued material support of the terrorist organization.” — Sinan Ciddi, FDD Senior Fellow on Turkey
“Erdogan has presented himself as a savior of the Palestinians, providing Hamas with a base in Turkey, refusing to condemn Hamas terrorism, and handing out cash to Palestinians in Jerusalem. Turkey’s alleged request of Hamas leaders to leave is due to external pressure, not ideological disagreement.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst
Hamas Leaders in Turkey
Turkey’s harboring of Hamas’ top leadership is well documented. Hamas’ leaders, including Khaled Mashal, Ismail Haniyeh, and Saleh al-Arouri, have openly met with Erdogan many times. Ankara has provided Arouri and Haniyeh with residency and Turkish passports, which have allowed them to travel internationally unhindered. Arouri, Hamas’ West Bank chief, is a U.S.-designated terrorist with a $5 million bounty on his head. He celebrated Hamas’ October 7 massacre on social media and is likely one of the masterminds of the attacks.
Material Support for Hamas
Turkey may also be providing military support to Hamas. In July, Israeli authorities seized 16 tons of explosive material that originated in Turkey and were bound for Gaza, apparently intended for Hamas rockets. While Ankara often declares its desire to “normalize” ties with Israel, Erdogan’s government remains a primary source of support for Hamas and other jihadist entities throughout the region. Even if the Hamas leadership has departed Turkey, there is nothing to stop them from coming back. The press rumors, if true, do not address the fundamental issue of Hamas’ institutional presence inside Turkey. There is also no indication that Ankara has revoked the Turkish passports of Hamas leaders. Likewise, their reported departure does not affect the terrorist group’s ability to continue sourcing raw materials from Turkey to use for manufacturing more rockets.

Turkey's Erdogan says Hamas is not a terrorist organisation
ANKARA (Reuters)/October 25, 2023
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, in his strongest comments yet on the Gaza conflict, said on Wednesday the Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organisation but a liberation group fighting to protect Palestinian lands and people.
Speaking to lawmakers from his ruling AK Party, Erdogan also called for an immediate ceasefire between Israeli and Palestinian forces and said Muslim countries must act together to secure a lasting peace in the region. "Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, 'mujahideen' waging a battle to protect its lands and people," he said, using an Arabic word denoting those who fight for their faith. Erdogan also slammed Western powers that have voiced support for Israel's retaliation against Hamas, saying "Western tears shed for Israel are a manifestation of fraud". Many of Turkey's NATO allies consider Hamas a terrorist group, and Erdogan's comments drew a swift rebuke from Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who said they were "grave and disgusting and did not help with de-escalation". "I will propose to my colleague (Foreign Minister Antonio) Tajani to send a formal protest and to summon the Turkish Ambassador," Salvini said in a note. Turkey has condemned the civilians deaths that resulted from Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage in southern Israel but also urged Israel to react in a restrained way. It has since strongly condemned Israel's heavy bombardment of Gaza, which is controlled by the militant Islamist group, while offering to mediate in the conflict and sending several shipments of humanitarian aid. Erdogan accused Israel of taking advantage of Turkey's good intentions. Turkey had previously been working to mend long-strained ties with Israel and Erdogan said he had now cancelled a planned trip to Israel because of the events in Gaza. Turkey, which hosts members of Hamas on its territory, backs a two-state solution to the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Qatar's PM: Hostage release talks progressing, hopeful for breakthrough 'soon'
DOHA (Reuters)/Wed, October 25, 2023
Qatar's prime minister said on Wednesday that negotiations the Gulf Arab state is leading to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are progressing and he is hopeful there will soon be a breakthrough. Qatar's foreign ministry urged de-escalation and warned that an Israeli ground assault on the densely populated enclave would make freeing hostages "much more difficult." "There is some progress and some breakthrough and we remain hopeful," said Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani at a press conference in the Qatari capital. Wealthy gas-producer Qatar has had an open dialogue with both Israel and Hamas, which has brought about the release of four hostages captured in the Oct. 7 rampage Hamas led into southern Israel, including two Israeli women on Monday. "If they are able to get along between the two parties I think we will see some breakthroughs hopefully soon," said Sheikh Mohammed, who is also the minister of foreign affairs and who was speaking alongside his Turkish counterpart. Qatar foreign ministry officials said an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza would complicate efforts to free the hostages. "Obviously, a land incursion into Gaza would make it difficult to maintain the safety of the hostages, and in our efforts at mediation with both sides, we urge all parties in this conflict to de-escalate immediately," said Majed Al Ansari, the foreign ministry's spokesperson. Also speaking in Doha, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said an Israeli ground operation into Gaza would turn the fighting there into a massacre. Fidan said that those supporting Israel's actions under the pretence of solidarity were "accomplices to its crimes". Some 222 people aged from 9 months to 85 years were seized on Oct. 7 when Hamas and other militants went on a killing spree through southern Israel, shooting motorists, hunting down civilians, including children in their own homes, and burning and stabbing people to death, according to survivors' accounts. Israel has responded with a bombing campaign and a siege of Gaza. The Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday at least 6,546 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli bombardments since Oct. 7, including 2,704 children. Some 756 were killed in the previous 24 hours alone. "The number of children being killed since the start of this war is exceeding the number of children killed in the other war between Ukraine and Russia and yet we didn't see the same reaction (in the international community)," he said, stressing that the only way to reach a peaceful solution in Gaza was to keep communication channels open.

Family of Al Jazeera journalist killed in Gaza strike: network
AFP/October 25, 2023
DOHA: The family of an Al Jazeera journalist have been killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza, the Qatar-based network said in a statement on Wednesday as war rages between Israel and Hamas. Al Jazeera said the wife and two children of its Arabic-language channel’s Gaza correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh were killed in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza strip. “The Al Jazeera Media Network extends its sincere condolences and sympathy to our colleague Wael Al-Dahdouh on the loss of his family in an Israeli airstrike,” it said. “The indiscriminate assault by the Israeli occupation forces resulted in the tragic loss of his wife, son and daughter, while the rest of his family is buried under the rubble.”Israel launched withering strikes on the narrow Palestinian territory in response to a massive cross-border attacks by Hamas militants on October 7 that Israeli officials say have killed more than 1,400 people. More than 220 people were taken hostage and are currently held in Gaza, Israel says. Israeli strikes have killed more than 6,500 people in Gaza, a rise of more than 700 since Tuesday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. In images and footage run by Al Jazeera and shared on social media, Al-Dahdouh was shown mourning over the bodies of his wife and children at a hospital in Deir el-Balah in the southern Gaza Strip. Al Jazeera said the family were staying in a temporary home after evacuating Gaza City following Israel’s warning for residents to move south as its forces intensified strikes targeting Hamas. “This is the safe zone the occupation (Israeli) army was talking about,” Al-Dahdouh said on Al Jazeera. The media organization said “their home was targeted in the Nuseirat camp in the center of Gaza, where they had sought refuge after being displaced by the initial bombardment in their neighborhood.” “Al Jazeera is deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of our colleagues in Gaza and hold the Israeli authorities responsible for their security,” it added.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 25-26/2023
A Message to Yehya Sinwar the military field commander of Hamas
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper/October 25/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/123555/123555/
Yahya Sinwar, you are the military field commander of Hamas, and everyone knows that you are the most violent man in Gaza. Your violence is not only directed at Israel, but even some of your own Qassam Brigade officials - Abu al-Majd Shatiwi's mother has previously accused you of killing her son amid a power struggle. This is a message that not even Khaled Meshaal or Ismail Haniyeh would dare deliver, but I will.
Today, more than two weeks after the October 7 operation, Haniyeh cries out: "Where are the Arabs?" Khaled Meshaal says Hamas will release the civilians provided if the bombardment of Gaza is dialed down.
This means that the situation has become unbearable in Gaza for Hamas, and the Qassam as well. How much worse is it for the innocent people of Gaza? Today, the West as a whole - and I mean what I say because I've heard it from a broad array of sources - is saying that Israel is "drunk on rage."
This rage is similar to Washington's fury in the aftermath of 9/11. Haidar al-Abadi told me, on February 14, 2007, that after 9/11, the US was like a raging bull and that they rode it. Today, no one can ride the raging Israeli bull but Israel's fanatics.
Of course, the people of Gaza and the Palestinian cause are its primary victims. The question was and remains: What would have happened if Washington had assassinated or arrested Osama bin Laden in 2002? Would Washington have toppled Saddam's regime or invaded Afghanistan? Maybe, but capturing him would have certainly undermined its justifications. Today, Yahya Sinwar, your head could well be the price for extinguishing the fire in Gaza. The Israelis would consider your arrest to be a trophy. Leaving Gaza could also be a solution to the crisis.
The question now, Yahya Sinwar is whether you are a leader or a terrorist.
Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for Gaza and the cause, or are you ready to suck them dry? Were you not the one who once told a reporter from Israel's Channel 2: "We will never recognize Israel, but we are ready to accept a long-term truce?" You promised that this truce would achieve "calm and prosperity in the region, for at least a generation and perhaps more... Nonetheless, we will embitter the lives of Israelis during the negotiations, just as we had with our resistance and war."
Well, by "embittering" the Israelis, you have turned life in Gaza into a nightmare and put a target on your back. Will you take the decision that other leaders have made? If you are indeed a leader, would you leave Gaza to prevent further bloodshed? I'm not trying to be facetious; Yasser Arafat did it when he and his men left Beirut. Today, it would be best if you too, Yahya, protected Gaza and its people, not any other Arab city. When you eliminated some of the Hamas and Qassam members, some tied the assassinations to a power struggle. Can you prove, today, that you are keen on furthering the cause, not building your own power, by leaving Gaza to save lives? Will you do it? Are you on a suicide mission or pursuing a state-building project? Is the cause the least of your concerns? I'll be honest with you; your departure from Gaza might not change anything. Indeed, the Israelis are mad. But it would give you the moral high ground and leave them in an awkward position. Do it, strengthen the argument of those who want to stop this brutal Israeli machine.

Blood Libel against Jews: Back with a Vengeance
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/October 25, 2023
This conflict is not about occupation or settlements. The chants of anti-Israel protesters, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," means that the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea -- all of Israel -- must be free of Jews.
The truth does not matter to bigots.
A document from the end of the 15th century features an illustration of a bearded Jew extracting the blood of a Christian child. The adjoining text explains that Jewish law requires that Passover matzoh be baked with the blood of Christian children.
Such documents were widely circulated through Europe during the Easter season and led to frequent pogroms — murder, rape, and destruction — against Jewish children, women and men in revenge for allegedly killing Christian children for their blood to make matzoh.
There was never any actual evidence of such cannibalism. In fact, Jewish law explicitly prohibits the consumption of any blood or its use in cooking.
The total lack of evidence, however, did not matter to those who were taught and believed what has come to be known as the "blood libel." Despite all the evidence to the contrary, many believed that this falsehood was "true."
This blood libel persisted throughout Europe into the early 20th century. Jews were put on trial and executed for supposedly killing Christian children for their blood.
Other libels against Jews formed the basis for classic antisemitism, culminating in the Nazi lies that dehumanized Jews to an extent that made the Holocaust possible. Following the murder of 6 million innocent Jews, including babies, the world said, "Never again" and antisemitism abated in many parts of the world.
Now it is back with a vengeance, accompanied by blood libels and other systematic lies about the Jewish people and their nation state, Israel.
It is against this sordid historical background that the current blood libel — that Israel targeted a Gaza hospital deliberately causing the death of 500 Muslim children, women and men — can best be understood and assessed.
There is absolutely no evidence that Israel struck the hospital, whether deliberately or accidentally. Evidence from videos, photographs and telephone intercepts have proved to intelligence agencies worldwide that a barrage of rockets was launched toward Israel from near the hospital, almost certainly by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and that one of the rockets malfunctioned mid-flight, landing not directly on the hospital but in its outdoor parking lot, and that the explosion killed far fewer than 500 people.
The claim of 500 people killed came, within minutes of the PIJ rocket strike, from the "Gaza Ministry of Health" – in other words from Hamas. They lie. No facts or numbers are ever verifiable. Moreover, Hamas claims that no rocket parts survived – another self-serving lie. Yet, their blood libel is widely believed by Israel's enemies – perhaps because they want to believe it. It is too good a story to be ruined by the facts. As the journalist Becket Adams wrote in National Review:
"The Media Will Never Forgive Israel for Not Bombing That Hospital.... Reporters and pundits mishandled the Gaza hospital story because they wanted so badly for it to be true."
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote:
"As the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea pointed out to me, Palestinian Islamic Jihad achieved more this week with an apparently misfired rocket 'than it achieved in all of its successful missile launches.'"
The "Muslim street" has been indoctrinated by its leaders to believe anything negative about Jews or Israel. And the Arab media generally reports Hamas lies and exaggerations — such as the claim that 500 civilians were killed at the hospital — as unvarnished truth.
It is unlikely that all the facts surrounding the tragedy at the Gaza hospital will emerge. Most of the physical evidence attesting to the rocket having been launched from Gaza by terrorists has been suppressed or manipulated by Hamas.
Credible intelligence agencies around the world have assessed the likelihood of various possible scenarios: an errant terrorist rocket; the debris of an Iron Dome defensive missile; a misfired Israeli missile; a targeted Israeli missile. The current consensus is that it was a Palestinian terrorist rocket that malfunctioned, as reportedly 20% of such rockets do, and landed at home in Gaza. There has been no objective assessment that points the finger at an Israeli strike.
The Palestinians have refused to produce fragments that could reveal if the rocket was Israeli, and no evidence so far has pointed to a missile having been launched there by Israel – to deliberately kill civilians or for any other reason. In fact, Israel blanketed northern Gaza with leaflets in Arabic urging its residents to flee to the south in order to avoid killing them – while the leadership in Gaza ordered them to stay, and then tried to block their safe passage south.
Yet that lie is precisely the blood libel that Israel's enemies — in Gaza, on the "Muslim street," in the Arab media and on university campuses around the world — are fomenting.
The current reaction to the events in Gaza cannot be understood without taking into account the long history of blood libels and Jew-hatred. The current focus is on Gaza, but the goal of Hamas supporters is what Hamas itself proclaims in its charter: the obliteration of any nation state for the Jewish people in any part of Israel.
This conflict is not about occupation or settlements. The chants of anti-Israel protesters, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," means that the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea -- all of Israel -- must be free of Jews.
Antisemitism has always been based on lies. No amount of evidence, regardless of how strong, can persuade fervent Jew-haters to accept the truth.
In the weeks to come, Israeli strikes will accidentally kill civilians in Gaza, because Hamas deliberately uses Palestinian children, women, the elderly and disabled as human shields. Some are willing shields; others are pressured or forced to risk their lives to protect Hamas killers. The international law of "proportionality" allows Israel to destroy important military targets — such as Hamas leaders or rocket launchers — even though they know that a certain number of civilians may be killed or injured. The only requirement is that the military value of the target be proportional to the number of anticipated collateral deaths and injuries among civilians. The rule of "proportionality" does not mean that Israel is permitted to kill the same number of civilians as those killed by Hamas. The rule of proportionality also depends on how "civilian" these "civilians" actually are. Israel legally has more leeway in endangering the lives of civilians who volunteer to be shields, or who are in other ways complicit with Hamas, than they would be with regard to young children or others who are completely innocent.
Do not expect, however, the blood-libeling liars of Hamas or their cheerleaders to consider these and other legal and moral distinctions. For them, every death of a Palestinian is automatically the fault of Israel, even if they are killed by an errant terrorist rocket, or while being used by Hamas as a human shield. The truth does not matter to bigots.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and the author most recently of Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute, and is also the host of "The Dershow" podcast.
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Did Hamas just prove the Abraham Accords right?
Natalie Ecanow/Washington Examiner/October 25, 2023
Four days after Hamas began its massacre of Israeli civilians, King Abdullah II of Jordan addressed his country’s parliament, telling lawmakers that Jordan’s “compass will always point to Palestine, with Jerusalem in its heart, and we will never falter in defending its interests and just cause.” His wife, Queen Rania, pointed a finger at Israel and claimed that “it isn’t self-defense if you are an occupying force.”Jordan and Israel have been at peace for almost 30 years, yet Amman didn’t offer a word of consolation to its grieving neighbor, nor condemn Hamas’s wanton murder of Israeli civilians. Israel and Egypt have been at peace for almost half a century, yet Cairo was likewise unwilling to acknowledge Hamas’s atrocities and war crimes. In contrast, the United Arab Emirates named Hamas and “expressed its condolences to the families of the victims.” Rather than keep Israel at arm’s length while rousing anti-Israel voices at home, Israel’s newest Arab partners appear much readier than Egypt and Jordan to integrate the Jewish state into the fabric of the Middle East.
Egypt and Jordan made peace with Israel in 1979 and 1994, respectively. Those treaties conditioned regional normalization on prospective Palestinian statehood. But neither solidified a warm diplomatic friendship with the state of Israel.
Indeed, Cairo and Amman have been anything but congenial toward Israel as it recovers from Hamas’s barbaric terrorist attack. Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry affirmed on Oct. 11 that Egypt rejects “any attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause by military means or displacement.” Worse, Egyptian presidential candidate Ahmed Altantawy praised Hamas’s attack and “condemn[ed] any attempt by the Israel occupation to respond with violence and barbarism.”
The UAE, however, normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords. That set of agreements, which also included Bahrain and, later, Morocco, untethered regional peace from the Palestinian file and was meant to foster warmer ties through people-to-people connections. Today, we’re seeing the dividends of that approach play out in real time. On Oct. 15, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke over the phone with Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, the Emirati ruler. Israel’s opposition leader, Yair Lapid, held a similar call with Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed on Oct. 9. “Bin Zayed expressed his solidarity with the State of Israel, and [I] thanked him for his support,” Lapid said.
Emirati solidarity also spilled into the pages of the Wall Street Journal, where a media personality close to the country’s leadership wrote that “now isn’t the time to go wobbly on peace.” He accused Hamas of “poisoning the climate for normalization.”
And though Bahrain initially released a neutral statement, the foreign minister later shamed Hamas and unequivocally condemned “the kidnapping of civilians from their homes as hostages.”
As for Saudia Arabia, the kingdom was reportedly inching toward a normalization deal before Hamas derailed that effort on Oct. 7. Riyadh is now toeing a fine line. Before Hamas was through massacring civilians, the Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement warning against “the dangers of the explosion of the situation” due to Israel’s “continued occupation” and “the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights.”
However, when the Saudi foreign minister spoke over the phone with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that day, he reportedly stressed “the Kingdom’s rejection of targeting of civilians in any way.”
Saudi-Israel normalization topped President Joe Biden’s Middle East agenda before Hamas set the region ablaze. Now, the Biden administration is reportedly scrambling to keep that possibility alive. Riyadh will eventually need 67 senators to ratify the mutual defense treaty at the center of that diplomatic effort. Certainly, Congress is watching the Saudi reaction to events in Israel carefully.
Still, Blinken cautioned on Oct. 8 that normalization cannot “be a substitute for resolving the differences between Israelis and Palestinians.” Washington tested that mindset with Egypt and Jordan, and it failed. The fact that Turkey, which openly sponsors Hamas, issued a more neutral statement is proof enough.
No doubt, the Abraham Accords are faring better — even if their record isn’t spotless. Indeed, the UAE and Bahrain quickly blamed Israel for an explosion at a Gaza City hospital on Oct. 17. With mounting evidence that a Palestinian misfire caused the explosion, the question is whether Abu Dhabi and Manama will distance themselves from the story, if not correct their original testimony.
Nevertheless, as Israel weathers this crisis, Abu Dhabi and Manama have so far proven stronger friends than Cairo or Amman. By stoking terror, Hamas thought it could prevent the Abraham Accords from expanding. Instead, it may have proved their worth.
Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute in Washington, D.C., focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Biden must take Iran threat seriously — and wage economic war
David Adesnik/New York Post/October 25/2023 |
Iran-backed militias are shooting at American troops in Iraq and Syria and getting away with it. On Monday morning, the militias targeted US bases with attack drones for the third time in a week. The Pentagon says Iran is ultimately responsible, but that seems to be an observation, not a commitment to act.
The militias have launched more than 80 attacks on US troops since President Biden took office, but there have only been two counterstrikes.
American warplanes could exact a heavy price from the militias, but US troops on the ground may first need reinforcements.
There are roughly 2,500 servicemembers in Iraq and 900 in Syria. Their primary mission is to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State.
American troops have local partners committed to that mission, but it is not clear they would risk their necks if Iran-backed militias launched a full-scale offensive to retaliate for US airstrikes. Hamas’ stunning ability to overrun Israeli bases the morning of Oct. 7 provides a stark reminder of the cost of underestimating the creativity of a low-tech adversary. The question, then, is whether Biden is prepared to spend the necessary political capital to win support — especially from his own party — to send several thousand reinforcements to ensure US bases remain secure.
Biden has hesitated to cast Iran as a threat. In his Thursday televised address from the Oval Office, he only made two passing references to Tehran, even though it provides $100 million per year to Palestinian terror groups.
So the first thing the administration needs to change is its mindset. Then it can strengthen the US presence in Iraq and Syria and begin holding the militias accountable for their aggression. Of equal or greater importance is making Iran pay for the violence it sponsors. To paraphrase Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, you have to target the head of the octopus, not get wrapped up with its tentacles.
The assault, however, should also be on the economic front.
Just because the militias prefer rockets and drones does not mean the United States should limit itself. And it is on the economic front where the Biden administration has committed the greatest malpractice.
As part of its campaign of “maximum pressure,” the Trump administration mounted an aggressive sanctions campaign with the goal of bankrupting Iran.
In November 2019, Tehran’s strapped finances forced it to cut subsidies for gasoline, sparking nationwide protests.
The regime deployed its security forces to bash heads and gun down protesters.
But it did not compromise with Washington, likely understanding the pressure would lift if Biden won the coming election.
In office, Biden promptly rewarded Iran for just participating in nuclear negotiations, not for actual concessions. Tehran repaid this kindness by dramatically accelerating its nuclear program. But nothing could deter the White House from its quixotic effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. One official told Bloomberg News the administration was deliberately avoiding enforcement of oil sanctions that are especially painful for a petrostate like Iran.
My colleague Saeed Ghaseminejad, a financial economist, estimates that Tehran netted an additional $26-$29 billion from lax enforcement.
Biden also gave Iran access to $10 billion of frozen funds in Iraq and delivered a $6 billion ransom for the release of five US hostages.
Altogether, Biden’s relief package for Iran has been worth an estimated $50 billion.
What Americans learned Oct. 7 was that Biden was paying off Iran while it was funding, training and equipping Hamas as it prepared to carry out the most lethal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. That should have opened the eyes of both Biden and his advisers to the fact their strategy of maximum deference to Iran was a total failure.
If Iran does not have hard currency, it may have to start making difficult choices between funding its proxies and bankrolling welfare measures for a population of almost 90 million immiserated by the clerical regime’s gross corruption and mismanagement.
In November 2019, reeling from US sanctions, Tehran cut subsidies for gasoline, sparking nationwide protests. A Reuters investigation found that Iranian security forces may have gunned down as many 1,500 protesters to keep the regime in power.
If Biden and his advisers can swallow their pride and reverse course on Iran, overwhelming bipartisan support is all but certain. Tehran’s unapologetic support for the Hamas massacre has woken up most of Capitol Hill’s advocates of engagement.
The sanctions campaign should be more than just a reversion, however, to US policy circa 2019-2020. It should include new measures to target the tentacles of the octopus as well as the head. That includes countries that have provided sanctuary to Hamas, such as Turkey and Qatar. America can’t fight terrorists effectively while letting billions flow to their sponsor in Tehran.
*David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Can the U.S. Arm Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan at the Same Time?
Ryan Brobst and CMPP Senior Director/Insight-FDD/October 25 2023
The Biden administration has moved quickly to send Israel weapons following Hamas’ deadly October 7 terror attack. This laudable step has some asking whether U.S. military assistance to Israel might affect Washington’s ability to send weapons to Ukraine or Taiwan. Fortunately, at least for now, there is little to no tradeoff between arming Ukraine and Taiwan and the aid being sent to Israel other than 155mm artillery shells.
A senior Pentagon official stated on October 9 that U.S. support being prioritized for delivery to Israel “includes air defense and munitions” and that the Pentagon is “contacting U.S. industry to gain expedited shipment of pending Israeli orders for military equipment.” The major systems and munitions the United States has sent to Israel so far are the Iron Dome air defense system, its Tamir interceptors, Small Diameter Bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and 155mm artillery shells.
It is worth examining each of these in turn.
Iron Dome and the Tamir Interceptor
Tamir interceptors are fired by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system that shoots down rockets, drones, and some missiles. Hamas fires its rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities, and without Iron Dome, Israel’s civilian casualties would be much higher. Israel operates at least 10 Iron Dome batteries that are spread across the country, along with a few other air defense systems. The Pentagon has transferred some of its Tamir interceptors to Israel and is reportedly planning to lease its two Iron Dome batteries to Israel as well.
Ukraine and Taiwan do not operate Iron Dome, so there is no tradeoff in providing Israel Tamir interceptors. However, a large portion of Tamir missile components are produced in the United States, which raises defense industrial base questions around whether or not production can keep up with Israel’s needs.
In addition to the supplier network already in the United States, Raytheon and Israel-based Rafael agreed in 2020 to build an Iron Dome and Tamir interceptor manufacturing facility in the United States. The facility would reportedly “build Iron Dome systems, the Tamir interceptor and launcher, and the SkyHunter missile (the U.S. version of Tamir).” Many now want to accelerate those efforts.
The supplemental funding that the Biden administration requested on October 20 includes $4 billion for Israel to procure “Iron Dome and David’s Sling defense systems.” That funding, along with investments to strengthen the U.S. Iron Dome supplier base and establish a production facility in the United States, will be critical to close the gap between the air and missile defense capacity Israel needs and the capacity it currently possesses.
Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs)
In addition to air defense assistance, Israel will need a significant number of precision strike munitions to target Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties. The Small Diameter Bomb, which a senior defense official said Monday the United States has provided Israel, is a 250-lb., air-launched, precision-guided munition. Its relatively small warhead will reduce collateral damage in the densely populated Gaza Strip. One thousand of the weapons were expedited to Israel, as Jerusalem had previously ordered them through a direct commercial sale.
The United States has procured over 37,000 of SDB Increment I and nearly 2,000 of SDB Increment II in total, according to Pentagon documents. U.S. Air Force and Navy procurement of both SDB variants averaged over 5,700 per year from 2018 to 2022, showing that industry can produce the weapon at scale. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel received 8,550 SDBs from the United States between 2010 and 2022, a significant number. The United States has not publicly committed any air-launched SDBs to Ukraine. It is possible that they have been quietly provided to Ukraine, but it would likely be in small numbers as the Ukrainian Air Force struggles to employ non-standoff munitions due to dense concentrations of Russian air defenses.
To help address that problem, Ukraine will soon receive the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB). Ukraine has not received the system yet, but that is due to the time needed to design, integrate, and produce the launcher and rocket motor, not availability of the bomb portion of the system. Taiwan does not have any pending orders for SDB through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, and while it has reportedly considered purchasing the GLSDB, Taipei has not ordered it yet. Therefore, there is no significant tradeoff between providing Israel SDBs and providing Ukraine or Taiwan with the munition.
Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs)
The Joint Direct Attack Munition is a guidance kit that converts unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions, and the Extended Range variant (JDAM-ER) converts unguided bombs into precision-guided glide bombs with a range of up to 45 miles. The United States has produced JDAMs in large numbers — over 520,000 in 25 years. The current production rate is 10,500 per year, with a surge capacity of over 50,000. According to SIPRI, Israel has received 12,489 JDAMs since 2010, and in 2015, the State Department approved a Foreign Military Sale to Israel of 14,500 JDAM tail kits as well as a host of other munitions, although no JDAM-ERs are listed. According to an October 20 Defense News report, the administration had already sent Israel about 1,800 JDAMs to Israel since October 7.
There is no publicly available evidence Ukraine has received the standard JDAM, although since March 2023, the United States has committed to Ukraine an unknown number of JDAM-ERs, which are launched from MiG-29s and Su-27s. Ukraine’s consumption of this munition is likely low, as Kyiv only has a small fleet of aircraft capable of launching the weapons and must contend with dense concentrations of Russian air defenses. Taiwan does not have any pending orders for JDAM through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program.
Israel will not need to use the extended range capabilities of JDAM-ER in Gaza, as the Israeli Air Force enjoys air supremacy and can fly close to targets. Admittedly, Israel may eventually be interested in JDAM-ER for potential operations against Hezbollah or Iran’s nuclear program. Regardless, Israel has its own glide bomb family, known as Spice, which adds an electro-optical/infrared sensor to complement the weapons’ GPS/INS guidance, allowing for additional targeting capabilities. It’s possible that Israel may request JDAM-ER in the future, but at present, Israel has not publicly requested the system and has its own stockpile of glide bombs. Therefore, there is no current tradeoff between providing Israel JDAM and providing Ukraine or Taiwan the system.
155mm Artillery Shells
155mm artillery shells are fired from towed and self-propelled artillery pieces and can be used against a wide variety of targets, including fortifications, vehicles, and infantry. According to public reports in January, the United States had reportedly withdrawn half of an expected 300,000 shells from WRSA-I by January 2023 to give to Ukraine. 155mm is in extreme demand by Ukrainian forces, as the Ukrainian military is an artillery-centric force. The United States has supplied over two million 155mm artillery shells to Ukraine, straining U.S. stockpiles and production capacity.
If a conflict with Hezbollah erupts, Israel’s need for 155mm artillery would increase well beyond what the IDF is currently using in Gaza. One factor worth considering is that the Israeli military is generally less dependent on tube artillery than the Ukrainian military, so its demand for artillery shells will likely be considerably less, depending on a number of variables.
A somewhat relevant historical example is the Second Battle of Fallujah, where Marines forces fired less than 6,000 rounds in a battle that took place in a dense urban area and lasted over a month and a half. Even so, the state of 155mm stockpiles is an area of concern. Fortunately, the Pentagon has already taken steps to increase artillery production, which has roughly doubled over the past six months to 28,000 per month and is on pace to reach 57,000 per month by spring 2024 and 100,000 per month by fiscal year 2025. This will alleviate tradeoffs in the medium term, but there might be challenges in the short term.
Therefore, for the time being, other than the overlap with 155mm artillery shells that can be managed, providing Israel the munitions and the air defense capacity it requires does not materially hamper efforts to arm Ukraine and Taiwan. Any suggestions otherwise do not withstand scrutiny.
*Ryan Brobst is a senior research analyst for the Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Bradley Bowman serves as CMPP’s senior director. For more analysis from the authors and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Brad on X @Brad_L_Bowman. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

America Needs a Decisive Israeli Victory ...That means destroying Hezbollah and striking Iran. Anything less is a major strategic defeat for Israel and the U.S
Dr. Raphael BenLevi/The Tablet/October 25/2023
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/america-needs-decisive-israeli-victory
The outcome of the Gaza war will determine who dominates the Middle East in America’s great power competition with China and Russia. A decisive Israeli victory will pave the way for a strengthened pro-American alliance of the Jewish state and the Gulf Arab monarchies. Anything less will spell the loss of American influence in this key region. For America to prevail, Israel’s victory must be overwhelmingly decisive, impressive if not shocking, and leave the region permanently changed.
On October 7, Israel suffered a devastating and unprecedented attack, resulting in a catastrophic loss of civilian life. Israel’s image as a strong country, as a reliable military power, and as an intelligence leader, have endured an equally shocking blow—one with far-reaching and unavoidable consequences. The eyes of the entire region, friends and foes alike, are now on Israel to see what its response will be, and the nature of that response will determine their approach to the Jewish state for years to come. Will Israel prove itself to be a powerhouse that was momentarily caught with its guard down, or a country too hesitant and lacking in determination to survive in the jungle that is the Middle East.
It’s not only Israel’s image which has been badly damaged by the shocking intelligence and operational failures of October 7. Allies and friends of America, no less than its enemies, are waiting to see what the United States will do now that its closest partner in the region has been brutally attacked and humiliated. America is being tested no less than Israel; the outcome will determine whether regional states will ally with America or with China and Russia. In other words, the Gaza war will determine whether the American-led order in the Middle East is still sustainable, or rather a relic of a historical period whose time has passed.
Since the end of World War II, the American-led order has rested, fundamentally, on the credibility of the claim that the United States will use its power to underwrite the security of its formal treaty allies in Western Europe and East Asia and its informal allies in the Middle East. And even though Israel has never and does not seek American forces to fight on its behalf, nor does it seek formal security guarantees from the U.S., the credibility of American security commitments around the world is currently on the line.
In the Middle East, the Saudis are already flirting with China as an alternative superpower with strategic influence. If the U.S. fails to support Israel and instead tries to restrain it, why should Saudi Arabia, a country that enjoys far less support among the American people or in Congress than Israel does, expect any significant U.S. assistance in a future confrontation with Iran and its proxies?
The power equation of the current conflict in Gaza is therefore the same for both Israel and the United States: Israel needs a decisive victory, and the U.S. needs a decisive Israeli victory. But what does decisive mean? Israel is currently deep in the red. In order to rehabilitate itself, Israel’s response must go well beyond merely responding to the Hamas attack. It must demonstrate its power to eliminate its foes and ensure the physical security of its people by creating new realities on the ground that will resonate throughout the region.
The Gaza war will determine whether the American-led order in the Middle East is still sustainable, or rather a relic of a historical period whose time has passed.
The strategic concept by which Israel has related to Gaza since Hamas took over the Strip in 2007 and began waging war against Israel has obviously failed. The total destruction of the Hamas regime in Gaza is obviously necessary. And make no mistake, achieving any version of this goal will come at a devastating cost to the Gazan population.
Contrary to often well-meaning protests in the West, there is no easy line between Hamas and the population of Gaza. In reality, Hamas was elected by Gazans in 2006; if elections were held today, it would win again by even larger margins. The death and destruction that is about to be unleashed on Gaza is necessary to defeat the regime, and only Hamas and its Gazan supporters are to blame.
But if Israel’s response is limited to simply devastating Hamas and the territory in which it has firmly implanted itself, the stain of the successful surprise attack will continue to haunt us. The whole world saw the extent of Israel’s vulnerability on October 7. The governments and peoples of the region who hate us will be eager to repeat the large-scale atrocities they have been witnessing on television and social media for weeks—this time, on an even greater scale.
If Israel has learned anything from the events of the past two weeks, it must be that it is absolutely unacceptable to allow a terror-state that calls for your destruction to establish itself on your border. Period. The idea that the monster at the door can be endlessly deterred through occasional skirmishing and superior weaponry has been tried and found sorely wanting. Israel must therefore take this moment to fundamentally change the situation in which it is held hostage by not one but two genocidal terror states, Hamas and Hezbollah—the sole purpose for whose existence is to destroy Israel.
Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah is inevitable. This Iranian proxy has been preparing itself to commit mass murder inside our country since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, and in a more sophisticated way since the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Its vast missile arsenal has been built for one reason only, and that is to kill thousands or tens of thousands of Israelis. It waits only for the right moment.
What Hamas was able to do last week is mild compared to what Hezbollah has been preparing to do since 2006. The question is not whether this conflict happens. It is simply whether we will allow Hezbollah to initiate the conflict on its terms and on its timeline, or if we will make the decision that this current war will not end without the destruction of the Hezbollah threat, on Israel’s terms and on Israel’s timeline.
But make no mistake, our fight is finally not only with Hamas or Hezbollah. It is with Iran. The Persians play chess, and in the regional power game, Hamas is a pawn, Hezbollah is a rook, and Iran is queen. Iran is the regional actor calling the shots, and Iran is the actor who must finish this war having suffered a clear strategic loss to its regional position and assets. Otherwise, Iran and its patrons and allies win, and the U.S. and Israel lose.
The strategic goal of the Islamic Republic is to establish itself as the dominant power from Tehran to Tel Aviv, and from Mashhad to Mecca; to establish the “Shiite crescent” and ultimately to wrest the holy cities of Islam from Saudi-Sunni control. Israel has been the central force standing in the way of this vision, and Israel’s very existence has been the target of Iran’s genocidal ambitions since the 1979 revolution.
In the broader regional context, an Iranian-dominated Middle East means a Russian-and-Chinese-dominated Middle East. Iran has had complex relations with both Russia and China for many years. However, in the past few years, complexity has given way to clarity. Despite Chinese and Russian hesitations over Iran’s Islamist worldview, both countries have strengthened their strategic ties with the Islamic Republic. A win for Tehran in the Middle East is therefore a win for Moscow and Beijing on the global chess board.
It is therefore a strategic imperative for both Washington and Jerusalem that the Gaza war ends with a blow to Iran’s positions. Hezbollah is the Iranian front line, but the IRGC forces in Syria and Iraq are the most obvious direct targets. An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, so long planned for, should be on the table as soon as Hezbollah has been neutralized. Devastating Hamas and Hezbollah and exacting a major price from Iran for the behavior of its proxies will come at a tremendous cost to Israel, but an even greater cost to its enemies. It is the only sufficient end to this war that can turn around what is currently a strategic disaster that threatens both America and Israel.
*Dr. Raphael BenLevi is a fellow at the Misgav Institute for Zionist Strategy in Jerusalem and a reserve officer in the IDF intelligence branch.

Why Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas for good is unrealistic
Mohamed Chebaro/Arab News/October 25, 2023
Suddenly, the Israel-Gaza war is center stage again. But what has changed? We all know that this war has been simmering for decades, exploding intermittently, as is the case in Gaza today and in the West Bank over the past few months. In the wider context, there are also the intermittent skirmishes with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the periodic Israeli attacks on Iranian and pro-Iranian groups stationed in the broken, post-revolution Syria. Not to forget the so-called shadow wars fought between Iran and Israel everywhere in the world, including on Iranian soil in the form of deniable assassinations or sabotage-related operations targeting Iran’s nuclear program, or on the high seas, where Israeli and Iranian maritime assets become entangled in tit-for-tat attacks — often deniable of course.
So, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Hamas militants may have committed their biggest mistake, I am not sure what he meant. Maybe he forgot that his country has occupied Palestinian lands, fragmented their territories, built illegal settlements and given carte blanche to ultrareligious Jews, allowing them to harass Palestinians and desecrate their religious sites.
Hamas’ resistance is not new, nor are its motives, and many say that Netanyahu has long been an enabler of the group, letting it rule Gaza to encourage further Palestinian division and to give the impression that the Palestinians lacked the leadership and unity to strike a peace deal with Israel. Hamas has been involved in killing and maiming Israelis through a string of suicide bombing campaigns since the mid-1990s. And Netanyahu’s successive Likud governments have led military reprisals that inflicted equally painful damage, if often disproportionately against the Palestinians. However, all that sucked the oxygen out of the peace process, which neither Netanyahu nor Hamas never believed in anyway.
Deploying ruthless force and setting aims like denying Hamas a future base in Gaza are driven by rage and anger.
Deploying ruthless force and setting aims like denying Hamas a future base in Gaza are driven by rage and anger. They reflect the desperation on the part of Israel to “win,” or to “do or die,” in a conflict that has dotted the last 75 years with insecurity, wars and suffering for all parties. Many in the Middle East have come to call it the “forever war.”
The outpouring of support by Western leaders and their vows to stand by Israel in its “darkest hour” after losing more than 1,400 of its citizens in a daring Hamas incursion, along with the capture of some 200 civilian and military hostages, was understandable. But this should not justify stating the necessity of Tel Aviv “winning,” as expressed by the UK prime minister and others. The “Israel must win” slogan, repeated by many in the past two weeks, clearly demonstrates a poor grasp of the problem at hand. A failure to contain the Israeli revenge drive — or, as they say, to reset their army’s strategic supremacy — could engulf the region in several fires of asymmetric warfare that will lead to the further loss of life and harm to civilians not only in Palestine, but across the volatile Middle East.
It is no secret that US President Joe Biden, during his visit to Israel last week, sought to contain the conflict, although he did that while pledging total support to Israel and the urgent dispatch to the region of two naval battle groups. Washington has tried to dissuade the Israelis from pursuing a scorched-earth policy against Hamas in Gaza, with Biden’s intensified diplomatic efforts with Arab leaders, such as those in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, a clear example of that.
Fearing a humanitarian catastrophe, the US has managed to pressure Israel to allow some aid in through Egypt and it has been working around the clock diplomatically to prevent a further fanning of the fire beyond the Occupied Territories to neighboring Lebanon, where Iranian proxy Hezbollah has been exchanging fire across the border with Israel, and further afield. For example, the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen have launched several missiles and drones in Israel’s direction, only for them to be intercepted by US ships in the Red Sea.
Biden’s cautiousness should not go unheeded by Israel. Nor should his remarks that, while Israelis might feel rage, they should not be consumed by it, as that could lead to them making mistakes. He alluded to the US’ own mistakes in the wake of 9/11. I could also say that “win” is a term that should not be used in a region where conflicts are interminable, complex, multilayered, laced with state and nonstate actors, and made more intricate by a weaponized religious zeal that often renders reason redundant.
Also, it is important to know that the fight between Israel and Hamas does not resemble the war on terror against Al-Qaeda two decades ago, nor is it similar to the international coalition to fight Daesh in Iraq and Syria from 2014. In both these instances, the militants were a kind of franchised foreign fighter, waging international campaigns of terror despite having no connection to the local population or a cause similar to the Palestinians’ fight for a state. Hamas militants, like it or hate it, are part of the social fabric of Gaza and are fighting for a cause that is shared by many Palestinians.
It is very dangerous to aspire to remove an organization that is so deeply entrenched in the social fabric
In the past, it was possible to prevail over Al-Qaeda and pursue and kill its leaders after weeding them out from Afghanistan. In the case of Daesh, that was possible too. Even Israel’s invasion to dislodge the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon in 1982 could not have yielded fruit if it were not for the Syrian regime continuing the job of the Israelis for its own geostrategic interests. It suffocated what was left of the PLO on Lebanese soil, only for Hezbollah, a client of Iran and Syria, to emerge as a key militant nonstate actor that continued its cross-border posturing long after the Israeli troops’ withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000.
This is why efforts should be focused on de-escalation and giving civilians access to basic humanitarian supplies not as a charity but as a right. Meanwhile, mediators and foreign powers must use all the influence they possess to try to secure the release of the civilian hostages. This is the first step toward trying to prevent an all-out, hasty and surely costly invasion, in terms of both civilian and military casualties on both sides.
The notion of winning by destroying Hamas for good is very unrealistic. Its advocates have not grasped what the history of similar conflicts has taught us. It is very dangerous to aspire to remove an organization that is so deeply entrenched in the social fabric and which receives help from a strong state actor like Iran. Tehran has long used asymmetric warfare to achieve its goals and has projected its power by meddling in the affairs of various countries, from Iraq to Lebanon and from Palestine to Yemen and Syria, weakening their central state organs to the benefit of militant groups.
The world after the Russian invasion of Ukraine is divided and the war in Gaza, if it stretches beyond the borders of Israel and Palestine, could increase the splintering, potentially destroying what is left of multilateralism and the key tenets of peace and stability.
**Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.

Putting the Hamas Massacre, and Hamas Denials, in Context
Matthew Levitt, Delaney Soliday/The Washington Institute/October 25/2023
The group’s own documentation of atrocities belies its claims that it did not target civilians.
Hamas leaders are beginning to understand the implications of executing one of the worst acts of international terrorism on record. This is why they now deny that their operatives attacked civilians in southern Israel on October 7. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, for example, rejected such accusations, stating, “We have nothing to apologize for.” This is a far cry from the bloodcurdling speech by another Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on the day of the attacks, when he crowed about the group’s “dazzling triumph” and described it as the “ultimate jihad” that would end in “victory or martyrdom.”
Mashal is desperately attempting damage control as the world comes to terms with Hamas brutality. The assault on Israeli civilian communities is an indelible stain, permanently branding the group as baby killers, not freedom fighters. Unfortunately for Mashal, Hamas itself produced some of the most damning evidence of its atrocities, including documents found on the bodies of attackers instructing them to kill and kidnap civilians, footage from the GoPro cameras they wore to document their carnage, and videos and photos posted on the group’s Telegram channels during the attacks.
The Hamas Attack in Context
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after viewing evidence of the attackers’ brutality, stated that it “brings to mind the worst of ISIS.” The secretary was painfully blunt in describing the attack: “Babies slaughtered. Bodies desecrated. Young people burned alive. Women raped. Parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.” The dead include citizens of at least thirty-five countries. Hamas kidnapped over 200 people from some twenty-two countries, including children as young as ten months old. On October 23, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) updated the number of hostages in Gaza from 203 to 222 but have not released information on the additional nineteen hostages’ nationalities. Hamas claims the number is closer to 250.
By any measure, the attack is one of the worst acts of international terrorism on record. Hamas operatives, aided by small numbers of terrorists from other groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, murdered some 1,400 people in Israel and wounded over 4,200. Regardless of Hamas’s framing, the number killed on October 7 is similar to the number who died when al-Qaeda crashed United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center’s south tower two decades ago: 1,385 of the nearly 3,000 deaths caused on 9/11, according to the Global Terrorism Database.
Very few terrorist attacks have killed that many people, other than the April 1994 attack by Hutu extremists in Rwanda, who killed 1,200 Tutsi civilians seeking shelter in a church outside Kigali, and the Islamic State’s June 2014 massacre of an estimated 1,700 unarmed Iraqi Shia military personnel fleeing Camp Speicher after the group seized control of Tikrit.
The Hamas attack is also unusual in the number of hostages taken. In this regard, Hamas joins the Taliban, which in January 2018 seized 160 hostages during its siege of the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan; Boko Haram, which in April 2014 kidnapped 276 girls from a secondary school in the village of Chibok, Nigeria; Chechen terrorists, who in September 2004 took 1,200 hostages, most of them children, in the Beslan school siege in North Ossetia; and the Lord’s Resistance Army, which in October 1996 kidnapped 139 students at a Catholic boarding school in Aboke, Uganda.
The Hamas attack was also devastating for the United States: at least thirty-two Americans were killed and at least ten are missing (Hamas released two Americans on October 20). Not since 1979, when Iranians seized sixty-six Americans, have so many U.S. citizens been taken hostage in a single incident. And not since Hezbollah al-Hejaz (aka Saudi Hezbollah) bombed the Khobar Towers in 1996—an operation that killed nineteen and wounded 372—have so many Americans died in a single attack on foreign soil. The FBI’s extraterritorial squad will now be opening a staggering number of international terrorism cases related to the Hamas attack.
Hamas’s Self-Indictment
As the depravity of the attack became clear, Hamas began to feel the pressure of comparisons to the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other notorious terrorist groups. Speaking a few days after the assault, Hamas deputy secretary-general Saleh al-Arouri insisted his group did not target civilians and claimed kidnapped Israelis were taken by random Palestinians who followed Hamas into Israel: “The truth is that our mujahideen do not target civilians...It is inconceivable that they would perpetrate the kind of crimes mentioned by the occupation, like rape, killing children, or killing civilians.”
But all these things they did, and Hamas has provided some of the most damning evidence. When asked about the massacre at the Tribe of Nova music festival, a Hamas spokesman described documentation of the event as a “fake story.” But these denials fall flat given images Hamas posted on its Telegram channels as the attack was unfolding, footage from its operatives’ GoPro body cameras and phones, and the detailed instructions they carried directing them to attack civilians.
Hamas used Telegram to amplify the attack’s impact (largely because it is banned on most other mainstream platforms), posting videos from the perpetrators and glorifying their acts. In one clip, a Hamas operative points his phone at the body of a dead Israeli whose blood is running down the sidewalk and says, “Time for photographs.” On October 7 alone, the official Telegram channels of Hamas and its Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades released 110 and 50 items, respectively, of textual, pictorial, and video propaganda highlighting the attacks.
Additional GoPro footage recovered by first responders documents terrorists preparing to launch an RPG into a civilian home, shooting out the tires of an ambulance, and killing a woman taking shelter in her living room. One video documented a Hamas terrorist gunning down a civilian running for safety, shooting the man in the back of the head and then firing twice more once his body hit the pavement. Footage reviewed after the massacre shows two Hamas members moving a body from the street into a nearby vehicle, rifling through the victim’s belongings, and taking what appears to be a cell phone from the scene. Hamas used stolen phones to hijack victims’ social media and WhatsApp accounts, from which it live-streamed attacks, issued threats to families, and called for further acts of violence.
Documents found on the bodies of dead Hamas attackers include detailed intelligence reports on targeted civilian communities and operational instructions. These documents underscore that the attack was no rogue operation and that Hamas planned from the outset to target civilians. For example, one document marked “top secret,” which was found on Hamas operatives who attacked Kibbutz Kfar Saad, included clear instructions to “kill as many people as possible” and “capture hostages.” The document specifically instructs the two Hamas combat units attacking the kibbutz to target elementary schools and a youth center. The plan called for holding hostages in the kibbutz dining hall and preparing to bring some of them back to Gaza. In a video interview released by the IDF, one captured fighter revealed that “whoever brings a hostage back [to Gaza] gets $10,000 and an apartment." The IDF also released Hamas “abduction manuals” that instructed militants how to target, capture, and subdue hostages.
Hamas cannot whitewash the fact that its operational plan explicitly called for killing as many civilians as possible, kidnapping many more, and forcibly taking them to Gaza. By massacring civilians and taking hostages, Hamas all but guaranteed that Israeli forces would take the fight to Gaza, where the group frequently uses the citizenry as shields. President Biden was right: “Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination...Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people. They use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.”
The group’s efforts at damage control speak volumes. Hamas sees that it is being criticized for its barbarity, so it is lying in an attempt to pin the blame elsewhere. But many countries around the world—not least those whose citizens were killed, injured, or kidnapped—may forever see the group in a new, more dangerous, light.
*Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Reinhard Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute. Delaney Soliday is a research assistant in the Reinhard Program.

Qatar’s Relations with Washington and Israel Are Being Tested
Simon Henderson/The Washington Institute/October 25/2023
The Gulf state is using its close relationship with Hamas to help secure the release of Gaza hostages, but these same relations could wind up damaging its political and military ties with the United States.
On October 22, Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented on the release of two American hostages seized in the October 7 Hamas assault on Israel, telling NBC News, “I again want to thank the government of Qatar for playing a very important role in getting them out.” Two more hostages were released a day later. Commenting on the negotiations, a senior Qatari official told a German newspaper, “The release took place within a framework that confirms the positive intention to release the hostages. We are optimistic that the hostages, especially the civilians, will be released very soon.” Yet Israel’s official statement on the matter made no mention of Qatar—unsurprising given Doha’s close ties with Hamas, its initial claim that Israel was “solely responsible” for the current conflict, and the fact that more than two hundred Israeli and foreign hostages are still being held.
Qatar’s role has prompted public furor in the United States as well, with many observers asking why Washington is so close to the Gulf state. Doha simultaneously hosts a major U.S. air base and Hamas’s leadership and bureaucracy; it also maintains ties with Iran and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Yet its relationships with Hamas and the Taliban have sometimes been encouraged and praised by U.S. administrations for varying policy reasons. Critics also tend to forget the recent history of close Qatari relations with Israel—less public these days but almost certainly still functioning (e.g., one journalist identified Israeli government executive jets making flights to and from Doha in late September). U.S. and Israeli officials have repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to find an alternative intermediary to replace Doha in dealing with the Gaza Strip; the current crisis may lead them to try again.
Qatar’s Balancing Act with Israel, Gaza, Iran, and the Gulf
The earliest public evidence of Doha’s ties with Israel emerged after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995, with Qatari information minister Ahmed al-Aziz al-Kuwari attending his Jerusalem funeral wearing full Arab dress. Rabin’s successor, Shimon Peres, visited Doha in 1996, and an Israeli “trade office”—functionally a de facto embassy—was set up there soon after. Despite regional tensions, this office remained open until 2008, when Israel carried out its Operation Cast Lead in Gaza; plans to establish a reciprocal office near Tel Aviv never came to fruition. Today, Israelis are still able to visit Qatar using their native passports, and Israel’s Foreign Ministry has a Qatar desk officer.
These relations have been balanced with Qatari assistance to the Palestinians. Doha has favored Gaza over the West Bank in this regard, providing the Strip with funding for power needs, public salaries, new apartment buildings, and schools. The main Qatari envoy organizing these projects has been construction magnate Mohammed al-Emadi. Interviewed by the author in 2018, he denied that Qatari government funds went to Hamas, explaining how he regularly flew to Jordan before driving to Gaza via Jerusalem, where he stayed in a hotel favored by religious Jews.
One of Doha’s main motivations for ties with Israel has been the perception that they will help Qatar influence the United States via its Jewish community. The government’s ties with Hamas have domestic drivers as well—Arab Qataris sympathize with the Palestinians in general, and many share the strict adherence to Islam represented in the Muslim Brotherhood ideology that Hamas purportedly follows. (Though the government has been smart about enabling non-Muslims to easily obtain alcohol there.)
With Iran, Doha’s posture has been complicated by geography and hydrocarbons. A solitary peninsula that sticks out into the Persian Gulf, Qatar has a small citizenry of around 300,000 but is blessed with huge reserves of natural gas, the third-largest in the world after Russia and Iran. Its massive offshore North Field is contiguous with Iran’s less-developed South Pars field, however, creating a “two straws in one milkshake” situation that essentially compels Doha to maintain good relations with Tehran.
Relations with other Gulf neighbors have been more fraught. For instance, Bahrain still resents that the site of its historical capital is inaccessible in northern Qatar—and that its modest hydrocarbon reserves are dwarfed by Doha’s. For their part, Qatari officials often complain about where neighbors have positioned existing or planned nuclear power reactors, likely for symbolic reasons as much as actual contamination fears. The United Arab Emirates has placed its four reactors well away from Abu Dhabi but quite close to Doha; similarly, Saudi Arabia’s tentative plans for a Chinese civil reactor would place it on the border with Qatar.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt imposed a complete trade and diplomatic embargo against Qatar, alleging that Doha was supporting terrorism and issuing a long list of demands for ending the rift. Yet the dispute ended abruptly for no clear reason in early 2021, with Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman lifting the embargo even though none of the demands had been met.
Does Washington Have Alternatives to Qatar?
Over the years Doha has played its “resource-rich but vulnerable” hand cannily, if controversially. In the late 1990s, it built the giant al-Udeid Air Base even though the facilities far exceeded its military needs at the time. When the Saudis barred the United States from using Prince Sultan Air Base for operations against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2003, Qatar made al-Udeid available. The U.S. Air Force and allied contingents have since used it as their main Gulf base, even establishing a crucial operations center there that controls all U.S. air activity in an area stretching from Iraq to Afghanistan. Next door, the UAE has allowed U.S. forces to operate from al-Dhafra Air Base, but that facility’s operational restrictions reportedly make it unattractive compared with al-Udeid.
Returning to a Saudi basing alternative today seems like a nonstarter given the fraught historical experience of U.S. forces in the kingdom. Meanwhile, the UAE has damaged its credentials with Washington by surreptitiously allowing China to build an intelligence base there. And Bahrain already hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet—asking the Sunni-ruled nation to do more could prove problematic given the presumably widespread sympathy for Iran among its majority Shia population.
Doha’s sponsorship of the Al Jazeera television network has also frequently exasperated Washington. Its Arabic channel in particular is heavily pro-Islamist and anti-American—sentiments that have had deadly practical consequences for U.S. forces on the ground. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, for example, Al Jazeera journalists in Iraq appeared to conspire with militants ambushing U.S. forces, in part to get better pictures. At the time, American diplomatic anger toward Doha did not have a visible impact on the network’s practices.
More recently, Washington has been grateful for Qatar’s major role in helping refugees leave Afghanistan when the Taliban took over in 2021; a core group of Afghan-focused U.S. diplomats now operates out of the U.S. embassy in Doha. Yet now that the Hamas war has brought longstanding concerns to the fore again, the United States may seek to pressure Qatar by threatening to withdraw military assets or actually reducing its military and diplomatic presence.
Conclusion
The United States and Israel have similar but not necessarily identical priorities in the Gaza crisis. Both want to free more hostages, but Washington is keen to prevent the conflict from widening to Lebanon and Iran, while Israel is more focused on reestablishing deterrence against Hamas after the shocking surprise attack. Finding an alternative to Qatar’s willing diplomatic channel with Hamas seems improbable.
Yet Washington can certainly make Doha more aware of how deeply disgusted the White House and most Americans are about the group’s horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Doha views the United States as its most important ally, and its previous deafness to U.S. concerns was most evident during the reign of former emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. The country is now led by his son Tamim, who has built Qatar’s reputation as a world-class player in the energy sector, sports world, and other fields. Emir Tamim now faces his toughest test—disassociating Doha from Hamas. Otherwise, he faces the prospect of significant downgrades to his country’s most crucial bilateral relationship.
*Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute.