Israel Update 18.7.24

Since October 8, Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along Israel’s northern border on a near-daily basis. Other Iran-aligned groups in the region, including Shiite armed factions in Syria and Iraq and Yemen’s Houthis, have also been firing on Israel since shortly after Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre.

HEZBOLLAH’S WAR AGAINST ISRAEL

Among the daily attacks:

Four IDF women soldiers were wounded, one seriously, during a rocket attack Saturday on Kiryat Shmona. The barrage from Lebanon included some 15 rockets, most of which were shot down by Iron Dome. Several rocket impacts caused damage. Rockets were also fired from Lebanon at the Zar’it, Margaliot, and Maayan Baruch areas.Report here

Some 20 rockets were launched from Lebanon at Israel late Monday, with the majority of them intercepted. Some of the rockets landed in the largely evacuated city of Kiryat Shmona, including one that hit a shopping mall. Report here

On Wednesday it was reported that least 85 rockets and missiles were fired overnight at communities in the Western Galilee, some of which had not been evacuated of residents. In Kiryat Shmona, at least seven rockets scored direct hits inside the city and some 10 projectiles were intercepted over Mt. Meron. Although rockets there landed mostly in open fields and woodlands, they did cause fires.

“We are seeing the new routine where the situation of the north, now mostly empty of its residents, is ignored. Israel’s north is part of the country and it is time to launch an offensive,” according to a statement from Fighting for the North, the organization representing evacuated Kiryat Shmona families. “We will not be sitting ducks.” Report here

ISRAEL HELPS GAZANS

Israel will replace the U.S. military’s offshore pier for delivering aid to Gaza with a dedicated facility at Israel’s Ashdod port.Report here

Israel will expand its economic aid to Gaza through the local private sector, planning extensive repairs to the sanitation system in cities with displaced civilians. The repairs will include sewage pipes and purification plants damaged during the war. Power lines will also be restored.
Israeli security officials said that sewage discharged into the sea “is a health hazard for us as well.” Report here

GAZA WAR

The IDF is working to target and eliminate the terrorists involved in the Oct 7 massacre who are still operating within Gaza.In recent days, the IDF has struck dozens of these terrorists. The Shin Bet and the IDF have mapped out the Hamas terrorists involved in the massacre. This mapping was made possible through the analysis of images, videos, and publications uploaded by Hamas members and Gaza civilians on the day of the massacre and at the start of the war, which showed the terrorists’ faces. Report here

Israel conducted an airstrike in southern Gaza on Saturday, targeting Muhammad Deif, the leader of the Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing), one of the architects of the Oct. 7 attack and the second most senior Hamas figure in Gaza after Yahya Sinwar. Deif also commanded the Hamas forces guarding the Israeli captives. Rafah Salameh, the leader of Hamas forces in Khan Yunis, was also targeted in the attack. Israeli officials said Deif was targeted while he was inside a fenced Hamas-run compound that was not used as a camp for displaced people.

Salameh was killed; however Deif’s death remains unconfirmed at the time of writing.
Report here (paywall)Report here

Multiple IDF sources projected continued confidence that Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif is dead. The explosion at the target house was of tremendous strength, and no survivors were seen exiting. Report here

The Wall Street Journal published satellite images showing an area in Gaza before and after the airstrike which targeted Deif. Note that none of the concrete/mortar buildings surrounding the site collapsed. This is because the bombs used were bunker busters that didn’t explode until they were underground, to reach Deif if he was in underground tunnels or chambers.

Despite widely repeated Hamas claims that 90 people were killed, many of them civilians, in Saturday’s attack the IDF, which has shown reporters video footage of the attack, believes the death toll was significantly lower, that there were dozens of Hamas gunmen at the site, and that it is highly unlikely there were many civilian fatalities.

Report here Report here

Senior IDF officers are sounding increasingly upbeat about the progress of the war – and the process of dismantling Hamas’s military capabilities. Gradually and inexorably, the tunnel threat is being reduced. While Hamas retains the capacity not only to target communities close to the border but also to fire at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, it is no longer easily able to smuggle in weaponry or components, and its rocket-making factories are broadly demolished.
While its current capacities have been massively reduced, Hamas’s ideology, goals and core purpose remain the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. Article here

IDF Surgeon-General Brig.-Gen. Prof. Elon Glassberg, who last week ended a four-year term encompassing a war and a pandemic, said his doctors and paramedics who served inside the combat zone in Gaza are measured by one metric – CFR (case fatality rate) – the percentage of wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefield whom they failed to save.
In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the CFR stood at 15%. In the Gaza War, the CFR was down to 6.5%.

This was achieved by deploying more medical professionals in the field, streamlining the evacuation process and the development of both powdered plasma and ‘whole blood’ . Glassberg is off to Washington to work with American military medicine experts on sharing the IDF’s experience from this war.Article here

Col. Nissim Hazan has been in Gaza since Oct. 7, beginning with two days fighting in Kibbutz Be’eri. He said
“We were a society that normalizes terrorism, that preferred temporary peace and was addicted to peace. We knew – but we had compartmentalized it – that there were bad people on the other side of the fence, and we preferred that they stay there. We didn’t think they could reach us. We’ve learned that those who say they want to destroy us will really do it in the end.” Article here (paywall)

TERRORIST ATTACK IN ISRAEL

Four IDF soldiers were wounded, two severely, in a car-ramming attack near Ramle in central Israel on Sunday. Border Police reservists who were nearby eliminated the assailant, a Palestinian resident of eastern Jerusalem. The wounded soldiers were in the area as part of rehabilitation treatment they receive following their service in the Gaza Strip.Report here Report here (paywall)

THE UK

Amid calls from some UK politicians to ban arms sales to Israel, the British armed forces have procured new Israeli Smart Shooter rifle add-ons which are said to improve precision on the battlefield. British Army officer Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp wrote: “I have fired with this sight in Israel and it is an outstanding system which will give our troops an edge including against attack drones.” He added: “The UK does not supply weapons to Israel, only technical components, and UK security is the net beneficiary of this trade as well as our close intelligence relationship.” Report here

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told visiting British Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Jerusalem on Monday that there is “no more just war than the one Israel is fighting now.” Herzog added that the country is fighting not only against Hamas, but also against Iran, “an empire of evil that wants to undermine the stability of the world and is rushing to the bomb [and] undermining international trade. We are a nation seeking peace, and I believe that we must find peace with our neighbours.” Report here

MOROCCO

23 young Moroccans recently toured Israel with Sharaka an organization that brings delegations of young professionals from around the Middle East to the country to learn more about the Jewish state and connect with its residents on a “person-to-person” level.

The Moroccan delegation has visited the Knesset, Yad Vashem, the Old City of Jerusalem, Al Aqsa Mosque and other cultural and historical sites around Jerusalem. They went south to visit the site of the Nova festival massacre and kibbutzim decimated by Hamas’s October 7 terror attack, then headed to Tel Aviv. Report here

Morocco has become a large customer for Israel’s defence industry. Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) sold the Barak MX air defence system to Morocco in 2022 and in 2023 IAI completed delivery of three Heron 1 UAVs to Morocco.
Reportedly the Moroccan army operates Elbit Systems’ Hermes 900 and Hermes 450 UAVs in the Western Sahara. Foreign media linked Morocco to an agreement worth $1 billion over five years with an unnamed third party, announced on July 9 by IAI.

The IDF’s new U.S.-made landing craft, the INS Komemiyut, stopped in Morocco for refuelling on its long journey from Pascagoula, Mississippi, to the naval base in Haifa. Article here

THE IDF

Maj. Ella Waweya, 34, has served in the army for 10 years. She hails from the Arab Israeli town of Kalansuwa, where all the citizens are Muslim Arabs. Her formal title is deputy spokesperson for the Arab world and head of the Arab communications department. The walls of her office are dotted with diplomas, certificates of merit, and family pictures, as well as beautiful Arabic calligraphy of the Quran, alongside a Druze flag, a cross, a small copy of the Zohar (Jewish mysticism book), and flags of participating Abraham Accords countries. Article here

THE ISRAELI-ARAB COMMUNITY

Over the past decade, the increased integration of the Arab population into the Israeli work force has been one of the growth engines of the local economy, according to a recent research study which shows that that the average annual income among Israeli Arabs has grown at a faster pace than among Haredi and non-religious populations in Israel, suggesting that socio-economic income gaps are narrowing. Growth is attributed to an increase in both the employment rate of Arab women and the wages of Arab women and men, as their level of education improved over the past decade. Report here

UNWRA

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has sent a letter to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini that lists 108 employees of the UN refugee agency for Palestinians whom Israel says are Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists, demanding that they immediately be fired.

The letter warned that Israel has more names to come and that it will provide the information to international UNWRA donors.

Israel has accused multiple UNRWA staffers of taking part in Hamas’s October 7 attack. The IDF has found a Hamas data centre located directly beneath UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, in addition to numerous findings indicating the use of the agency’s assets for terror purposes.Report here

The recent discovery that Hamas was using the headquarters of UNRWA in Gaza to recruit new members and to store rockets, explosives, and drones illustrates how the use of UN facilities is a key strategy of Hamas. The terrorist group has often been located in UN schools as well. It is reasonable to conclude that Hamas views UN facilities as part of its command and control of Gaza, using them openly and systematically.
The fact that the UN and UNRWA, in particular, have not condemned Hamas for this must raise questions about what the UN organizations know about the use of their facilities. There is no other armed group in the world that has systematically used UN facilities the way Hamas has done in Gaza. Hamas also uses hospitals in the same manner. Analysis here

TECHNOLOGY

U.S. officials said Monday they found a cellphone carried by Thomas Crooks, the Trump rally gunman, and sent it to the Pittsburgh FBI office, which did not have the technology to open it quickly. The phone was then sent to the FBI’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., where FBI agents used technology from Cellebrite, an Israeli digital intelligence company well known among law enforcement agencies for helping them access data on phones seized or recovered in criminal investigations, to get into the phone quickly.
Cellebrite’s technology was able to open it in less than 40 minutes. Report here (paywall)

WEST NILE FEVER

The number of patients diagnosed with West Nile virus has increased to 440, the Health Ministry reported on Monday. 32 people who were diagnosed with the virus have died since the outbreak began in June. The virus is primarily transmitted to humans through the bite of infected mosquitoes.Report here

SPORT

Israeli archers Roy Dror and Shamai Yamrom won gold at the European Youth Championships held in Romania. Roy, Niv Frenkel and Ori Berlad won bronze in the team event. Result here

COMMENT & OPINION

Hostages

Miriam Bash: In 2014, when 276 girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, Nigeria, by the Islamist militia group Boko Haram, a campaign for their return drew widespread international support.

The “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign included endorsements from prominent figures like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. In stark contrast, the Israeli hostages’ plight has not seen comparable global outrage. This is despite the hard work of hostages’ families, who fly across the world to fight for their loved ones’ freedom.

In some cases, the hostages have even faced negative attention — a phenomenon unheard of in past crises. Posters of the hostages have been torn down around the world, and some media personalities have questioned the legitimacy of reports from the October 7 attacks.

The fact that 120 hostages from 22 different countries were taken from Israel by terrorists and remain in Gaza until today demands urgent international action. This hostage crisis is not only an Israeli issue, but a global one.

So, world, where is your outrage? Why don’t you fight to bring your people home? Article here

Hezbollah’s War Against Israel’s North.

Kenneth Jacobson: Life for Israeli residents in the north has become intolerable, and about 80,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and have been living as internally displaced persons across Israel for many months. One would have thought that all this time the international community would have sharply condemned Hezbollah’s actions and worked to stop the ongoing attacks.

Rarely, however, was this the centre of attention, until more recently, when Israel indicated the situation was unacceptable and may have to be solved militarily. Suddenly, the world woke up, and the theme of preventing escalation became a primary focus.

What seemed to be tolerable to the international community – the displacement of nearly 100,000 Israelis – was now replaced by something that was deemed intolerable: a full-scale conflict.

Here, too, there were dual impacts of this approach: the failure to address the continued assaults by Hezbollah had brought the area to the brink of war; and the problem, ignored for many months, was turned on its head. It is now presented as a war that must be prevented in order for civilians on both sides to return to their homes. Which is to say, the world only started caring about displaced citizens when they weren’t just from Israel.

So Israel may inevitably be forced into what many might consider a “disproportionate response” in order to create deterrence which the international community failed to do. And then invariably will come international condemnation of Israel’s military actions as disproportionate. Article here

Gaza War

Ron Ben-Yishai: A report published Thursday in the Washington Post by David Ignatius claims that Hamas has agreed to relinquish its civilian governance of Gaza to Palestinian elements that are neither Hamas nor representatives of the Palestinian Authority.
Behind this concept lies Hamas’s longstanding intention to mimic Hizbullah’s operational model in Lebanon, allowing it to focus and invest all its resources on “resistance,” meaning war with Israel. As the strongest military force in Gaza, it will still dictate what happens behind the scenes, with civilian officials acting as its executors. This is how Hizbullah operates in Lebanon.
Alongside the civilian administration, there would be a security force funded and operated by the U.S. and Arab countries, made up not by Arab soldiers but by mercenaries hired by private security companies to safeguard humanitarian aid, oversee its distribution, prevent looting, and perform general policing and law enforcement tasks.Article here

Patrick Kingsley: Hamas’s Qassam Brigades hide under residential neighbourhoods, storing their weapons in tunnels – and in houses, mosques, sofas, even a child’s bedroom. They emerge from hiding in plainclothes, sometimes wearing sandals or tracksuits, before firing on Israeli troops, attaching mines to their vehicles, or firing rockets from launchers in civilian areas. They rig abandoned homes with explosives and tripwires, seeking to lure Israeli soldiers to enter the booby-trapped buildings.
Hamas’s decision to keep fighting has proven disastrous for the Palestinians of Gaza, as some 80% of its residents have been displaced. Israel says it has killed more than 14,000 Hamas fighters, since the start of the IDF operation in late October. Israeli officials say that Hamas’s tactics explain why Israel has been forced to strike so much civilian infrastructure. Article here (paywall)

Khaled Abu Toameh: More than nine months after the Israel-Hamas war began, many Palestinians are convinced that the “day after” in Gaza will be a return to the pre-Oct. 7 era, in which the Iran-backed terrorist group still has control. Today, Palestinians fall into two groups: those who hate Hamas but think that, under the current circumstances, it is impossible to remove it from power, and those who want Hamas to stay in power because they embrace it and its extremist ideology.

According to the latest poll, a vast majority of Palestinians (68%) said the terrorist group’s decision to launch war on Israel was “correct.” There is virtually little debate among the Palestinians about the “day after” in Gaza. This is due to the widespread Palestinian belief that Hamas will somehow maintain its hold on power in Gaza after the war. Article here

Professor Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and former head of the Palestinian desk at Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, was asked to explain the massive support for Hamas among the Palestinian population, especially following the widespread destruction in Gaza caused by Hamas’s war.
Michael highlighted a “sick psychological infrastructure, rotten to the core, [that] has been systematically built and nurtured by the PA and its leaders in local society – through education, media, payment to terrorists and their families, glorification of terrorism and terrorists, and systematic, ongoing indoctrination against Israel and Jews by cultivating the ethos of victim-refugees and armed resistance.”Article here

Andrew Garfield:War is unbelievably nasty and modern urban warfare against a ruthless enemy which wants you to kill as many of their civilians as possible, doubly so. Once civilian casualties started piling up, Israel’s determination to eliminate Hamas was never going to win it friends.
None of the Arab states who have established relations with the Jewish state have broken them off. The idea of a pan-Arab entity taking over Gaza once the war is over is not as fantastical as people think. The Arabs seeking peace with Israel are doing so not because Israel is weak but precisely because of Israel’s position as a formidable military and economic superpower. They need Israel to win.Article here

John Spencer: What the ICC/ICJ/UK get wrong about Israel

Lengthy but highly recommended article by the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. Article here