Israel Update 10.10.25

Chag Succot Sameach to all my readers.

Here is the link to last week’s Israel Update, featuring the “NO-AID FLOTILLA” Link here

THE TRUMP DEAL

 

Israel and Hamas agreed Wednesday to a deal that would (inter alia) release all Israeli hostages held in Gaza after two years of war. The breakthrough came less than a month after an Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials on Qatar, which led to new pressure on Hamas from leaders in the Muslim world.  Report here (paywall)

 

 

P.M. Netanyahu’s cabinet voted early Friday morning in favour of the Gaza ceasefire deal that will see hostages freed in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners and a halt to the fighting, despite vocal objections from the premier’s far-right coalition partners. The IDF will now withdraw to new lines inside the Gaza Strip, 72 hours after which Hamas will release the hostages. Report here

 

 

Last Friday, Hamas had said it was willing to release hostages and hand over Gaza. But Hamas used hedged language that some observers saw as problematic to clinching a final peace. While Arab mediators said Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’s top negotiator, and several other senior political officials support accepting the U.S. proposal despite significant reservations, they have limited sway over the group’s armed wing in Gaza.
Mediators said Hamas leader in Gaza Ezzedin al-Haddad is willing to give up rockets and other offensive weapons to Egypt and the UN for storage, but he wants to retain small arms such as assault rifles. Moreover, Hamas commanders inside Gaza say they won’t be able to enforce compliance with disarmament demands among fighters if they accept a deal that amounts to surrender.
Mediators warn that some Hamas fighters could defect to other Palestinian militant groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, leaving uncertainty over whether a deal with Hamas alone could halt the fighting.Report here (paywall)

Footnote:

Israel’s Health Ministry said that several weeks ago it contacted the Red Cross, requesting that hostages, who are thought to have been starved during their captivity, not be overfed before their return, as Hamas may do to try to hide their previously emaciated state. According to the ministry, after prolonged starvation, a sudden increase in food intake can lead to what is known as refeeding syndrome, which may cause neurological, respiratory, and cardiac complications. None of the hostages has been visited by Red Cross officials during their time held captive in Gaza.

The National Centre of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) is completing preparations to receive the bodies of the fallen hostages, as it has in previous cases, where it will confirm their identities. Report here

 

 

Oct 7 ANNIVERSARY

 

 

On the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, Israelis grappled with how to mark the date, which overlapped with the first day of Sukkot, when Jewish tradition requires festivity.

The Israeli government has postponed official remembrances until the day after the Simchat Torah holiday

 On Tuesday evening, thousands went to Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park for the October 7 memorial organized by Kumu (“Rise Up”), an initiative set up by families of victims and hostages as a counterpoint to the official state ceremony.

The event was livestreamed globally and screened simultaneously at Hostages Square. It opened with released hostage Agam Berger performing the theme from “Schindler’s List” on her violin. Between speeches from hostage relatives, bereaved families and released captives, well-known Israeli musicians performed on a stage that was a tableau of symbols: a burned-out car like those destroyed along the Gaza border, encircled by red crown anemones — the national flower and an emblem of remembrance — a bullet-riddled bomb shelter, and 48 suspended yellow chairs representing each hostage still in Gaza.  Full report here

 

         

GAZA WAR AGAINST HAMAS

 

 

Sgt. First Class (res.) Michael Mordechai Nachmani, 26, was killed in battle while fighting in the Gaza Strip yesterday, before the ceasefire came into effect. Report here

 

 

At 3 a.m. Saturday, Israel halted its offensive manoeuvres in Gaza City. Troops are permitted to return fire if threatened. Defence officials said the front-line presence of Israeli troops inside Gaza – especially around key Hamas strongholds – would help maintain leverage at the negotiating table. At the same time, the ceasefire allows Hamas units to regroup and reposition. Report here

 

 

On Wednesday, IDF forces killed several terrorists attempting to attack troops in Gaza City as ceasefire negotiations continued in Egypt.Report here

 

Last week the IDF uncovered a Hamas tunnel running underneath the Jordanian Hospital in the south of Gaza City. The tunnel is 1 1/2 km. long and includes a weapons manufacturing workshop. A second tunnel was found at the Hamad Hospital in northwest Gaza City. Report here

 

Some 20 armed Hamas operatives attempted to attack other Gazans last Friday morning in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the Khan Yunis area. Hossam al-Astal, who leads a group opposed to Hamas, said 11 Hamas operatives were killed and six were seriously wounded in Israeli drone strikes. The IDF released a video showing Hamas operatives dragging children with them, using them as human shields. The gunmen were killed minutes later, without harm to the children. Report here

HOUTHI ATTACKS CONTINUED.

 

Including:

A ballistic missile launched by the Houthis in Yemen at Israel early Sunday morning was intercepted. The missile set off sirens in central Israel, some southern West Bank settlements, and communities near the Dead Sea at around 5 a.m., sending hundreds of thousands of Israelis rushing to bomb shelters.Report here

 

Four explosive-laden drones launched by the Houthis in Yemen were shot down by Eilat within an hour on Tuesday afternoon. Report here

FORMER HOSTAGES UPDATE

 

Avigail Idan, aged 3 years old when abducted to Gaza on Oct 7 2023, (the youngest surviving former hostage) whose parents were murdered by Hamas, recently started school. Avigail and her two siblings have been adopted by their aunt & uncle Leron and Zoli Mor, who have 3 children of their own. Report here

 

 

Abducted to Gaza with her mother and freed after 50 days, Noga Weiss later learned that her father Ilan was murdered on Oct 7. Now aged 20, she serves as an IDF welfare NCO channelling her pain into helping others heal. Article here

CO-OPERATION

 

 

13 senior police officials from the New York area returned to the U.S. after an intensive week in Israel last month designed to increase their counterterrorism training and understanding of antisemitism. They also visited the Nova music festival site and several kibbutzim.(TY Michael O) Report here (paywall)

 

IRELAND

 

 

Ireland is reportedly set to soften planned sanctions on Israel. Some multinational corporations have warned against discouraging US investors or drawing retaliatory US sanctions on participating companies.  Mainly US-owned foreign multinationals employ around 11% of Irish workers and contribute most of the corporate tax that makes up almost a third of all Irish tax receipts.Report here

 

FLOTILLA POST-SCRIPT

 

 

Hamas documents discovered in Gaza show a direct link between the flotilla leaders and Hamas.
The PCPA (Palestinian Conference for Palestinians Abroad), established in 2018, operates de facto as Hamas’s embassies abroad, and is responsible for mobilizing actions against Israel on behalf of Hamas, including demonstrations and flotillas to Gaza. Israel designated the PCPA as a terrorist organization in 2021. Saif Abu Kashk, a PCPA operative in Spain, is the CEO of Cyber Neptune, a front company that owns dozens of the ships participating in the latest flotilla.Report here

Footnote:

Flotilla participant Greta Thunberg drew criticism Tuesday after sharing a picture of an emaciated Israeli hostage in a social media post about alleged mistreatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centres.

Political commentator Aviva Klompas posted: If you needed further proof that Greta Thunberg is a terrorist mouthpiece who has no clue what’s talking about – she posted this image meant to show Palestinian suffering – and instead shows one of the starved Israeli hostages – Evyatar David. Reports here& here (paywall)

COUNTER TERRORISM

 

 

The IDF and Israel Security Agency seized a large stockpile of weapons smuggled from Iran to terror operatives in the West Bank, the military announced on Wednesday. The weapons included 29 anti-personnel mines, four drones, including two explosive drones, 15 anti-tank rockets, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, three rocket launchers, 20 hand grenades, 53 pistols, seven assault rifles, nine machine guns, and 750 bullets. Report here

 

Israeli security forces uncovered 15 rockets in the Ramallah area of the West Bank last week, 8 of them armed with explosives. Forces also uncovered 18 explosive devices, firearms, and other munitions. Report here

 

 

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY DESTRUCTION THWARTED

 

 

 Israeli authorities last week prevented what they described as a deliberate attempt by the P.A. to damage a major archaeological site in Area C, where Israel has both administrative and security jurisdiction.
The operation targeted PA engineering crews who were preparing large-scale infrastructure work at the biblical city of Gibeon, one of the 13 priestly cities in the territory of the tribe of Benjamin and home to King Saul’s family,  where Joshua made a covenant with the Gibeonites and is the site of the famed battle in which “the sun stood still at Gibeon.” Report here

 

 

EUROVISION

 

 

Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker announced that if there is a boycott against Israel’s participation in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, set to be held in Vienna, then Austria’s national broadcaster ORF should not host Eurovision, the website Eurovision Fun reported on Wednesday.
The Eurovision Broadcasting Union, the body that runs the contest, recently announced that its general assembly will hold a vote in November on whether Israel can participate.
Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Iceland have announced they will not participate if Israel takes the stage.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz previously said that Germany would withdraw from the contest if Eurovision were to boycott Israel. Report here

 

 

COMMENT & OPINION

Trump Deal

Avi Issacharoff:  both sides can say they got what they wanted, both can claim “I won,” and neither got everything it demanded… Netanyahu’s government did succeed in securing what until recently would have seemed impossible: the release of all the living hostages and some of the bodies of murdered hostages without a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The IDF will continue to control roughly 53% of the Strip, including a substantial buffer intended to prevent Hamas terrorists from reaching the border. .. On the other hand, Hamas won a halt to the fighting and probably won international guarantees that Israel will find politically difficult to violate — namely a promise not to attack the Strip again while talks continue on the remaining stages of what has been called the Trump deal, a process that can be expected to last a long time. Hamas will also receive international assistance to the Strip and will be able to consolidate its hold on the territory, including its governing authority… The big question is what Israel will do if Hamas moves quickly to rebuild its military capabilities while a comprehensive agreement remains absent.

…as it stands, Hamas says it cannot now locate the bodies of nine of the dead hostages. That means nine missing persons whose burial places are unknown, nine families left without remains and with an immeasurable void in their lives. Israel must continue to press the mediators in the months ahead to make Hamas find those bodies; it can be assumed Hamas could do so, if not within 72 hours. The family of Hadar Goldin has been waiting for the return of his body for 11 years. Eight more families must not be made to endure the hell that family has lived through. Analysis here

 

 

Summer Said: How Israel’s Missile Strike on Hamas in Qatar Unlocked a Deal for Peace in Gaza.
U.S. and Arab mediators had worked fruitlessly for months to craft a deal to at least pause the fighting in Gaza and free more of the Israeli hostages. On Sep. 9, Israeli missiles slammed into an office in Qatar where Hamas’s top negotiators were meeting. The attack was a sobering reminder to Arab countries of the risk of regional escalation, focusing their minds on peace. Hamas leaders were now becoming a bigger risk for their Arab hosts. Article here (paywall)

 

 

Katy Balls: In February, President Trump demanded that if Hamas did not release “all of the hostages,” then “all bets are off, and let hell break out” – only to have Hamas release just three. While the peace plan announced at the White House has been in the works for some time, a breakthrough moment came last month after Israel launched a strike on Hamas in Qatar. Article here (paywall)

 

 

Brendan O’Neill:…where the exhausted civilians of Gaza really want a ceasefire, the privileged despisers of Israel who clog up our institutions here in the West want something quite different. They desire not peace, but destruction – the destruction of the Jewish State. They long not for the return of normalcy to Gaza but for the denormalisation of Israel. The shunning of it, the criminalisation of it, and at some point in the future, the deconstruction of it. In moving Israel-Gaza closer to a ceasefire, Trump has stolen that word from the faux-peace lobby and left them with the toughest of choices: either to fess up about their sick dream of Israel’s violent erasure or to shut up once and for all. Article here

 

 

A Gazan’s View

 

Moumen Al-Natour: Two masked Hamas gunmen came to the door of my Gaza City apartment in July and ordered me to report to al-Shifa Hospital for an interrogation. I had been active in the anti-Hamas protests that month.
As they do in most Gaza hospitals, Hamas maintains a hidden torture dungeon at al-Shifa. I am familiar with this because I have been arrested by Hamas on 20 occasions and tortured more than once.
I knew what complying with the gunmen meant: I would be lucky to leave only with broken bones.
During the war, the number of dissidents murdered by Hamas’s Arrow Unit enforcers has increased sharply, their bodies dumped in the street or delivered to the front door of their families.
A few weeks earlier, Hamas militants tortured local journalist Ahmed al-Masri for joining the protests, breaking his feet and shooting him in the legs. They stabbed activist Uday al-Rubaie to death and hurled his body from a tower.
I chose to take my chances by escaping the city, staying on the move in areas no longer held by Hamas.
My hope is that this war ends with the end of Hamas’s tyranny and the rebirth of Gaza as a place open to peace and prosperity. Article here (paywall)

 

 

Oct 7 Anniversary

 

Brendan O’Neill: For me, there are two anniversaries this week. There’s 7 October, two years since a 7,000-strong army of anti-Semites invaded Israel to wage a genocidal campaign of rape and terror against the Jews there. And there’s 8 October, which will mark two years since the young and educated of the West sang the praises of that fascist abomination….

As the German novelist Herta Müller said, even calling it (Oct 7) ‘terrorism’ feels woefully insufficient. It was a ‘total derailment from civilisation’, she says. There was an ‘archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age’. Article here

 

 

Charles Moore: The Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel was possibly the most terrible day of the 21st century so far. Its most obvious rival is the attacks on the U.S. on Sep. 11, 2001. I would say that there was something peculiarly low and disgusting about Oct. 7 – because it slaughtered whole families, because it also involved rape, because 200 people were kidnapped, some tortured, some murdered, some held (dead or alive) to this day, and because it specifically targeted Jews. And the great majority of those who committed the Oct. 7 atrocities returned to a heroes’ welcome.
Some might complain, “Why labor these points? We know how dreadful it was.” The trouble is, I don’t think we do. I think we have half-forgotten. This is because the deeds of that day have been deliberately effaced and, in a sly manner, excused. Even before Israel retaliated, numerous Hamas apologists attacked it for retaliation. Some claimed atrocity footage had been faked. Have you noticed how the use of the hostages as pawns in negotiation is now reported with complete neutrality, as if this were a perfectly acceptable tactic? Article here (paywall)

 

 

Further reading:

 

David Horovitz: Hamas has been reduced from a 24-battalion army to a guerrilla force primarily focused on survival. But its ideology is unchanged: destroy Israel and kill Jews at any cost. And it has galvanized ever-widening global backing for its cause from hate-filled antisemites and their useful idiot allies.
President Trump may have welcomed Hamas’s ostensible acceptance of his plan as evidence that the Islamic extremist group is “ready for a lasting PEACE.” But, in fact, Hamas is ready for nothing of the kind.
Neither are Qatar and Turkey – two Trump-allied nations taking central roles in mediating the current talks – remotely interested in Hamas’s demise. Turkish President Erdogan repeatedly brands Israel as a terrorist entity and lauds Hamas as its victim. Qatar relentlessly poisons minds worldwide courtesy of its Al Jazeera outlet.
Let nobody think this would spell the end of Hamas, active and widely supported in the West Bank, bent on eventual revival in Gaza, anticipating a major boost through the release of notorious terrorist murderers from all Palestinian factions, and still publicly revelling in its “glorious” Oct. 7 invasion. Article here

 

 

Nadav Shragai:It may well be that the deal Israel is preparing to sign with Hamas is unavoidable. But it is far from a “total victory.” Israel is to release from prison 250 terrorists convicted of multiple murders. Israel rightly sanctifies the lives of its hostages, but at the same time mortgages the lives of its citizens. More than 85% of terrorists released in past decades have returned to terrorism, to attack or kill Israelis again. We are releasing ticking time bombs.Article here

 

 

Amb. Michael Oren:President Trump’s peace plan did indeed promise to achieve all of Israel’s goals: the release of the hostages and the end of Hamas’s rule in Gaza. The president declared that Hamas had accepted the plan and was prepared for peace. He ordered the IDF to stop firing in Gaza City to facilitate the safe release of the hostages.
Once relieved of Israeli military pressure, Hamas will try to drag the U.S. into protracted negotiations and obtain approval to remain in Gaza and keep its “defensive weapons.” In short, in exchange for the release of the hostages, Hamas wants to win the war. Article here

 

 

Yonah Jeremy Bob:Now that Israel and Hamas are nearing the endgame, what will the next five to 20 years look like in Gaza from a strategic perspective? What danger will Hamas still present to Israel? Israel needs a security perimeter in Gaza for a long-term period to prevent the next Oct. 7 massacre, stationing soldiers to block any invasion attempt to reach civilian communities.
What about blocking Hamas from recovering? This is where IDF raids and surgical strikes come in against Hamas terrorists who attempt to rebuild the group’s power, in a way akin to how the IDF has been targeting Hizbullah on Israel’s northern border since the November 2024 ceasefire, striking Hizbullah targets a few times a week.  Article here