Israel update 22.1.26

PHASE 2 OF GAZA CEASEFIRE DEAL

President Trump’s oversight structure is divided into several layers:

1. The Board of Peace (The Umbrella Body)

Mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 2803, this is the top-level body intended to oversee postwar management until the end of 2027.

Members: Includes leaders from the U.S., Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, the UAE, Canada, and Argentina.

2. The Two Executive Boards

Founding Executive Board: Focuses on the “big picture” agenda, determining which global conflicts the Board of Peace should tackle next.

Gaza Executive Board: The primary decision-making body for Gaza. It oversees specific portfolios like reconstruction, investment attraction, and governance capacity-building.

Israel has strongly opposed the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar on these boards, but the U.S. views them as essential for pressuring Hamas.

3. National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG)

A committee of Palestinian technocrats responsible for day-to-day affairs (health, education, etc.).

4. International Stabilization Force (ISF)

A multinational force expected to support stabilization and disarmament efforts.

Limitation: the ISF is not expected to engage in “kinetic activity” (active combat) to forcibly seize weapons from Hamas, which remains a point of contention.

Explanatory article here

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At the Board of Peace unveiling ceremony in Davos today Thursday, President Donald Trump said Hamas will “have to give up their weapons, and if they don’t, it’s going to be the end of them.” Report here

The Board of Peace is expected to present Hamas with an ultimatum demanding that it agrees to disarm. The ultimatum will include an explicit requirement for Hamas to hand over all types of weapons in its possession. Hamas will be given a short period of time to respond. If Hamas agrees to disarm, the assessment is that this process would take 3-5 months.Without full disarmament, there will be no progress in Gaza’s reconstruction and the international community will not transfer funds for that purpose. This is a fundamental principle agreed upon by all parties, including Arab states. If this scenario does not materialize, according to officials, there is also agreement among the international bodies that Israel would receive authorization to disarm Hamas by force.  Report here

GAZA

The IDF is operating daily in Gaza against Hamas ceasefire violations. Reserve officers from the Jerusalem Brigade, summing up their sixth combat deployment since Oct. 7, said they operated along the Yellow Line in northern Gaza, firing small arms, artillery or other fire at suspected targets and terrorists who approached the Yellow Line almost every day. They also continued to locate and destroy Hamas tunnels and weapons caches. Report here

Last weekend the parents of Ran Gvili, the last hostage whose remains are still held in Gaza, said that the Trump administration was “rushing to rebuild Gaza without forcing Hamas to uphold its part of the deal”. All the hostages should have been returned before advancing to Stage 2. Report here

Israeli PM Netanyahu said on Monday that no Turkish or Qatari soldiers would be present in Gaza. He added that Israel is still awaiting the return of slain hostage Ran Gvili’s remains, as stipulated in the first stage of the ceasefire agreement. The second stage of the agreement “means one simple thing: Hamas will be disarmed, and Gaza will be demilitarized.” Report here

Israeli security fears: Senior Israeli security officials have noted the expanding footprint in Gaza of Turkey and Qatar, two powerful states tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. Further, the vast majority of the 15 members of the new Palestinian governing body for Gaza (NCAG) are affiliated with the PLO, with a small number identified as having ties to Hamas.
IDF officials have repeatedly stressed that Hamas became a terrorist monster by Oct. 7 largely due to hundreds of millions of dollars in Qatari cash that Israel allowed into Gaza in the years preceding the attack. “For every kg. of cement that built the Qatari neighbourhood in Khan Yunis about a decade ago, three kg. of concrete went into Hamas’s terror tunnels”.
“This simply must not happen again,” they said. “In the end, the money will be diverted to strengthening Hamas, even if it initially serves civilian purposes. That will help preserve Hamas’s de facto rule in Gaza.”
Moreover, the 800 aid trucks entering Gaza daily generate tens of millions of shekels for Hamas due to the taxation it imposes. This supports salary increases for tens of thousands of Hamas operatives and officials, a return to rocket production, and planning for future Oct. 7-style attacks. Report here

Hamas welcomed the administration committee’s (NCAG) creation, viewing the body as a cosmetic cover that will take responsibility for supplying Gaza’s civilian needs while leaving its security activity and its civil apparatus untouched. In effect, Hamas is seeking to entrench a Hizbullah-style model in Gaza, remaining the dominant force alongside a weak formal government.Report here

Israel’s defence establishment believes that Hamas is increasingly motivated to rebuild and recover, encouraged in part by President Trump’s plan for Gaza..
Hamas, like Hizbullah, is expected to stall for time and delay giving up its weapons. Hamas’s thinking has been shaped in no small part by Washington’s decision to include both Turkey and Qatar in the post-war management of Gaza. Their inclusion on the Executive Board could eventually “undermine the IDF’s achievements in the war,” the security sources warned.  Report here

Israel’s Security Cabinet decided Sunday not to open the Rafah Crossing, despite a request from the U.S. At the same time, a senior Israeli official said that including Turkish and Qatari representatives on the Gaza Executive Board – the council that would oversee Gaza’s reconstruction – was not part of the original understanding between Israel and the U.S. Report here

Three Hamas sources told Asharq Al-Awsat (Arabic international news source) that several prominent political and military leaders who survived the war are preparing for a “safe exit” from Gaza under the second phase of the ceasefire agreement. One source said the departure would be voluntary and carried out with full coordination with the Hamas leadership abroad. Another source noted that other leaders, particularly military figures, categorically reject leaving Gaza under any circumstances.Report here

 THE US

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned six Gaza-based organizations that claim to provide medical care to Palestinian civilians but in fact support the military wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. OFAC is also targeting the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, an organization that is clandestinely controlled by Hamas and has been a key backer of several so-called flotillas attempting to access Gaza. These groups hide their affiliation to Hamas in order to raise funds from overseas donors, thereby diverting donations to enable Hamas’s terrorism. Press Release here

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA)

 Former PA intelligence chief Tawfik Tirawi, 77, on Tuesday publicly accused the Palestinian leadership of allowing systemic corruption to flourish within its institutions, in an open letter addressed to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

The PA’s critics claim that it lines the pockets of elites with tax proceeds and international aid, while funnelling much of what is left to a massive security apparatus trained to crack down on dissent at the behest of its patrons. Report here

WEST BANK STATS

The IDF said Monday that terror attacks and the number of Israelis killed by West Bank Palestinians declined sharply in 2025. There were 504 Palestinian attacks in 2024 which killed 41 Israelis, while in 2025 there were 57 attacks leading to 20 Israeli deaths. Rock-throwing and firebomb attacks fell from 1,230 in 2024 to 1,015 in 2025.
240 Palestinians were killed by IDF fire in 2025, down from 500 in 2024. 96% of those killed were terrorists.Report here

DEFENCE

Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defence Systems announced the sale of Trophy active protection systems for tanks to four NATO countries: the Czech Republic, Netherlands, Croatia and Lithuania, for $385 million. The system has already been installed on U.S. Army Abrams tanks and is in service on German Army Leopard 2 tanks. Report here (paywall)

The U.S. military has selected the HERO-90 loitering munition system developed by the Israeli company UVision to give soldiers on the ground the ability to strike armoured and fortified targets with precision. The technology allows for autonomous target detection and tracking while ensuring human oversight in firing decisions. Report here

DOCTORS

Data from the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration shows that 541 physicians moved to Israel in 2025 and since 2024, more than 1,000 physicians have made aliyah and entered the workforce. Hundreds of doctors are expected to make aliyah in 2026.Report here

MEDICAL

Doctors at Rabin Medical Centre have begun treating blood cancer patients with Israel’s first fully “homegrown” CAR-T therapy, marking a major medical breakthrough. The treatment was developed and manufactured at the Samueli Integrative Cancer Pioneering Institute, which recently completed in-house production of genetically engineered CAR-T cells for multiple myeloma patients whose disease had stopped responding to standard therapies. (TY Michael) Report here

GAS

Chevron Mediterranean Limited and the owners of Israel’s Leviathan natural gas reservoir have approved the expansion of the offshore production platform.
The project, to come online toward the end of the decade, will add three wells, subsea infrastructure, and enhanced treatment facilities to increase deliveries to 21 billion cubic meters per year. The field provides essential energy to millions of people in Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Report here

COMMENT & OPINION

Gaza Editorials

Washington Post Editorial: While the White House said President Trump’s Gaza peace plan has entered its second phase, on the ground in Gaza, the situation remains fraught. The biggest obstacle is Hamas’s refusal to lay down its arms, which means Israel refuses to commit to withdrawing from Gaza. And why should they? What happened on Oct. 7, 2023, can never be allowed to happen again.
In the three months since the ceasefire took effect, Hamas has emerged from its tunnels weakened but still able to assert dominance in Gaza due to the absence of any alternative security force. The terrorists’ refusal to disarm has prevented the creation of an international force to provide security. No country is willing to commit ground troops if it means battling Hamas. Privately, they’d all prefer Israel do that dirty work.
One proposal floated by Hamas is to decommission or “freeze” some weapons in depots overseen by Arab countries. Another is offering a “buy back” programme to pay militants to voluntarily surrender their light firearms. Neither would amount to real disarmament. The reconstruction of Gaza cannot start until Hamas no longer poses a threat. Editorial here (paywall)

Wall St Journal Editorial: “We’ve talked to a number of Hamas people, and we’re hearing throughout the Arab world that people don’t want to be at war anymore,” a senior U.S. official told reporters on Wednesday. This is a case of what Israelis call the “Oct. 6 mind-set” – the pattern of thought common before the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7 exposed it as dangerous naivete. If Hamas simply wanted “a better economic future for their families,” it wouldn’t have sent death squads to slaughter 1,200 Israeli men, women and children.
The U.S. officials spoke only of taking Hamas’s “heavy weaponry,” leaving out what would happen to the AK-47s on which Hamas’s power and ability to murder dissenting Gazans rests. The U.S. is engaging and coordinating with Hamas on all matters of Gaza’s current and future governance, which legitimizes the terrorists. What happened to the point in Mr. Trump’s plan that said “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form”?
Perhaps Hamas will hand over some weapons, but the Israelis expect to have to do the job themselves once U.S. officials realize no one else will. The smart move would be for the Board of Peace to impose a deadline on Hamas to disarm and let Jerusalem enforce it. Editorial here (paywall)

The “obsessive” nature of global media coverage regarding Israel.

Samuel J. Hyde:  Israel occupies an outsized and morally charged place in the media’s imagination, particularly in the West. There is a systemic, disproportionate fascination, bordering on obsession, with covering Israel as though it were the gravitational centre of world affairs…
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict occupies a peculiar and disproportionate place in the West’s political imagination, unmatched by conflicts that are deadlier or more brutal. So it becomes over-seen, over-examined, intensely dissected, and uniquely moralized.
Israel’s wars are routinely framed as the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” as though the entire story were a localized struggle between two neighbouring peoples, one strong and one weak, one powerful and one victimized. This framing is tidy, emotionally resonant, and yet profoundly misleading.
Most of Israel’s wars have not been fought against Palestinians but against Egyptians and Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese, Iraqis and, increasingly, Iranians. The rockets fired at Israel during the war did not come only from Gaza. They came from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and from Iran itself. A vast and intricate regional struggle is reduced to Israelis vs. Palestinians. Israel is cast as the dominant actor, the controlling force, and ultimately the villain. The wider forces shaping the conflict vanish altogether.
This is how media distortion always works – by shrinking and enlarging the facts selectively. A small story is made to seem enormous. The result is a morality play in which a villainous country called Israel comes to embody the worst sins of the modern age. Israel ceases to be a state acting within a volatile region and becomes instead a metaphor for everything the imagination fears about power and injustice. If the coverage of Israel feels uniquely charged, moralized, and obsessive, it is because it is. Article here

The Board of Peace

Jonathan Schanzer: The inclusion representatives from of Qatar and Turkey on the Gaza Executive Board,(the operational arm of the Board of Peace)  both long-standing and continued patrons of Hamas, raises an uncomfortable question: Will they continue to back their terrorist client in Gaza, or will they work with the Trump administration to end Hamas rule in Gaza? Trump should demand that Qatar and Turkey banish Hamas from their territories and end all support, as a condition for their continued inclusion on the Board. Article here

Gaza War

Prof Gil Troy: Too many critics preach at Israel about “morality.” Such long-distance hectoring is arrogant, especially coming from critics who have never been shot at…morality includes the obligation to defend one’s people and state against brutal enemies…But if we are forced to choose between winning this war, which ultimately freed 160 hostages and saved Israel, or being popular, we’d rather be alive than well-liked – especially because we kept asking “what’s the alternative…how would you fight this multi-front war against genocidal jihadists cowering behind civilians?” Article here

Fiyaz Mughal: To My Fellow British Muslims: Listen to the survivors of the Hamas Oct 7 Attacks.

Since Oct. 7, I have been struck by how little space there has been within British Muslim public discourse for grappling seriously with the horror unleashed by Hamas on that day. During a visit to Israel, I was with a survivor of the Nova music festival. After listening to his account, I needed several hours to process the trauma he had recalled – trauma that clearly still lives within him.
The impact of Oct. 7 is felt everywhere in Israel. The country has fundamentally changed – more vigilant, more resolute, and more willing to act decisively against perceived threats. This collective shift is not born of ideology, but of shock and a deep desire that Israel will never again be caught out militarily.
What makes us human is our ability to care about suffering wherever it occurs. Listening to Israeli victims of Oct. 7, acknowledging their trauma, and allowing ourselves to feel their pain is not betrayal. It is moral integrity. If this message reaches even one British Muslim and invites reflection, then it has served a purpose. Jews, Muslims, and Christians were attacked by the barbarity of Hamas. To bear witness to that truth is not political. It is human. Article here

Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland

Lt.-Col. (ret.) Jonathan Conricus: Somalia was a classic failed state due to a dysfunctional local government, corruption, and foreign meddling.
Neighbouring Somaliland was a stark contrast. No terror organizations or extremist Islam were tolerated; free and steady elections were held; the government actually worked to improve the infrastructure and conditions on the ground for its citizens; and most people had basic rights and liberties.
Yet the international community refused to award Somaliland freedom and independence, and forced it to remain tethered to the failing Somalia.
Thus, Israeli recognition was both sensible and long overdue. Article here