Israel update 20/5/26

GAZA

 

The lawyers of a Palestinian Gazan man have made a formal submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor demanding that 14 Hamas leaders be investigated for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. To date, the ICC has not charged any Hamas leader with crimes committed against their own civilians. This submission, therefore, marks the first such filing by a Palestinian against Hamas. Report here

 

Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the commander of Hamas forces in Gaza, was killed on Friday in an Israeli military strike in Gaza City… In an interview with Al Jazeera, Haddad said he had taken part in planning the Oct. 7 attack. He held hostages in northern Gaza, including surveillance soldiers Liri Albag, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev, Naama Levy and Agam Berger.
Former hostage Emily Damari, who had also been held by Haddad, said, “This is a very, very important closure for many people. He murdered my friends and many other innocent people. He planned my abduction and also held me in Hamas tunnels. With God’s help, we will get to every last one of them.” Report here

 

 

The Board of Peace report submitted to the UN Security Council on progress in implementing the Trump ceasefire agreement, places the blame for blocking Gaza reconstruction on “Hamas’ refusal to disarm which prevents the transition to civilian reconstruction in Gaza.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said, “This report exposes what has long been clear to everyone: Hamas has lied and continues to lie every step of the way….Those who continued to echo Hamas propaganda instead of fighting it strengthened a murderous terrorist organization that is holding Gaza and its residents hostage.” Report here

 

Nearly 80% of Gazans are interested in emigrating from Gaza, according to a recent survey…Prospects for reconstruction and long-term change remain remote as Hamas refuses to disarm.Report here

THE WAR AGAINST HEZBOLLAH

 

Despite the “ceasefire”, Capt. Maoz Israel Rakanti, 24, was killed in an explosive drone strike in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

Staff-Sgt. Negev Dagan, 20, was killed by Hizbullah mortar fire during combat in southern Lebanon on Friday.

Maj. (res.) Itamar Sapir, 27 was killed in combat with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.

Reports herehere& here

 

A roadside bomb hit four IDF soldiers overnight Saturday/Sunday in south Lebanon, leaving one of them in serious condition.

Col. Meir Biderman, was severely injured, and one reserve officer was moderately injured by an explosive drone impact in southern Lebanon on Wednesday. An additional non-commissioned officer was lightly injured during the same incident.

Report hereReport here 

FLOTILLA

 

The  day before the Israeli navy began seizing boats participating in the latest Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla on Monday, Israeli Jewish and Arab activists led by Israeli-Arab  Yoseph Haddad, launched their own smaller, counter flotilla sending  a message that Israelis could respond in kind and would safeguard their territorial sovereignty.

The Sumud flotilla is linked to the Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a proscribed terror group in Israel with ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Report hereVideo here

 

Footnote: All 50 boats were intercepted and their 428 participants detained in Israel. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that no aid had been found on the boats. Video here

 

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY (PA)

 

During a speech at the Eighth General Conference of Fatah, PA President Abbas admitted that tax funds being withheld by Israel would be used to fund Palestinian terrorists. The comments confirm that the PA has not ended its pay-for-slay policy.
Palestinian Media Watch director Itamar Marcus said that Abbas’s admission must have “significant international implications.”
To justify continued funding of the PA, Western countries have been denying PMW findings that pay-for-slay continues, and have accepted Abbas’s lies that it stopped funding terrorists in September 2025,” he explained.
“Israel will be wise if it uses this (admission) to put pressure on the Western countries to stop funding PA terror and to withhold their recognition of a Palestinian state, which France and others conditioned on the PA’s promise to end pay-for-slay.”
$156 million was paid out to terrorists and their families in 2025, according to a U.S. State Department report published in April 2026.Report here

THE UN

 

In April, UN Watch sparked outrage after it revealed that numerous democracies — Canada, Australia, France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, and Finland — joined in the consensus nomination  of Iran to a key UN body that is now meeting to address women’s rights and terrorism prevention. The United States was the only member to object.

Two weeks later, the UN did it again: they elected Iran a Vice-President of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference. But this time, the UK, France, Germany and Australia objected:

UK, France & Germany “We would like to put on record our concerns that Iran, a country found to be in non-compliance with its nuclear obligations, is to be elected to the body tasked with ensuring the effective functioning of this review conference.”

Australia “Australia does not support Iran for a leadership role at this review conference. Iran’s non-compliance with its obligations and ongoing threat to the countries of its region make it clear that it is unfit for such a position.”

The US representative ““Let me be clear. The United States does not agree that Iran is a leader on issues of nuclear non-proliferation. We are deeply shocked that this body has chosen to allow Iran to assume this position.” Report here

 

 

IRAN

 

While the Trump administration is ramping up its economic warfare against Iran, a parallel system continues to move cash beyond Washington’s reach. For more than a decade, Iran has been cut off from much of the global banking system. Iran has adapted by relying on exchange houses, brokers and informal networks across the Middle East, mostly in Gulf Arab states. Billions of dollars in Iran-linked funds move through the Arab Gulf states each year. As long as these networks operate openly in the Gulf, Washington’s economic wall around Iran will remain incomplete. Report here

INNOVATION

 

When buildings are heavily damaged or collapsed, such as during recent ballistic missile attacks, first responders and rescue teams require immediate, precise structural data to safely navigate ruins and extract trapped civilians. Researchers from the Technion and Haifa University have developed a groundbreaking AI-driven system specifically designed to overcome critical structural data bottlenecks during search and rescue operations, particularly following structural collapses or military strikes. Report here

 

Like every Israeli,  Professor Uri Lesmes’ life changed after Oct 7. He wanted to contribute to the war effort and contacted friends in the IDF, offering his expertise in nutrition and food engineering. Lesmes became a consultant tasked with improving meals for frontline soldiers. The outcome was a range of sterilised pouch meals that could withstand battlefield conditions while providing comfort and nutrition. Menu options included shawarma, mujaddara – a Middle Eastern rice and lentil dish – and tofu-based meals. Report here

DEFENCE

 

Elbit Systems subsidiary Elbit America has won a contract from the US Army to develop and test a Binocular Night Observation Device. The contract will enable Elbit America to compete for the next phase of the US Army programme, which is valued at up to $450.6m Report here

ARCHAEOLOGY

A mysterious and impressive ancient tunnel, hewn through the rock over a length of approximately 50 metres, was unexpectedly discovered near the Ramat Rachel neighbourhood in Jerusalem. The extraordinary discovery was uncovered during archaeological excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority prior to the construction of a new neighbourhood.  Report here .  Short video

 

SPORT

 

Israel’s Eylon Elazar & Kevin Cuzmiciov achieved their first ever gold in the Challenge category on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour in China.Report here

 

Alona Tal Franco won a gold medal in the final of the clubs, Challenge Cup in Portugal. Videos here & here

SEASONAL

 

A kosher food influencer sampled 14 different cakes at 7 Jerusalem cafes and bakeries.Article here

 

Milk and nutrition. Article here

 

COMMENT & OPINION

 

Israel, Lebanon & Hezbullah

 

Herb Keinon: The U.S. State Department’s Friday announcement – following another round of negotiations between Israel and Lebanon – extending the ceasefire between the two countries is something of a fiction. It is not the government of Lebanon, but Hizbullah, that decided to wage war against Israel, first on October 8, 2023, and then again on March 2, 2026. A ceasefire with Lebanon doesn’t mean much, since their armies aren’t fighting one another.
It is Hizbullah that is firing drones at Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, there to prevent it from once again setting up a base of operations directly on Israel’s border, with the expressed intent of launching an Oct. 7-style invasion of the Galilee.
The ceasefire is by no means a harmless fiction because it ties Israel’s hands. The current restrictions on Israel’s use of force in Lebanon effectively take Beirut out of the game and establish a maximum price Hizbullah knows it can tolerate. Israel is not using its full force and sending fighter planes to strike Hizbullah strongholds in Beirut or in the Bekaa Valley because of the understandings surrounding the ceasefire.
Negotiations detached from the realities on the ground do not end terrorism. Rather, they create space for the terrorists to adapt, regroup, and strike again. Article here

 

 

Tuvia Book: I feel like I am in an Orwellian novel. President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the mainstream media are hawking the ceasefire. Yet, the reality could not be more different. Nineteen-year-old young men are fighting and dying in this very hot and unfinished war against the terrorist Hezbollah entity, which is hell-bent on completing the slaughter of October 7th.

It is not only IDF soldiers being targeted, it’s also Israeli civilians who are still here in the sparsely inhabited north, where entire cities and kibbutzim are ghost towns. Whatever our government and the American administration are trying to sell the world, the reality is that the north of Israel has been left to its own fate for almost two and a half years, and that we are in a war of attrition with one of the Iranian regime’s terror proxy forces.

When I forced my way back into the IDF as a combat medic in October 2023, despite being very much aged out, I never dreamed I would still be serving today, more than two and a half years later! So, why do reservists like me keep on returning to fight this long war? We recognize that this is the right thing to do. We acknowledge that these are the values we were raised on. We feel it is an honor to serve our people and our country. We cannot say, “Let someone else do it,” if we did, nothing would get done. We realize that an existential threat hovers over our very existence. We understand that this is yet another war of no choice. We know that there are tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox draft evaders. We are fighting for our families. We are fighting for hearth and home. We are fighting for our people. We are fighting for our country. We are fighting for our beliefs and values. We are fighting for Western civilization. We are fighting for the forces of light and right.

We need to be able to conclusively defeat our foes and not have endless “ceasefires” that are not worth the paper they are written on. Like Nazi Germany, the Iranian terror regime and its proxies must be defeated for the sake of the future of the world.Article here

 

 

Palestinian Authority

 

Khaled Abu Toameh:By defining Israel’s establishment as a “catastrophe,” the Palestinian leadership is effectively telling its people that the very existence of Israel is illegitimate. This is not the language of reconciliation, coexistence, or compromise. It is the language of rejectionism and extremism. If, every year, one side of the conflict commemorated the creation of the other side’s country as a disaster that must be reversed, would anyone seriously believe that such rhetoric prepares people for peace and compromise?
The annual Nakba commemorations reinforce the narrative that Jews are foreign colonialists with no legitimate historical or national connection to the land. This narrative erases nearly 4,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem, Hebron, Judea, Safed, Tiberias, and elsewhere in Israel. This explains why peace efforts have repeatedly failed over the past decades. While some Westerners continue to speak about a “two-state solution,” Palestinian leaders continue to educate their people that all of Israel is “Occupied Palestine.” Article here

 

 

Settler Violence

 

 

Herb Keinon: The EU’s decision to sanction settlement organizations under the guise of “settler violence” was praised by the Belgian Foreign Minister who said, “Extremism and violence carry consequences.” If only that were true. If it were true, then Belgium, along with Britain, France, Canada, and Australia, would not have rewarded the Palestinians with statehood recognition in the fall of 2025, less than two years after Palestinians in Gaza carried out mass acts of unspeakable barbarism.
No, this measure is about drawing a distorted equivalence between Israelis and Hamas. Let’s be clear: there are acts of violence by Jews against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, and they are deplorable. They should be unequivocally condemned and fully prosecuted under the law. But acknowledging the existence of violent incidents is not the same thing as accepting the grotesquely inflated narrative that has grown around it.
Between 2019 and 2022 there were 24,808 incidents of Palestinian stone-throwing and firebomb attacks against Jews – not including shootings, stabbings, or explosive devices. Yet it is “settler violence” that has become the focus of international sanctions campaigns and diplomatic outrage. Why? Because this is about delegitimization…When the EU adopts a narrative that inflates fringe violence into a defining characteristic of the more than 900,000 Jews living beyond the Green Line, including Jerusalem, while downplaying decades of Palestinian terrorism, it ceases to be an honest broker, loses its ability to be taken seriously in Israel, and instead becomes a political actor advancing a predetermined outcome. Article here

 

 

Josh Hasten: reservist Yoni Tokayer said he was on patrol near Jerusalem last fall when a report came in that a group of Arabs was approaching three teenage Jewish shepherds who were out with their flocks. Tokayer rushed to the scene, found that the threat was real, got out of his jeep and fired a warning shot into the air, successfully dispersing the mob. Seconds later, a car with Palestinian Authority license plates arrived and an Arab instructed three children to get out of the car and lie on the ground, pretending they had been injured. An accomplice began filming the “wounded” children, and a short time later, the video was posted to Arab media channels on Telegram with accusations of an attack by settlers, he said.

Naomi Linder Kahn, director of Regavim’s International Division, told JNS that her NGO had studied 6,000 reports of alleged settler violence published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Regavim found that 98% of OCHA’s reported incidents either did not involve violence, did not involve settlers, or did not take place in Judea and Samaria. Events classified as settler violence by OCHA included Jewish visits to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, schoolchildren visiting ancient archaeological sites such as Shiloh and Herodion, and car accidents involving Jews and Arabs. Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council of local authorities in Judea and Samaria, told JNS that police and Israel Security Agency statistics from the past 12 months show 6,000 attacks by Palestinian Arabs targeting Jews, compared to 90 incidents of serious violence by Jews. Article here