Israel Update 7.5.26

HEZBOLLAH

(The first report was published before yesterday’s Beirut strike)

The ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese government is significant, except that the war Israel is waging is against Hizbullah, with whom no ceasefire agreement was reached. Israel is deployed in a buffer zone 3 to 8 km. inside Lebanese territory, with freedom of action to operate and respond in southern Lebanon up to the Litani River.
The restrictions on Israeli operations north of the Litani prevent it from responding in Hezbollah’s core areas in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut or in the Beqaa Valley. This leaves the IDF in a position where it is unable to take real action that produces a meaningful change in reality. Report here

However…

Last night (Wednesday), Israel targeted Malek Ballout, the operations commander of Hezbollah’s special operations unit – the Radwan Force – in an airstrike in Beirut. Israeli leaders said Radwan Force operatives “were responsible for firing [rockets] at Israeli communities and harming IDF soldiers.” The IDF also said Wednesday it launched a wave of airstrikes on Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon after issuing evacuation warnings for 12 villages, mostly located north of the Litani River. Report here

Hezbollah’s fibre-optic FPV drones have recently emerged as a significant threat to Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Senior IDF officers say that, in response, restrictions imposed on Israel must be lifted, that the military should strike Hezbollah targets with greater force north of the Litani River and target the supply chain for FPV drones, as well as additional Hezbollah targets.  Report here

On Wednesday two IDF soldiers were wounded, one moderately and the other lightly, by Hezbollah explosive drone impacts. Also on Wednesday a soldier was seriously injured and three others lightly hurt by an explosive drone impact.  Reports here& here

The IDF has begun deploying drones equipped with nets to intercept explosive Hezbollah drones launched at IDF troops in Lebanon and northern Israel.
The Iron Drone Raider is an automated, AI-driven technology developed by Airobotics.  Report here (paywall)

A senior officer in the western sector of Israel’s new security zone in southern Lebanon, said, “We are here to prevent [Hezbollah] Radwan Force infiltrations into Galilee communities and to stop direct fire, primarily anti-tank missiles, at frontline towns.” He described the ceasefire imposed by President Trump as a “ceasefire under fire,” as Hezbollah and Israeli forces have continued to exchange fire. Report here

IRAN

Iran is taking advantage of the ceasefire with the U.S. to dig out its weapons, according to a U.S. official. The regime has stepped up efforts to excavate missiles and other munitions it hid underground or that were buried beneath rubble from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes. The U.S. believes the regime wants to quickly reconstitute its drone and missile capabilities so it could launch attacks across the Middle East if President Trump decides to resume military operations. Report here

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has constructed a sophisticated, transnational money laundering apparatus to circumvent U.S. sanctions and fund its proxies. By the end of 2025, blockchain analytics revealed that IRGC-controlled addresses accounted for 50% of Iran’s entire crypto ecosystem, receiving billions in illicit volume. Pakistan has emerged as the critical geographic and financial bridge for this deployment with the IRGC heavily leveraging established Pakistani money laundering syndicates. Report here

GAZA

The US-led Board of Peace tasked with overseeing the postwar management of Gaza does not intend to hold Israel to the terms of the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire if Hamas does not accept the international panel’s framework for the terror group’s disarmament. Report here

According to Nikolay Mladenov, director general of President Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza, talks in Cairo with a Hamas delegation in April produced preliminary understandings that Hamas is willing in principle to discuss partial, phased disarmament involving certain heavy weapons…But Hamas refuses to give up pistols, rifles, light machine guns, RPG launchers, and grenades. Israel says Hamas’s maximum offer on disarmament remains far from Israel’s minimum demands. Other parts of Trump’s plan are also stalled. The multinational stabilization force has not been established, and the funds needed to fund, equip and deploy it have not been secured. The Palestinian technocratic committee meant to manage Gaza is also not functioning.
Senior IDF officials say Israel must act with full force to disarm Hamas. The Oct. 2025 ceasefire left 43% of Gaza under Hamas control, and Hamas has used the situation to strengthen its rule. Report here

ISRAELI-ARAB COMMUNITY

The number of volunteers for National Service among the Israeli Arab population is gradually increasing. In 2022 their number stood at 3,319. There are currently 4,138 Israeli Arabs doing National Service.
Sammy Smooha, professor emeritus in sociology at the University of Haifa said “90% and perhaps more of the volunteers are Arab and Druze girls, and for them it’s a case of ‘women’s liberation.’ They open a bank account and a monthly sum is deposited in it. That creates a feeling of independence. They have a job.”
“They saw what it’s like to be a Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank. They understood that their situation in Israel is far better, that they are relatively protected here – they have employment, citizenship, they can vote for the Knesset.”
Somaya Bashir, 50, founded a nonprofit called We Have No Other Land that advocates for Jewish-Arab cooperation and promotes National Service in the county’s Arab community. One of her daughters is currently doing National Service. She says “….Contributing to the country in which you are a citizen reflects a self-perception that projects strength – it is the opposite of a feeling of inferiority. A citizen who contributes to the country sees himself as an equal.” Report here (paywall)

Footnote

National Service is an alternative path for Israeli citizens, who are exempted from mandatory military service in the IDF (for example Israeli Arabs) to serve their country through volunteer work in various civilian sectors.

ECONOMY

 Although Israel has been on an effective war footing for almost three years, the Bank of Israel still expects the economy to grow by 3.8% in 2026.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Israel’s economy will grow by 3.5% in 2026, compared to 2.3% for the U.S. and 1.3% for the EU.
Israel’s GDP is forecast to outperform all G7 countries in 2026.
The IMF forecasts a debt-to-GDP ratio for Israel of 69.8% in 2026, much lower than the G7’s rate of 123.7%.
Israel’s unemployment rate was 3.2% in March, below America’s 4.3% and the euro zone’s 6.2%. Report here

ENTREPRENEURS

Two Israeli universities rank among the world’s top 10 for the number of undergraduate alumni who founded startups that raised venture capital, according to the latest ranking released by Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s largest and most influential venture capital firms. The ranking places Tel Aviv University seventh, with about 865 alumni founders who have raised roughly $30 billion. The Technion ranks 10th, with about 783 alumni founders who have raised $23 billion. The data covers the past decade.Report here

MEDICAL RESEARCH

A research team led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute, Sheba Medical Centre and the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota has developed the first open digital atlas of a healthy human liver. Their research can help improve treatment for fatty liver disease. The lab was struck in the Iranian missile attack on the Weizmann Institute in June 2025, but the researchers were able to salvage samples and continue the work to completion. Report here

GERMANY

Israel will transfer jet fuel to Germany following a request from the German Energy Ministry.
Surplus production has been identified that can be exported.  Report here

FINLAND

Finland’s parliament recently rejected a citizens’ initiative calling for a ban on arms trade between Finland and Israel in a 140-20 vote. Report here

COMMENT & OPINION

Hizbullah

Yaakov Katz:
More than 6,000 rockets and drones have been fired into Israel in the two months since Hizbullah began its latest round of attacks on March 2. In the Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona there have been 180 rocket sirens and 87 drone alerts. That comes out to more than four sirens a day – every day. Yet, if you follow much of the international media coverage of Lebanon, you wouldn’t know any of this.
Instead, the stories run according to the familiar script: Israel is once again striking its northern neighbour. There is little mention of the relentless rocket fire, the daily drone incursions, or the inability of the Lebanese government to rein in Hizbullah. Israel is cast, almost exclusively, as the aggressor.
This is the same storyline we saw 2 1/2 years ago when after the initial shock of the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion faded, coverage of the war in Gaza shifted almost entirely to the suffering of Palestinians, making it seem like there was only one side to the war and as if Israel’s actions existed in a vacuum, disconnected from the massacre that had triggered the conflict.
In Lebanon, the fact that Hizbullah – a designated terrorist organization – is actively firing thousands of rockets and drones at Israeli communities and Israel is acting in self-defence like any country that wishes to survive would do, does not fit into that narrative, and so it is sidelined.
The way the media cover wars is by reducing them to a scoreboard – how many people have been killed on each side. The result creates a distorted moral equivalence, where a sovereign state defending its citizens is seen in the same way as a terrorist organization whose stated goal is destruction. But Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7. Hizbullah opened a second front from Lebanon. Israel did not choose these wars; it was forced into them.
Do people expect Israel to simply evacuate again an entire swathe of the country? Should it tolerate a situation where communities live under constant threat of rockets and drones? Should it simply concede the territory? We know that this would only embolden Hizbullah and send a dangerous message across the region – that sustained attacks on civilians provide results. Moral clarity is needed when media ignores who initiated the war and why it continues. Article here

Iran

J T Young: Every Iranian action underscores why this regime cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons…Iran has made it clear with each action why it wants nuclear weapons, what it would do with nuclear weapons, and on whom it would turn them…Their continued intention to pursue nuclear weapons brought on the current conflict.
Iran has used the weapons at its disposal, mostly ballistic missiles and drones, with little concern about civilian casualties… These have been fired in enormous quantities at virtually every target in the region… Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is an economic version of its military tactics. It is an indiscriminate use of an economic weapon against any and all parties within reach. It inflicts pain on those residing half a world away from the conflict. It is simply another version of terrorism.
If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it will use them the same way it has used the weapons it currently has at hand – indiscriminately. Just as it has had no compunction on inflicting slaughter now, it would have none inflicting slaughter on anyone who would oppose its goals later. Article here

Danny Zaken: published reports claiming that Netanyahu had “dragged” Trump and the U.S. into war, partly by arguing that the regime could be brought down, are plainly wrong. The conversations I held indicate that some senior Trump administration officials, and Trump himself, were the ones who assessed that the regime could be toppled, while the Israeli team presented a far more cautious assessment on this issue.

After the June 2025 operation, at the end of which the U.S. delivered the final blow by bombing the underground nuclear facility at Fordow, the Iranian regime decided to accelerate its nuclear project and missile industry. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered the expansion of massive underground cities with the aim of concealing most of the nuclear facilities there, along with an arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles, making them immune to significant damage from the air.

This information reached Israel and the Americans and included the launch of an organized project to manufacture the final stage required for launching a nuclear missile. By the end of 2025, this information became the reason for the (December) meeting between Netanyahu and Trump.

During the meetings, War Secretary Pete Hegseth believed that toppling the regime was a realistic possibility through encouraging and assisting internal protest, encouraging and assisting ethnic militias, and an intensive military strike against regime leaders and military facilities. The Israeli assessment was that toppling the regime was a complex and long-term mission.

As far back as the 1980s, Trump expressed the view that the Islamic Republic had humiliated the U.S., exploited American weakness, and paid no significant price. During his first term he withdrew from the nuclear agreement and reimposed and escalated sanctions under the “maximum pressure” campaign. To this must be added the Iranian plot to assassinate him. To Trump, this represented a direct attack. When the decision to act against Iran reached the table, Trump was not being asked to confront a distant adversary. He was being given the opportunity to settle a grudge accumulated over almost 40 years. Article here

Hamas & Gaza

Wall St Journal Editorial: Hamas has been drumming up talk of “engineered starvation” in Gaza again. But this time, the new Board of Peace has responded. “Since the ceasefire last October, the Board of Peace has significantly scaled up support for the people of Gaza…Food aid is reaching 3 times more people than before.” Aid trucks are no longer diverted from reaching their destinations en masse, and child malnutrition cases have plummeted.
“The next critical step in Gaza’s recovery,” the Board added, is “finalizing the process by which Hamas decommissions its weapons and allows for the transition to a new government that will lead the redevelopment of this war-torn region.” But Hamas is refusing to disarm.
Amid the Iran war, Hamas has avoided scrutiny for blowing past the Board of Peace’s April 14 deadline to accept its disarmament plan. This is a continuing breach of the ceasefire by Hamas, which means Israel will have to continue holding territory and using force to keep the terrorists off balance. Israel won’t let Hamas rebuild the jihadist fief next door. Now the Board of Peace won’t give Hamas its usual free lane in the propaganda war either. Editorial here (paywall)

Palestinian Authority (PA)

Khaled Abu Toameh:
The PA continues to demonstrate that it is unwilling to prepare Palestinians for peace and coexistence with Israel. For years, the PA has promised the U.S. and European donors that it would overhaul its education system by removing incitement, antisemitism, and the glorification of violence from school textbooks.
In its latest rebuke, the European Parliament has condemned PA textbooks for the seventh year in a row, citing ongoing defamation of Jews, incitement to violence, and the promotion of jihad and “martyrdom.”
The PA’s own Ministry of Education recently admitted that textbooks currently used in schools “have not been revised at all.”
If the Palestinian leadership is serious about peace with Israel – not at all certain – it needs to begin by educating its children for peace, not indoctrinating them with hate. Any society that aspires to statehood and peaceful coexistence must prepare its next generation for nonviolence, mutual recognition, and respect. So far, there is scant evidence of this.Article here

Flotilla

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner:
The stunning pre-emptive interception of the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla far from Israel’s shores was a model of professionalism, discipline and strategic clarity. Once again, the IDF, the Navy and Israel’s intelligence services demonstrated that national security can be defended firmly, intelligently and without unnecessary drama. There were no injuries, no chaos, no televised confrontation, and no manufactured spectacle for these activists eager to provoke headlines.
This time Israel moved fast and sucked all the wind out of their sails. There was no grandstanding, no CNN, no Gretas, and no opportunity to turn sailors defending their country into villains for international consumption.The naval blockade of Gaza has been widely recognized in international law as a lawful security measure when properly declared and enforced. In that context, publicly declared attempts to breach a lawful sea blockade must be viewed as unlawful extremist conduct rather than legitimate protest or humanitarian action. Accordingly, Israel is required to take the necessary and proportionate measures available under international law to enforce its rights and ensure the integrity of the blockade, including actions on the high seas. Article here

UK convictions

Stephen Daisley:
The conviction of four members of the radical anti-Israel organization Palestine Action, following an attack on an Elbit Systems factory in Bristol, sends a clear message: being pro-Palestinian doesn’t give you a free pass to destroy private property.

The courts say the actions of these four activists were criminal, but even more fundamentally, they were wrong. Elbit is an Israeli defence manufacturer. Armies across the Free World need these capabilities to meet the evolving threats of 21st century warfare…Elbit also offers the capability to gather intelligence with the speed and accuracy to prevent situations from escalating into war. Britain ought to be proud of its ability to attract world-class defence companies like Elbit.
Too many look on Palestine Action’s tactics with indulgence when they aren’t revelling in the radical chic excitement of it all. They believe the ends justify the means, but only the ends pursued by their own side. Article here (paywall)

Brendan O’Neill:

The conviction of the Palestine Action activists confirms it: Israelophobia is a vile menace to civilised values.(Warning: some offensive language) Article here