[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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I don't believe it's fair or reasonable to describe Hamas as using Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas is a national liberation movement against an occupation that is willing to kill as many civilians as need be because their goal is to terrorize the survivors into fleeing and never attempting to return.

If Hamas has the Israelis right where they want them it's because the IGF is blatantly doing IGF things while the whole world watches.

Nah, you went too far in your pro-Hamas speech, Hamas doesn't care about their people's lives a bit. Nor it's "national libraration movement", and it doesn't represent all Palestinians either. It's a backward totalarian movement part of the terrorist-sponsoring organization the Muslim Brotherhood.

I hope you won't ever say the same about Hezbollah one day, if that happens, you will find me the first one attacking you on WP.
Don't buy much into the radical leftist narrative either.

^^ The person who lets the bear in to slaughter a household is as savage as… the bear.
Starting a war you can’t win, is a self-genocidal move as well.

Gaza was struggling economically before the 7th of October (but they really needed to have far less babies) but it wasn’t a totally unlivable city; and it was receiving a lot of help from other nations.

https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/1257 ... estinians/

Here some footage of Gaza before and after 7th of October. It wasn’t doing so badly despite the siege. Ironically, it was probably prospering better than Lebanon.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tir36oMKWEM

So the narrative of « 7th October attack was a desperate move for Gazans to survive » is a lie.
The attack brought Gaza’s doom.

The attack was an Iranian ploy to halt the KSA/Israel peace negotiations, executed by fanatics. And the Gazans paid the highest price, at least the kids and those who didn’t vote for Hamas.

Let’s not forget how all this tragedy got started.

I refuse to recognize Hamas as a resistance movement by any means.

Here are some of the main developments over the past day:

A woman and a young girl are among those killed in Israel’s latest attack on the Bureij refugee camp.
The Israeli military has bombed the al-Katiba area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing at least 11 people, including women and children, according to our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues.
Nine people were killed and others injured in an Israeli bombing that targeted a house in the al-Amal neighbourhood in Khan Younis, according to medical sources at Nasser Hospital.
Israeli settlers raided the occupied West Bank village of Sarra, near Nablus, and burned “dozens” of trees, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
General CQ Brown, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, is in Jordan to begin a Middle East trip to de-escalate regional tensions.
Hezbollah says it carried out a suicide drone strike on Israeli soldiers positioned near the village of Yaara, adding that it hit them “accurately”.

The United States’ top general began an unannounced visit to the Middle East Saturday to discuss ways to avoid all-out regional war as Israel braces for a threatened Iranian attack.

US Air Force General Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, began his trip in Jordan and said he will also travel to Egypt and Israel in the coming days to hear the perspectives of military leaders. Though the target of Iran’s attack remains unclear, Brown said the US is closely monitoring its movements and sending reinforcements with the aim of deterring Iran.

His visit comes as a Hamas delegation reportedly arrived for ceasefire-for-hostages talks in Cairo Saturday, a day after Israel’s delegation attended talks there with mediators Egypt, Qatar and the US.

Brown said that if a deal is reached, it could “help bring down the temperature.” Iran has indicated it is awaiting the talks’ outcome as it weighs its attack plans.

Brown told Reuters he would discuss with his counterparts in the

Referring to US military buildup in the region, Brown said, “We brought in additional capability to send a strong message to deter a broader conflict… but also to protect our forces should they be attacked.” Safeguarding American forces was “paramount,” said the general.

In recent weeks, the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group entered the region to replace the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group. The US has also sent an Air Force F-22 Raptor squadron into the region and deployed a cruise missile submarine.

Iran has not publicly indicated what would be the target of an eventual response to the Haniyeh assassination, but US officials say they are closely monitoring for any signs that Iran will make good on its threats.

“We stay postured, watching the [intelligence] and force movements,” Brown said.

Brown did not speculate about what Iran and its allies might do, but said he hoped to discuss different scenarios with his Israeli counterpart.

“Particularly, as I engage with my Israeli counterpart, how they might respond, depending on the response that comes from Hezbollah or from Iran,” Brown said.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah fired some 100 rockets toward Israel on Friday, as the Iran-backed terror group threatens a large-scale attack in response to the killing of its deputy chief Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut, hours before the blast that killed Haniyeh.

Palestinian media report that a group of masked Israeli settlers attacked the northern West Bank town of Rujeib and a nearby village.

The Israelis hurled stones, set fires, and damaged cars, according to the reports and footage from the scene.

The Hamas terror group has taken a strategic decision to carry out attacks against Israelis abroad in a bid to avenge the recent killing of group leader Ismail Haniyeh, Channel 12 reported Thursday, citing Palestinian sources.

The report said the shift in tactics by Hamas was made just two days after the leader was killed in Tehran last month. The killing was blamed on Israel, which has not taken responsibility.

In part, the shift to tactics, previously embodied by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, comes due to the fact that the group’s ability to launch attacks on Israel from Gaza has been significantly degraded over ten months of war in the enclave.

It was not clear whether the assassination campaign was meant to target Israeli civilians, such as tourists, or whether it was targeted at officials, the news network said.

Israel launched a wave of airstrikes across southern Lebanon early Sunday in what it said was a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah, as the militant group said it had launched hundreds of rockets and drones to avenge the killing of one of its top commanders last month.

The heavy exchange of fire threatened to trigger an all-out war that could draw in the United States, Iran and militant groups across the region. It could also torpedo efforts to forge a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with the Palestinian group Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah, for over 10 months.

By mid-morning, it appeared that the exchange had ended, with both sides saying they had confined their attacks to military targets. But the situation remained tense, and the full extent of casualties and damage was not immediately known. At least three people were killed in the strikes on Lebanon.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah was planning to launch a heavy barrage of rockets and missiles toward Israel. Soon after, Hezbollah announced it had launched an attack on Israeli military positions as an initial response to the killing of Fouad Shukur, one of its founders, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking at the start of a Cabinet meeting, said the military had eliminated “thousands of rockets that were aimed at northern Israel” and urged citizens to adhere to directives from the Home Front Command.

“We are determined to do everything to defend our country, to return the residents of the north securely to their homes and to continue upholding a simple rule: Whoever harms us — we will harm them,” he said.

Air raid sirens were reported throughout northern Israel, and Israel’s Ben-Gurion international airport closed and diverted flights for approximately an hour due to the threat of attack. Israel’s Home Front Command has raised the alert level in northern Israel and encouraged people to stay near bomb shelters.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said Hezbollah had intended to hit targets in northern and central Israel. He said initial assessments found “very little damage” in Israel, but that the military remained on high alert. He said around 100 Israeli aircraft took part in Sunday’s strikes.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that two people were killed and another two wounded in the strikes in southern Lebanon. Separately, a fighter for the Amal group, which is allied with Hezbollah, was killed in a strike on a car, Amal said.

Hezbollah said its attack involved more than 320 Katyusha rockets aimed at multiple sites in Israel and a “large number” of drones. It said the operation was targeting “a qualitative Israeli military target that will be announced later” as well as “enemy sites and barracks and Iron Dome (missile defense) platforms.”

Hezbollah later announced the end of what it said was the first stage of retaliatory strikes, which it said would allow it to launch more attacks deeper into Israel. But a later statement said “military operations for today have been completed.”

The group said all the exploding drones it launched hit their targets, without saying how many. It listed 11 bases, barracks, and military positions that it said it targeted in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. It also dismissed Israel’s claim that its preemptive strikes had succeeded in warding off a stronger Hezbollah attack. Hezbollah did not provide evidence for its claims.

Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Institute, said Sunday morning’s exchange was “still within the rules of engagement and unlikely at this point to lead to an all out war.”

In the U.S., a spokesman for the National Security Council, Sean Savett, said President Joe Biden was “closely monitoring events in Israel and Lebanon.”

“At his direction, senior U.S. officials have been communicating continuously with their Israeli counterparts,” Savett added. “We will keep supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, and we will keep working for regional stability.”

The Pentagon said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, about Israel’s defenses against Hezbollah. Austin “reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s defense against any attacks by Iran and its regional partners and proxies,” a statement said.

Missiles were visible curling up through the dawn sky, dark vapour trails behind them, as an air raid siren sounded in Israel and a distant blast lit the horizon, while smoke rose over houses in Khiam in southern Lebanon.

Any major spillover in the fighting, which began in parallel with the war in Gaza, risks morphing into a regional conflagration drawing in Hezbollah's backer Iran and Israel's main ally the United States.

With three deaths confirmed in Lebanon and one in Israel, both sides indicated they were happy to avoid further escalation for now, but warned that there could be more strikes to come.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Iranian-backed group's barrage, a reprisal for the assassination of senior commander Fuad Shukr last month, had been completed "as planned".

However, the group would assess the impact of its strikes and "if the result is not enough, then we retain the right to respond another time", he said.

Israel's foreign minister said the country did not seek a full-scale war, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned: "This is not the end of the story."

The two sides have exchanged messages that neither wants to escalate further, with the main gist being that the exchange was "done", two diplomats told Reuters.

DENSE BOMBARDMENT
Israel's air strikes started before Hezbollah began its barrage, Nasrallah said. Netanyahu said these "pre-emptive" strikes had foiled a much larger Hezbollah barrage but Nasrallah said they had had little impact.

Hezbollah's own rocket and drone strikes were focused on an intelligence base near Tel Aviv, Nasrallah said. Netanyahu said all the drones targeting what he called a strategic location in central Israel were intercepted.

A security source in Lebanon said at least 40 Israeli strikes had hit various towns in the country's south in one of the densest bombardments since hostilities began in October.

Hezbollah said the strikes killed two of its fighters in al-Tiri. The Hezbollah-allied Shi'ite Muslim group Amal said a strike on Khiam killed one of its fighters.

Israel's military said a naval soldier was killed and two wounded.

Lebanon's caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati met cabinet ministers at a session of the national emergency committee.

Flights to and from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv were suspended for around 90 minutes.

Israel and the US have been cooperating for more than 10 months in the hunt for elusive Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, The New York Times reported on Sunday, detailing the intensive effort to find the architect of the October 7 invasion and slaughter in southern Israel.

Citing two dozen unnamed officials from Israel and the US, the report said the two countries — both of which classify Hamas as a terrorist organization — have jointly poured vast resources into the hunt for Sinwar, including “ground penetrating radar” supplied by the US.

However, despite the intense cooperation, which one Israeli official described to the newspaper as “priceless,” another source familiar with the arrangement said it was “very lopsided,” with Israel gaining far more from the US than it was sharing in return.

According to this source, the Americans have shared information leading to Hamas leaders other than Sinwar, hoping to receive reciprocated Israeli intelligence that would lead them to the remaining American hostages in Hamas captivity, but Israel has not been as forthcoming.

Describing the joint effort, the report says a joint Israeli-American intelligence force was set up and tasked with monitoring Sinwar’s communications, which were conducted electronically at the beginning of the war in Gaza but have since been shifted to couriers, due to the scarcity of fuel to power generators and to evade interception.

While Sinwar was still communicating with his organization electronically, the team was able to monitor Sinwar’s calls with other Hamas officials.

During this period, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pushed his government to okay shipments of fuel into Gaza to power cell networks needed to keep Sinwar communicating electronically, so Israel could continue eavesdropping on the Hamas leader, the New York Times reported.

Though they could not pinpoint the Hamas chief’s location, the intercepted communications allowed the teams to piece together a picture of his life in Hamas’s tunnels, including discovering that Sinwar regularly monitors Hebrew media and watches the 8 p.m. Israeli news, according to the newspaper.

Gallant initially ordered fuel supplies to Gaza cut along with other goods on October 7, arguing they would be used to bolster Hamas and would power generators to keep oxygen flowing into the group’s vast tunnel system.

In November, following heavy international pressure, the war cabinet voted to begin allowing in fuel shipments, over the objections of right-wing members of the government who have pushed to cut any aid into Gaza until all hostages are released.

Despite the shipments of fuel, Sinwar long ago stopped communicating electronically, making it much more difficult for officials and ceasefire negotiators to track him, the report noted.

The US and Israel believe Sinwar spent the first weeks of the war hiding in a tunnel under Gaza City, where the report said IDF troops found footage of Sinwar moving his family to another locale.

From Gaza City, Sinwar was believed to have moved to tunnels under Khan Younis, where he came close to being captured at the end of January but fled just before the army raided his bunker.

According to the NYT, this escape was hasty, with Sinwar leaving behind roughly a million dollars in shekels in the tunnel.

As part of its war with Hamas in Gaza, the IDF has eliminated many members of the terrorist organization’s leadership over the last 10 months. Included on the list of targets were the organization’s top three leaders, Sinwar, former political leader Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammad Deif.

Some sources in the NYT report believe eliminating Sinwar is the achievement Israel needs to declare that Hamas has been fully defeated, and will make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more amenable to ending the military campaign in Gaza.

It is unclear, however, how Sinwar’s death would affect negotiations for a hostage-for-ceasefire deal, as the report says the Hamas leader has had to okay every development in the talks in Doha and Cairo.

A senior Biden administration official indicates that more sanctions are on the horizon against Israeli extremists over attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.

“We have taken actions in terms of sanctioning entities and individuals. That remains a viable tool going forward,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby says in an interview with The Times of Israel.

The past week has seen several settler attacks against Palestinians, including a pair of rampages that resulted in two deaths. No arrests were made in the most recent attack last night. Indictment in such cases are highly rare and convictions even more so.

The head of the Shin Bet security service has been quoted lamenting in private meetings that the Israel Police overseen by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is refusing to crack down on the phenomenon.

The lack of Israeli enforcement has led a handful of Western countries — led by the US — to begin issuing their own sanctions against Israeli extremists.

Asked if these sanctions have been effective in curbing the problem, Kirby responds, “There’s still settler violence, so that’s deeply concerning. As President Biden has made clear, it is unacceptable and we’ve condemned it in every case.”

Israel is making every possible mistake when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war, (res.) Brig.-Gen. Amal Assad told the unofficial civilian probe of October 7 on Tuesday.

The probe was founded by families of those killed on October 7, representatives from the attacked kibbutzim, and civil society groups last month to investigate the events behind the attack. One of the primary goals of the committee, which is composed of legal and security experts, is to initiate the foundation of a state probe, a notion that was shot down by Israel’s political echelon.

Assad, formerly the commander of the IDF’s Lebanon coordination unit, which oversaw IDF operations in Southern Lebanon and coordinated with the South Lebanon Army, said that Israel must not continue to fight without an end goal.

“We are making every mistake possible. You cannot wage a war this way. You cannot fight just to fight, and that is what we have been doing for ten months – fighting for revenge,” he said.

“I don’t know how many hostages were killed because of us, how many hostages we killed, but I think it is an outrage that we started this war without knowing what to do the day after,” Assad stated.

“Even now, we killed [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh. What next? We preemptively struck Hezbollah. Now what? The government cannot only deal with military tactics without a strategy. Sadly, for many years now, we have not had a strategy in this country in any field.”

He questioned the logic behind Israel’s actions since the outbreak of the war, asking what Israel was trying to prove. “Are we trying to prove that we are going to show them? Do we need revenge now? Why? We still have 109 hostages,” he said, adding that they should be brought home “at all costs.”

“A country that is not able to defend its citizens in their homes has no right to exist. A country that does not free its hostages has no right to exist,” Assad underlined.

He said that until October 7, there was too much faith in technology and in the notion that Hamas was deterred, leaving the IDF unprepared for the October 7 massacre.

State's treatment of non-Jews
After being asked by the committee if he thought that Israel’s government treated Jews and non-Jews differently, he answered that this was absolutely the case and that he felt that there was a sense of Jewish supremacy.

“When I sit on a panel with [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and hear him speak, I understand that he is a different race and that I am inferior to him. Why? Because I am not Jewish,” Assad said.

This is how all non-Jews are treated in Israel, he added.

Israeli forces launched a sweeping military operation Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, carrying out airstrikes and deadly raids and sealing off the city of Jenin.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the large-scale operation was part of a “full-fledged war” as he compared the situation to the Gaza Strip, saying Israeli forces must implement similar measures being carried out in the war-torn Palestinian enclave in the West Bank.

At least 10 people were killed and almost two dozen injured, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, an emergency service.

Israel has conducted near-daily raids in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, in the months since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent Israeli offensive in Gaza. But Wednesday's operation could be the largest in more than 20 years, when what Israeli officials called Operation Defensive Shield was executed during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.

The Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Security Agency (also known as the Shin Bet) and the Israel Police said in a joint statement that forces had launched a “counterterrorism operation” in Jenin, Tulkarem and Al-Faraa refugee camp overnight, “eliminating armed terrorists from the air and ground.”

They said three armed militants “who posed a threat” to security forces were killed in an airstrike in the area of Jenin, while two other armed militants were killed in Jenin and Tulkarem, which are about 30 miles apart. Israeli authorities said a number of “wanted suspects” were also apprehended, along with a number of weapons.

Israeli forces “exposed and dismantled explosives that were planted under the roads in the area and were intended to be detonated in attacks against the security forces operating in the area,” the statement said.

Images and videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News showed Israeli bulldozers appearing to destroy roads in Tulkarem and Jenin overnight

Kamal Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, said on Palestinian radio that Israeli forces had surrounded the area and blocked off exit and entry points, as well as access to hospitals, The Associated Press reported. The staff at the hospital was later allowed to move freely after facing "severe restrictions" by Israeli forces, according to Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Israeli forces raided homes in the the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarem, searching from one house to another and detaining men found inside, according to Nihad Al-Shawish, the head of services at the camp. All access roads to the camp have been destroyed, Al-Shawish said.

Al-Shawish said hours before the raids began the camp was warned that civilians should consider evacuating the area by the Palestinian Authority's liaison with Israel. The evacuations were not mandatory, he said.

Israel’s operation in the West Bank — one of two Palestinian territories occupied by the Israeli government — still raised fears of forcible displacement among Palestinians.

Youssef Barahmi told NBC News he could see the camp being “surrounded by the IDF,” from his home less than 2 miles away in the town of the same name.

The Palestinian Authority employee said his mother-in-law, who lives in the camp, had told him that Israeli forces were surrounding her house. He added that he was no longer able to reach her over the phone.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa’s office said in a statement that any incursion into hospitals was “a direct threat to the lives of patients and medical staff.” Israeli forces had blocked entry roads and besieged multiple medical facilities across the West Bank, the statement added.

'Full-fledged war'
Katz made the connection between the raids in the West Bank and the war in Gaza. Palestinian health authorities say more than 40,000 people have been killed in the besieged enclave since Israel launched its offensive after the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Hamas’ assaults in southern Israel killed some 1,200 people and led to 250 others being taken hostage.

Katz said Israel must “address this threat in the same manner as we deal with terrorist infrastructures in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any other necessary measures.”

This is a “full-fledged war and we must win it,” he added.

Katz also said that the IDF was “operating with intensity” in Jenin and Tulkarem to stamp out “Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures.”

Katz said that Iran was trying to establish "an eastern terrorist front" against Israel in the West Bank, and accused it of funding and arming militants and smuggling weapons from Jordan.

Israel frequently blames Iran for violence in the region.

The Biden administration issued its sixth batch of sanctions targeting Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, blacklisting a group that provides volunteer guards for illegal outposts and a civilian security guard for a flashpoint settlement who has allegedly engaged in attacks against Palestinians.

The sanctions against the Hashomer Yosh (Guardians of Judea and Samaria) organization, and against Yitzhak Levi Filant, the chief security officer for the Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank, came days after two violent settler rampages through Palestinian towns in the West Bank left a pair of Palestinians dead. No arrests have been made in the most recent attack near Bethlehem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement saying that it “views with great severity” the imposition of sanctions against Israeli citizens, and said the issue was the subject of “deep discussions” with the US.

Several far-right coalition lawmakers, including MK Ariel Kallner of Netanyahu’s Likud party, also condemned the sanctions, with Kallner claiming “antisemitic persecution” by US President Joe Biden and Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The head of the Shin Bet security service has recently been quoted lamenting in private meetings that the Israel Police, overseen by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, is refusing to crack down on the phenomenon of settler violence.

The lack of Israeli enforcement has led a handful of Western countries — led by the US — to begin issuing their own sanctions against Israeli extremists. Biden issued an executive order giving him authority to levy such sanctions in February, and 11 individuals and 11 entities have been designated since.

One of the primary activities of the Hashomer Yosh organization that was sanctioned Wednesday is arranging for volunteers to provide help and support for some 26 illegal farming outposts in the West Bank.

According to the State Department announcement, Hashomer Yosh has provided “material support” to the Meitarim Farm in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank run by Yinon Levi, who was sanctioned by the US in February for alleged violence against local Palestinian residents of the area.

Levi has been repeatedly accused by Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills of harassing local herders and instigating violence against residents of the area, and was specifically named in a petition to the High Court of Justice submitted in November as a key culprit in the forced displacement of the residents of the Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta, which lies just a few kilometers from Meitarim Farm.

Hashomer Yosh’s website does not currently list Meitarim Farm as one of the outposts it supports, although it has promoted commercial activities there.

Another farming outpost supported by Hashomer Yosh is Moshe’s Farm, established in 2020 and run by Moshe Sharvit. Also known as Emek Tirza Farm, the outpost was sanctioned by the US in March. Hashomer Yosh has provided the illegal outpost with volunteers and continues to promote the farm as one of the options for volunteers on its website.

Sharvit has been repeatedly accused of harassing local Palestinian farmers and their livestock, and has been filmed doing so with his ATV.

Hashomer Yosh has also provided support for Neriya Ben Pazi and Zvi Bar Yosef, who were designated by the US for their involvement in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the State Department said.

Hashomer Yosh has received over NIS 8 million ($2.2 million) in direct funding from the Agriculture Ministry and the Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Ministry since 2018 for its various activities.

Although Filant’s role is akin to a security or law enforcement officer, he has engaged in malign activities outside the scope of his authority, the State Department said.

“In February 2024, he led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to pursue and attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands,” its announcement added.

The Yesh Din organization, which campaigns against West Bank settlements, accused Filant of “innumerable acts of violence and harm to Palestinians and their property” in the region around Yitzhar.

“For years, we have documented testimony of his [Levi’s] illegal actions, but we also hear from his victims that they are scared to complain about him to the police because of his unlimited power in the region,” Yesh Din said in response to the new US sanctions.

“Since the beginning of the [current] war, Levi and his armed civilian security squad, sometimes dressed in army uniforms, leave the area designated to them by law and abuse their authority,” the left-wing group added.

“Extremist settler violence in the West Bank causes intense human suffering, harms Israel’s security, and undermines the prospect for peace and stability in the region,” the State Department sanctions announcement asserted.

Kallner, of the ruling Likud party, described Hashomer Yosh as a “pioneering organization” in a social media post defending the group and denounced the sanctions as a “gross violation of Israeli sovereignty.”

“To the US administration: President Biden and Vice President Mrs Harris, to tell us ‘don’t’ after the massacre will not move us. Stop the antisemitic persecution and don’t forget: No power in the world has succeeded and will not succeed in severing the connection between the people of Israel and its land,” Kallner wrote on X.

The military said that the investigation showed that there had been a regional warning at 8:00 p.m. when the Shin Bet noticed that certain extremists were gathering in cars.

On Wednesday, IDF Central Commander Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth called the attack by around 100 Jewish extremists on the Palestinian West Bank village of Jit on August 15 the worst Jewish terror event ever.

In issuing his probe of the event, which resulted in the burning of numerous homes and cars, the death of one Palestinian, and attacks on others, Bluth said that he and all those involved from Israel, including the IDF, failed to properly defend the Palestinian village properly.

The military said that the investigation revealed there had been a regional warning before the attack when the Shin Bet noticed that extremists were gathering in cars and that this warning led the security forces to deploy around main junctions and routes.

However, at this stage, the IDF did not block the entrance to Jit. The probe does not provide an explanation, but it conveys the importance of learning lessons for the future

Sources told The Jerusalem Post that the Shin Bet warning was general and that the agency had not followed the physical movements of the attackers – as it sometimes does – using drones.

Finally, sources suggested that the Jewish attackers might have deliberately chosen Jit, a village not previously attacked, to surprise the IDF.

The attackers entered Jit at 8 p.m. The IDF learned of the incident and sounded the alarm to send forces there at 8:06 p.m.

Moreover, the probe said that the initial IDF forces did not realize the size and severity of the Jewish terror attack. Only at a later stage did the troops block the entrance to Jit, preventing more rioters from entering the village.

When additional IDF forces arrived several minutes later, they started to push and corral the Jewish attackers, including using warning shots in the air and crowd dispersal methods. At this stage, Bluth complimented the soldiers for fighting hard and risking their lives.

In addition, the probe praises the IDF for quickly assisting Palestinians to escape from burning structures and providing them with first aid.

However, at no time did the IDF use live fire on the Jewish attackers, not even firing at their legs when they fled.

No arrests in Jit
The IDF did not make a single arrest that night; an IDF source said it was difficult to do in the black of night when the attackers ran off in different directions. (In contrast, the IDF allows its soldiers to fire at the legs of Palestinian suspects who try to escape.)

Only later did the Shin Bet and police arrest four suspects out of around 100 attackers, and they are currently being investigated.

Three of the suspects are adults; the fourth is a minor.

The detention of the three adults has been extended with a special administrative order, which allows holding them for a longer period even without an indictment. The same process is occasionally used with Palestinian terrorists.

A record number of Palestinian terrorists (since the First Intifada in 1987-1991) have been in administrative detention since October 7. The number exceeded 2,000 already in November 2023.

The probe provided no new information about the attackers or the killing of the Palestinian victim.

It also pointed out that certain reservists and local Jewish private security volunteers came armed and in IDF uniform from another village without having received orders, in violation of their operating area authority, which limits them to certain geographic areas.

Two of these personnel have been expelled from the security volunteers, and their weapons were seized. The probe did not specify exactly what those two individuals did differently from the other security volunteers who arrived.

The head of the Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July 2023 that war was all but certain for Israel if the government continued to plow ahead with its controversial judicial overhaul, a report said Friday, amid the defense and political echelons’ ongoing blame game surrounding October 7.

The report by the Ynet news site said that although Bar appeared certain that Israel was heading for war, he was likely referring either to a war in the north with the Iran-backed Hezbollah, or an escalation in the West Bank leading to a third intifada that could later expand, rather than war with Hamas.

According to the outlet, on July 23, 2023 — a day before the government passed the first major piece of its contentious judicial overhaul legislation — Bar told Netanyahu: “Today I give you a warning of war. We don’t know the day and time in which it will break out, but this is the indication.”

Later that day, with Netanyahu’s blessing, Bar reportedly issued the same warning to Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who relied on the information to warn of a “violent, multifront confrontation” in a September 20 press conference.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) pushed back on Ynet’s report, saying Netanyahu “did not receive a warning about the war in Gaza — not on the purported date stated in the article and not a moment before 6:29 a.m. on October 7,” when Hamas fired a massive rocket barrage that gave cover to its thousands-strong invasion and onslaught.

Referring only to the war in Gaza, the PMO did not deny that Netanyahu had received a more general warning of war.

The report came after Channel 12 news on Thursday reported that in early October — three or four days before October 7 — the Shin Bet had assessed that Hamas chief Sinwar was uninterested in “getting involved in a round of fighting.”

The report quoted a pair of top-secret Shin Bet documents saying concessions from Israel toward Gaza “will enable the preservation of public order for a protracted period.”

Ynet cited top security officials Friday as being horrified that “elements in the PMO” were allegedly leaking classified documents in order to absolve the political echelon of responsibility for October 7 and pin the blame exclusively on the defense establishment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday that he was prioritizing his stance of maintaining Israeli troops in the Philadelphi Corridor over saving the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza.

The stance was shared during a heated security cabinet meeting Thursday night during which the premier had the top ministerial body vote to approve a series of maps drawn up by the IDF, which show how Israel aims to keep its troops deployed in the nine-mile narrow stretch known as the Philadelphi Corridor during the first phase of the hostage-ceasefire being negotiated.

After a rare and relatively swift six weeks of talks, Israel and Hamas have agreed to three separate three-day pauses in fighting, starting Sunday in central Gaza, to allow for the vaccination of some 640,000 children against polio amid fears that the outbreak of the potentially fatal virus could spread beyond the territory.

Eleven months of Israeli bombardment have created the ideal conditions to bring polio — which is spread mainly when contaminated stool from an infected person is orally ingested — back from near-eradication: destroyed water and sewage lines; hundreds of thousands crowded into patches of land lacking toilets and sewage systems; and a health care system that has collapsed under the weight of hostilities and war injuries, leading to a dramatic drop in routine vaccinations.

It's a sanitation crisis so dire that it has put people at risk of ingesting traces of infected human waste. Georgios Petropoulos, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian agency in Gaza, told NBC News from Rafah that it was “almost impossible” to steer clear of disease.

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” he said. “There’s rivers of human feces.”

The diagnosis of a 10-month-old boy with polio last week — the first case in Gaza in 25 years — added urgency in a war where deals have otherwise proved elusive.

In an interview with NBC News, the boy's mother, Naveen Abu Al-Jidyan, said her son, Abdel Raman, should soon be learning to walk, but instead his leg has been paralyzed.

After leaving their homes to escape the conflict, most of the enclave's 2.2 million people are now confined to a humanitarian area smaller than Manhattan, the majority in makeshift, overcrowded shelters without sanitation infrastructure that safely separates waste from human contact.

Untreated sewage flows openly near these dwellings, where flies travel freely from feces to fluids and food. Waste seeps into the surrounding environment and contaminates the dwindling fresh water supplies.

“There’s people with a hole in the tent and they have to defecate out of that hole," Petropoulos said. "The same tent where they sleep.”

People are also running out of water to wash their hands or clean themselves, with many resorting to seawater, despite the fact that untreated sewage is being pumped into the Mediterranean Sea with wastewater treatment plants shut down.

“They know the water from the sea is not hygienic in any state,” Louise Wateridge, a spokesperson for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, told NBC News last month. Using it, she said, is “an act of desperation.”

According to Oxfam America, less than 4% of fresh water is now drinkable in Gaza. UNRWA estimates that almost 70% of water and sanitation facilities and infrastructure has been destroyed or damaged in Israel’s bombardment.

Meanwhile, vaccine rates have dropped enough since the start of the war to allow for the re-emergence of polio. In 2022, vaccine coverage was estimated at 99% for two doses, but this has dropped to less than 90%, according to the latest WHO data.

According to UNICEF, poor sanitation conditions mean that at least 95% of children will need to receive two vaccine doses in order to reduce chances of an outbreak in the region.

The first three-day vaccination campaign will start Sunday in central Gaza as international agencies send 1.6 million doses of the vaccine to the conflict zone. The daily pauses in fighting are scheduled to take place between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. local time.

A second three-day campaign will take place in southern Gaza from Sept. 5, and a third in northern Gaza starting on Sept. 9.

The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit said on Wednesday that vaccinations would be conducted in coordination with the Israeli military “as part of the routine humanitarian pauses that will allow the population to reach the medical centers where the vaccinations will be administered."

After polio was detected in Gaza’s sewers in July, the Israeli government began offering vaccinations to troops returning from Gaza.

s hundreds of thousands of Palestinians trudge through sewage and garbage each day without access to clean water or soap, they remain at risk of polio and a litany of other diseases.

Earlier in August, UNWRA reported 40,000 cases of Hepatitis A, another virus that can be transmitted through ingestion of contaminated water. In June, it warned of the risks of a cholera outbreak amid severe water shortages.

There have also been at least 500,000 cases of diarrhea, while the WHO has reported over 100,000 cases of lice and scabies.

Fewer than half of the territory's hospitals and clinics remain operational and are overwhelmed with the injured, with aid agencies reporting that doctors are struggling to treat a huge caseload of dysentery and pneumonia.