[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

Post Reply New Topic

The Israeli military said Saturday evening it had expanded its ground offensive in the southern Gaza Strip in the past few hours.

Troops pushed into the al-Jneina neighborhood of Rafah as part of efforts to expand a buffer zone along the borders of the Strip, the IDF said. During the operation, the IDF said troops demolished Hamas infrastructure in the area.

Separately, dozens of airstrikes were carried out over the weekend, targeting what the military said was Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad infrastructure. The targets included weapon depots, rocket launchers and buildings used by the terror groups, according to the IDF.

Also on Saturday, the IDF acknowledged mistakenly opening fire on ambulances and fire engines in the southern Gaza Strip a week ago, as it targeted and killed several Hamas operatives. The incident took place last Sunday in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah. According to Hamas authorities, at least one rescue worker was killed.

On Friday, the Hamas-run civil defense agency reported finding the body of the team leader and the rescue vehicles — an ambulance and a firefighting vehicle — and said a vehicle from the Palestine Red Crescent Society was also “reduced to a pile of scrap metal.”

Meanwhile, amid aid agencies’ warnings of a food shortage in Gaza, the World Central Kitchen charity said Israel had struck one of its food distribution sites in Gaza on Thursday, killing a local volunteer identified as Jalal and wounding six others. The IDF said it was probing the incident and in touch with WCK.

Israel announced on March 2 that it would suspend the delivery of all goods and supplies to Gaza due to what it said was Hamas’s refusal to accept a proposal to extend the initial phase of a ceasefire and hostage release deal that was reached in January. After a two-week impasse, Israel scuttled the deal with a series of airstrikes across the Strip.

A group of masked men attacked residents of the Masafer Yatta area, south of Hebron, for the second time in a week on Friday, according to CCTV footage published by Yuval Abraham on the same day.

Abraham, alongside Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal, won an Oscar for their film No Other Land, which is based in Masafer Yatta. He published the videos showing a group of around 15 masked men attacking residents of the village with clubs and by hand.

Later, he published videos showing several seriously injured people who were bleeding from their heads and said they were victims of the attack.

What happened in Masafer Yatta?
In one video, a group of around 15 masked men can be seen charging up a hill toward the village.

In another video, the men can be seen beating a young man. Initially, one man beats him with a club, then several other men arrive and knock him to the floor before stomping on him and beating him with clubs.

The initial attacker begins to leave before returning to hit the resident several more times on the ground.

Abraham posted a final video showing several people lying on the floor, bleeding from their heads, which he says is a result of the attack. He added that they were suffering from brain hemorrhages and skull fractures.

Masafer Yatta has been a regular target for attacks for several years; the most recent attack occurred earlier this week when Hamdan Ballal, Abraham's co-director and resident of Masafer Yatta, was attacked, hospitalized, and arrested. Ballal was released without charge the following day.

Masafer Yatta is a region of the West Bank southeast of Yatta in which about 20 Palestinian unrecognized villages are located. The villages remain unrecognized due to a dispute between the villagers and the IDF.

The area was designated an IDF training zone in 1981 via cabinet decision. Residents appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the decision, stating that they had been present in the area prior to the decision to declare it a training zone.

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that there was no evidence of permanent habitation in the area prior to 1980. The Supreme Court did note the existence of temporary buildings and structures but found that none met the criteria for permanent residency.

President Donald Trump threatened Iran on Sunday with bombing and secondary tariffs if Tehran did not come to an agreement with Washington over its nuclear program.

In Trump's first remarks since Iran rejected direct negotiations with Washington last week, he told NBC News that U.S. and Iranian officials were talking, but did not elaborate.

"If they don't make a deal, there will be bombing," Trump said in a telephone interview. "It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before."

"There's a chance that if they don't make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them like I did four years ago," he added.

Iran sent a response through Oman to a letter from Trump urging Tehran to reach a new nuclear deal, saying its policy was to not engage in direct negotiations with the United States while under its maximum pressure campaign and military threats, Tehran's foreign minister was quoted as saying on Thursday.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated the policy on Sunday. "Direct negotiations (with the U.S.) have been rejected, but Iran has always been involved in indirect negotiations, and now too, the Supreme Leader has emphasized that indirect negotiations can still continue," he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Israel Defense Forces issued an evacuation warning on Monday for Palestinians in the entire Rafah area in the southern Gaza Strip, saying the military was “returning to fight with great force to eliminate the capabilities of terror organizations in these areas.”

In a post on X, the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesman, Col. Avichay Adraee, published a map of the area to be evacuated, telling Gazans to move to the al-Mawasi area on the southern Strip’s coast.

It was the most significant evacuation order issued by the IDF since the resumption of the offensive against Hamas earlier this month ended a two-month ceasefire.

The orders came during Eid al-Fitr, a normally festive Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

The IDF acknowledged Friday that it had fired on ambulances and fire engines in southern Gaza last week, saying it had mistakenly identified them as “suspicious vehicles.”

The bodies of eight medics from the Red Crescent, six members of Gaza’s civil defense agency and one employee of a UN agency were retrieved, the Red Crescent said in a statement.

It said one medic from the Red Crescent remained missing.

In an earlier statement, the Red Crescent said the bodies “were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition.”

Gaza’s civil defense agency also confirmed that 15 bodies had been recovered, adding that the deceased UN employee was from the agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

In a separate statement issued in Geneva, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said it was “outraged” at the deaths of the medics.

“They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned [to] their families; they did not,” IFRC secretary general Jagan Chapagain said.

“International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer — civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.”

IFRC said the incident represents the single most deadly attack on Red Cross and Red Crescent workers anywhere in the world since 2017.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was “appalled” that the medics “were killed while carrying out their work” alongside others.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday the US would receive a strong blow if it acts on President Donald Trump’s threat to bomb unless Tehran reaches a new nuclear deal with Washington.

Trump reiterated his threat on Sunday that Iran would be bombed if it does not accept his offer for talks outlined in a letter sent to Iran’s leadership in early March, giving Tehran a two-month window to make a decision.

Switzerland’s ambassador, who represents US interests and acts as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran, was summoned on Monday by the Iranian foreign ministry, which expressed Tehran’s determination to respond “decisively and immediately” to any threat.

“The enmity from the US and Israel has always been there. They threaten to attack us, which we don’t think is very probable, but if they commit any mischief they will surely receive a strong reciprocal blow,” Khamenei said.

“And if they are thinking of causing sedition inside the country as in past years, the Iranian people themselves will deal with them,” he added.

On Monday, regime mouthpiece The Tehran Times reported that the Iranian military had “readied missiles with the capability to strike US-related positions” amid the threats and noted that some of these missiles were in underground facilities built to withstand airstrikes.

The IDF on Monday night announced that it had sentenced two soldiers and two lower-level commanders to seven days of military detention or to being limited from leaving their military base for sacking certain sites in the Palestinian town of Jinva in Hebron on Friday night during a raid.

In addition, the brigade and battalion commanders received warnings in their permanent military files for not preventing the soldiers’ actions or failing to properly train them.

The raids
Although the raid was authorized to search for illegal weapons, the sites in question – a school and a pharmacy – were not authorized to be searched.

Moreover, the soldiers involved also broke and destroyed equipment using methods of searching that were overly aggressive and would not have been allowed even had the raid itself been authorized.

Next, the IDF soldiers and officials involved covered up the incident and were only found out due to a video of their actions distributed on social media.

Military officials were unsure if the Palestinians would be reimbursed for the destruction, though one official suggested the Palestinians might be able to submit claims to the Defense Ministry.

IDF Central Command Head Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth said the incident was a grave violation of IDF values.

Despite Bluth’s criticism of the officers and soldiers involved, there are regular reports of similar incidents, which generally seem to go uninvestigated unless there is video evidence.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has accused the police of systematically failing to probe violence and property destruction against Palestinians

To understand what happened at the village of Jinba in Masafer Yatta over the weekend, it's best to look at a drawing by a young boy in this region of the southern West Bank. The work, which the boy Jafar Rabai calls "Settlers Dress Up as Soldiers," depicts six soldiers with sidelocks, marking them as religious settlers.

In the drawing, a boy is lying on the ground with his head bleeding; another boy is lying on the ground as a soldier holds a rifle to his head. Another soldier is halting an ambulance, and the other four are brandishing their rifles.

The drawing is a good depiction of the events over the weekend, which started with reports of an attack on an Israeli shepherd – reports that triggered harsh reprisals by settlers and Israeli soldiers.

The blackboard in the little village school still bears the date of the 26th of Ramadan, last Wednesday. The school also fell victim in the attack – soldiers broke down its doors and destroyed dozens of desks and chairs.

In one classroom, they tore down a Palestinian flag from a wall and set it on fire in the middle of the room. Almost all the school's windows were broken; someone even took the trouble to break the loudspeaker that sounds the bell.

The soldiers also went to the small clinic next door that is visited once a week by a physician from Doctors Without Borders. The soldiers carefully destroyed furniture in the clinic, then they did the same thing to a sink and a water dispenser.

Jinba is one of the most remote villages in Masafer Yatta, where settlers and the military are most violent in their attempt to drive the people from their homes, on land the army wants for a firing zone. Many people in the village live in caves or use them for storage; the people make their living shepherding and in agriculture.

The sequence of events began Friday. "A Jewish shepherd has been attacked. … Terrorists from the village of Jinba attacked the shepherd with clubs while he was out with his flock and wounded him," the settlers said in a statement.

The announcement was accompanied by two photos of the shepherd with blood on his clothes and hands. But on Saturday, it turned out that this was no ordinary shepherd. In footage released by people from Jinba, the shepherd is seen driving toward two Palestinian counterparts on an all-terrain vehicle, before he attacked one of them.

It's unclear what happened next and whether the Israeli shepherd was indeed wounded by the Palestinian shepherds or someone who came to help them. Either way, reprisals by settlers quickly followed.

Shortly after the attack, around 15 young settlers covering their faces stormed the village armed with clubs. Footage shows them entering the first home and viciously beating 15-year-old Ahmed al-Amur, even after he fell down bleeding.

They then attacked Ahmed's 64-year-old father, Aziz, who was struck several times and was left with a fractured skull, presumably from an iron bar. Next came his second son, Kosay, whose arm was broken. In the yard around the house one can still see bloodstains from Ahmed, while his father's bloodstains are still in the adjoining cave.

A neighbor of the Aziz family, Leila Abu Younis, heard the screaming and ran over. "There were settlers there, maybe 15, veiled," she says. "They attacked the boy and we didn't dare go near them; we couldn't do anything, but we saw there were soldiers in the distance and we cried out to them: 'They're murdering him, murdering him, get an ambulance!'

"One settler was standing between me and a soldier. The settler picked up a stone and threw it at me, and the soldier told him not to throw anything but did nothing. The boy was bleeding from his ears and mouth. His brother, with his broken arm, said to me, 'Auntie, talk to him so he doesn't fall asleep, so he doesn't die.

While the wounded lay bleeding and waiting for evacuation, dozens of soldiers arrived at the other side of the village and ordered all men in the area, 22 in all, to go to the square by the mosque. They were blindfolded and their hands were tied behind their backs.

The youngest detainee was 15. They were made to stand in line and were put on vehicles, at least one of which belongs to a local settler. The detainees were taken to a nearby army base.

Issa Abu Younis, Leila's husband, quickly returned from his flock when he heard what was happening in the village, but he was detained by soldiers. "At the base, they put us in a big hole in the sand, handcuffed and blindfolded," he says.

"After a couple of hours, we were taken for questioning at Kiryat Arba" – a West Bank settlement. He says they fasted during the day, as they do all day during the month of Ramadan, "and they threw us there without water. They finally gave us one bottle, for 22 people. It wasn't until 11 at night that they gave us more water."

The police said in a statement that "22 suspects have been detained on suspicion of complicity in the incident" – the attack on the shepherd. But by midnight, 15 of them had been released with another seven left in detention until Thursday. And the story wasn't over.

Leila Abu Younis invited her neighbor, whose husband was hospitalized due to injuries sustained during the settlers' attack, to sleep over with her daughter. All the women and girls, 15 in all, with the youngest just 4, slept together in a big room.

At 2:30 A.M., the soldiers returned. "We heard loud banging on the door. I got up to turn on the light but didn't manage to do so before the door was opened," Leila Abu Younis says.

"The soldiers told us to go outside in the cold and sit on the ground with our hands on our heads. They went into the room and I heard them breaking everything."

Locals estimate that over 100 soldiers arrived in the overnight operation in the village. They divided into teams of five to seven and, equipped with sledgehammers, went through houses destroying property and food.

In the room where Leila Abu Younis slept with the women and girls, the soldiers uprooted a fireplace, brought down a wardrobe and took the trouble to scatter ashes from the fireplace on clothes and blankets. In the closet, the soldiers found 300 shekels ($82) and 100 Jordanian dinars ($141).

According to people there, the soldiers tore up the money and threw the scraps onto the floor. In a cave next door that is used to store food, they spilled out dozens of kilograms of flour, sugar, salt, rice, olive oil, fermented butter, sheep fat and buttermilk; they also threw blankets over the spilled food.

In addition, they broke the windows at the fodder storehouse, tore up sacks of barley and spilled it out. Someone also opened the sheep pen, releasing the lambs.

"I went over to the soldier to tell him that those lambs were ours, but he pointed his gun at me and told me to keep away," one person says, adding that five lambs had fled or were stolen or run over.

In other homes they broke TVs, cameras, tablets used by children for school, refrigerators. One resident says an officer told him the rationale of the operation: "Yesterday you believed you were strong; today we'll show you who's strong."

Another neighbor says he identified one of the soldiers as a settler who lives nearby. "He approached my nephew, looked him in the eye and told him, 'You're forbidden to go out with the sheep again,'" the neighbor says.

Almost every resident who was in the village during the operation, which went on until the morning, recalls the terror. "There was a crib with a 4-month-old baby," says Tharwat Mehmed, a local resident.

"One soldier asked me what I had there; I told him it was a baby, my granddaughter, and then he shouted so he would scare her. My daughter, 19, began to shake with fear. Her face went yellow."

According to Mahmoud Ahmed, "Five soldiers came into our home. They took all the cheese and all the sacks and spilled everything onto the floor. They threw down all the kitchen utensils and the wheat and mixed it up with sheep medicine.

"I also have a place for pesticides and fertilizers; they spilled those onto the sheep's barley, ruining it. I was outside with my son, who's 5 months old, and they didn't even let me go inside to take a piece of clothing to cover up the child."

By morning, the soldiers left the village, leaving the people no time to eat the last suhur meal before the last day of Ramadan. In much of the West Bank, this phenomenon of settlers being drafted into regional defense battalions and abusing their neighbors under the guise of the Israeli army has become commonplace during the war. Around 5,500 settlers have been drafted by these battalions, with Masafer Yatta serving as a microcosm.

Saturday was the first day of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. Women from Jinba said that, for the first time in as long as they could remember, none of them prepared ma'amouls, the traditional holiday cookies.

"There is great fear in living here," one of them said. "Our children tell us they don't want this life anymore, but we're not giving up."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that Israel is seizing territory in the Gaza Strip hours after his government laid out plans to take over large parts of the enclave.

The announcement adds to the growing drumbeat from Israeli officials in recent days who have suggested that Israel would shift tactics to hold territory in Gaza, at least temporarily, in an effort to pressure Hamas to free the remaining hostages. The officials have also asserted a vision for postwar Gaza in which Palestinians would move elsewhere — an idea vehemently rejected by much of the world.

Holding territory, Mr. Netanyahu said, was meant to push Hamas to return at least 59 remaining hostages the group and its allies captured on Oct. 7, 2023. “The pressure will increase until they hand them over,” he said in a filmed statement.

In the 15-month military campaign that preceded a January truce, Israeli forces stormed Gazan cities before withdrawing, leaving behind vast destruction but allowing Palestinian militants to regroup in the rubble.

In the weeks after the cease-fire took hold, many Gazans returned home, but Israel resumed its attacks in mid-March.

Now, the military appears to be planning to station forces in captured territory. The defense minister, Israel Katz, on Wednesday said newly captured areas would be “added to the security zones” that the military currently maintains in Gaza, including a buffer along the enclave’s borders with Egypt and Israel, and much of a key road in the center of the enclave.

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would establish a corridor, which he hinted would cut off territory in the southern city of Rafah from the rest of the strip. The so-called Morag Corridor appeared to take its name from a former Israeli settlement in southern Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005.

It was not clear how large the corridor was or how long Israel intended to hold it. The military said that it would not provide details beyond Mr. Netanyahu’s statement.

In the northern town of Beit Lahia, Palestinians took to the streets to protest against the war and call on Hamas to give up power.

“Hamas out,” protesters chanted Wednesday at the rally. “Enough death,” they shouted.

Earlier this week, Mr. Netanyahu set forth demands for a postwar Gaza, including Hamas laying down its arms, Israeli security control in Gaza and what he called voluntary migration for Gazans.

It’s unclear whether the recent moves by Israeli amount to a bid to pressure Hamas to negotiate and make concessions, or indicate a more comprehensive plan for Gaza. Either way, Israel would face significant pushback, and it is uncertain whether either side could force the other to accept its terms for an agreement through military means.

Even if Palestinians were allowed to leave Gaza or were forced out, it’s not clear where they would be able to resettle. Arab countries, including neighboring Egypt, have rejected proposals first publicly floated by President Trump to relocate them to their soil, with some calling the ideas tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces struck a United Nations building in the northern city of Jabaliya where several hundred people were sheltering, said Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. The Israeli military said it had attacked Hamas militants hiding inside a “command-and-control” center, without providing evidence. Israel has accused Hamas of embedding in civilian areas.

The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency rescue service under the Hamas-run interior ministry, said in a statement that seven people had been killed. The group does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.

Since the cease-fire collapsed, Israeli forces have been advancing deeper into the Gaza Strip, including in the southern city of Rafah, though they have not been sweeping through Palestinian cities as they did before the truce. Both sides have been speaking to mediators about a potential deal to halt the fighting — so far without success.

Might have been better if the Orange Stain hadn't dismantled a functioning deal in the first place.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, more than 100 Hamas terrorists stumbled upon the Supernova music festival, an outdoor rave taking place near the Gaza border community of Re’im, where they brutally massacred and abducted partygoers, in what became the single deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history.

More than 3,000 partygoers were attending the overnight rave, along with some 400 staff and 75 unarmed security guards.

In all, 344 civilians who attended the Nova party and 34 security personnel were murdered or killed amid the attack, which, according to testimonies, included sexual crimes and other brutal acts. The terrorists abducted another 44 to the Gaza Strip.

As far as is known, Hamas had no prior knowledge of the party when they launched the attack and happened upon the large festival. And while some in the Israel Defense Force’s chain of command were aware that it was taking place, that information was not relayed to troops stationed nearby until it was too late, according to a military probe published Thursday that identified a number of missteps that left those at the rave virtually defenseless.

The investigation into the massacre and fighting that took place at the Nova festival is the latest of a series of detailed investigations the IDF is carrying out into some 40 battles that took place during Hamas’s October 7 attack, when some 5,600 terrorists stormed across the border, massacred some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza.

The probe, carried out by Brig. Gen. (res.) Ido Mizrahi, focused on the military’s preparations for the party; the process by which the party was approved by authorities despite its proximity to the Gaza border; the chain of events during the attack on October 7; and the conduct of troops in the area of the party.

The investigation team only looked into the attack in the area of the party, known as the Re’im parking lot, and a small section of the Route 232 highway adjacent to the festival.

The probe did not look into the murders of partygoers by Hamas terrorists in other areas of the Gaza border that day, including at several bomb shelters where the revelers had sought shelter, as they were being covered in other IDF investigations.

The findings were presented to families of victims on Wednesday, with many of them angrily rejecting the probe as unserious or accusing the army of hiding details and trying to cover up the extent of its failures, according to Hebrew media reports.

The October Council, representing families of those killed on October 7 who are advocating a state commission of inquiry into the events of that day, described the findings as “at best imprecise, and at worst — lies.”

The production company behind the Nova music festival said it was grateful that the military had taken responsibility for its failures.

“The investigation revealed and verified the extent of the neglect we felt, and the magnitude of the failure that emerges from it is multi-systemic, shocking, and incomprehensible,” it said in a statement. “We appreciate the fact that for the first time since that damned and unbearable day, an official is finally standing up to us, taking responsibility, admitting to the failures, and dealing with the anger, pain, and difficult questions.”

According to the probe, only 31 armed police officers were present at the party when the onslaught began, with the army — stunned by the shock attack on dozens of nearby communities and bases and in utter disarray — failing to come to the rescue.

The probe did not investigate the individual murders of partygoers at the festival, which are being covered by a top-tier police investigation. The IDF investigation team did, however, cooperate with the police’s Lahav 433 major crimes unit to understand the chain of events of the attack at the party.

Mizrahi and his team spent hundreds of hours investigating the massacre and fighting at the Nova party, reviewing what the IDF said was every possible source of information — the IDF’s radio communications, surveillance cameras, dashcams, footage taken by the Hamas terrorists, interrogations of captured terrorists and testimonies of survivors.

The probe was aimed at drawing specific operational conclusions for the military. It did not examine the wider picture of the military’s perception of Gaza and Hamas in recent years, which was covered in separate, larger investigations into the IDF’s intelligence and defenses.

The probe’s findings, conclusions and recommendations
The investigation team stated that “the IDF failed” to defend the partygoers at the Nova festival, which became “the single most deadly terror attack in Israel’s history.”

The investigation found that the IDF did not make any adjustments to its defenses for the party; did not deploy loudspeaker warning systems to alert partygoers of rocket fire; and did not hold any assessment that specifically dealt with the large civilian event near the Gaza border.

On the eve of the onslaught, after the IDF identified suspicious signs of Hamas activity, the Nova festival was not mentioned during any military assessments.

Additionally, ground troops deployed on the Gaza border on the morning of the Hamas attack were unaware of the existence of the party, the investigation stated.

The IDF also did not place a military representative at the party to be in contact with police officers there, who were securing the event. Nor did the IDF place a military force near the party to secure it, in addition to the police force. Both should have been done, the probe stated.

The massacre at the Nova festival was enabled by the fact that the military was entirely unprepared for such an event — a widescale attack on numerous towns and army bases simultaneously by thousands of terrorists, according to the probe. The troops defending the border were defeated at an early stage in the fighting, and the chain of command was broken.

The probe also found that because the Hamas terrorists managed to capture main junctions near the Gaza border that morning, partygoers were unable to flee and troops had difficulty in reaching the area.

According to the investigation, the Nova festival was not a predetermined target by Hamas, and the 100 terrorists who reached the area and carried out the massacre were actually planning on reaching the southern city of Netivot, located further northeast. The terrorists had no prior knowledge of the party and decided then and there to carry out the massacre, after going the wrong way, the probe stated.

On October 5 at 12:00 p.m., the party was mentioned by the chief of operations at Northern Brigade during a discussion at the brigade. The deputy commander of the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion — the unit responsible for defenses in the area at the time — was present at the meeting, although he did not pass on this information down to the troops on the ground.

The Home Front Officer carried out another tour of the area as the Unity party began that night at 10 p.m. on October 5.

The Unity party ended at 1 p.m. the following day, and the Home Front Command officer, along with the chief of operations at the Northern Brigade, carried out another tour of the site.

At 10 p.m. on October 6, the Nova festival began.

The process by which the party was approved was done correctly, and per the assessments at the time, there was no security risk in the event taking place, according to the probe. The investigation also pointed to gaps in the discussions, or lack of, between the IDF and police.

The investigation found that no assessment was held in the IDF specifically for the party, and no adjustments were made to the military’s defenses in the area in light of the party taking place.

The probe also found that soldiers deployed to the Gaza border on the morning of October 7, were unaware that more than 3,500 people were gathered at the rave near Re’im.

Additionally, the IDF did not have a military representative physically at the party who would have been able to coordinate matters with police, rescue authorities and the production company.

During the night between October 6 and 7, the IDF identified several signs of Hamas activity but misinterpreted them as not being an immediate threat. Regardless, the probe found that the Nova party was not brought up at all during the overnight discussions in the IDF, and no decisions were made concerning the festival, taking place around 5 kilometers from the Gaza border.

Timeline of the attack
Amid an initial barrage of over 1,000 rockets fired at Israel at 6:29 a.m., some 1,200 Hamas terrorists broke through Israel’s barrier with the Gaza Strip at 114 locations and headed for Israeli military bases and communities located near the border.

At 6:35 a.m., the commander of the Ofakim police station, Chief Superintendent Nivi Ohana, who was the senior officer on duty at the party that morning, decided to shut down the event. He called over the loudspeakers and members of the production team did too, ordering the partygoers to begin to disperse.

Dozens of partygoers began to flee at this stage, but the terrorists had already started taking major junctions along Route 232.

At 7:13 a.m., the Home Front Command officer at the Northern Brigade received an update that some 90% of the partygoers had evacuated the area. She updated her counterpart at the Gaza Division on the information, which in retrospect was not accurate, as well as that there were reports of gunfire in the area. The division at this stage wrongly understood that the party had largely dispersed.

Police officers were still directing traffic out of the party when they began to see that many partygoers were returning in their cars after heading north. The terrorists had opened fire on those trying to flee, outside Alumim, Be’eri and Sa’ad.

Some partygoers then tried to flee south and came under fire again there by terrorists who had captured major junctions along Route 232.

Police at that stage blocked traffic heading north from the Nova party to prevent anyone from coming under fire from the terrorists. At the same time, the officers opened up a dirt path leading east, allowing thousands to escape via agricultural fields toward the community of Patish, some on foot and some in their cars.

Meanwhile, Hamas terrorists were attacking the nearby community of Re’im at 7:50 a.m., as well as murdering partygoers along the highway and at several roadside bomb shelters.

By 8 a.m., around 90% of the partygoers had evacuated the area of the rave, with only the event staff and some of the police officers staying behind, along with some of the revelers who thought it would be safer than the roads.

At the same time, over 100 Hamas terrorists on 14 pickup trucks and two motorcycles infiltrated Israel and passed by the Gaza border community of Be’eri. A different Hamas company was already in the kibbutz, and this force was intended to reach Netivot.

A terrorist outside the kibbutz signaled to the large Hamas force to continue on the Route 232 highway. But instead of heading north to reach the Sa’ad Junction and from there heading east to Netivot, the terrorists drove south, toward the Nova party.

En route, the terrorists stopped by a bomb shelter outside Be’eri, where they murdered several people hiding there, including partygoers who fled Nova.

Route 232 heading south from Be’eri was almost entirely empty, as police had earlier stopped the traffic from the area of the party. Dozens of vehicles were abandoned by the fleeing partygoers along that section of the highway and in the area of the party.

At 8:12 a.m., the terrorists spotted the police roadblock from around 500 meters away and began to open fire. The officers, only armed with their pistols and limited ammunition, made a stand as the terrorists continued to advance toward them.

At 8:14 a.m., the terrorists fired an RPG at the roadblock, hitting one of the vehicles abandoned there, and wounding several partygoers and officers in the vicinity.

Dozens of partygoers, who had been waiting around the police officers on the highway, began to flee back into the area of the party. Others fled east through the fields.

The partygoers who fled into the party area looked for shelters as the terrorists closed in. Some hid in bushes, others inside portable toilets and trash dumpsters, and members of the staff hid underneath the drink bars.

An ambulance that was designated for the event drove from its position at the entrance to the party, heading into the camping area, as the terrorists advanced on the highway.

At 8:20 a.m., an IDF tank of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion that had been stationed at the so-called Paga military post — located just across Be’eri — arrived at the Nova party area after sustaining heavy fire on the border.

The tank team included soldiers Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, Sgt. Ariel Eliyahu, Sgt. Ofir Testa, and Cpl. Ido Somech.

Levinson and Eliyahu had been killed as they battled numerous Hamas invaders near the border, while Testa was seriously wounded. Levinson’s body was also abducted amid the fighting. Only the driver, Somech, was able to keep fighting.

Somech kept driving and came across the site of the festival, where a major battle between the terrorists and police was going on. Upon seeing the tank, the terrorists halted their advance on the Nova party. They then opened fire on the tank with RPGs and gunfire.

Testa, who was already seriously wounded, got out of the tank and with his final strength, gave his assault rifle to a festival guard who was fighting the terrorists unarmed. He turned to head back to the tank and was shot dead.

The terrorists then tried to climb onto the tank, while Somech fired back, killing one of them. They also tried to hurl grenades into the tank but failed to do so.

Somech then drove the tank out of the party area, running over several abandoned vehicles in the process, and stationing himself next to the highway. Some of the fleeing partygoers and police officers used the tank as cover as they withdrew further south down Route 232. Joining them were rave attendees, and brothers, Daniel and Neria Sharabi, who collected weapons from the dead tank crew members and defended some 30 partygoers.

The terrorists continued to advance down the highway, as they set fire to the abandoned cars on the highway. The tank and those using it as cover continued to flee further south, away from the party area.

At 8:50 a.m., the terrorists spotted partygoers fleeing on the dirt path heading east, and opened fire on them. Between 9 and 9:10 a.m., the terrorists abducted seven hostages, who had been hiding on the sides of Route 232 outside the party and did not manage to flee.

At 9:15 a.m., Maj. Avraham “Avi” Hovelashvili, the deputy commander of the Caracal Battalion, was killed fighting terrorists outside the party.

At the start of the attack, Hovelashvili was home in Ashdod. When he started to hear reports of a Hamas invasion near Kibbutz Sufa, where his Caracal comrades were operating, Avi jumped into uniform and set off to join them. On his way, he encountered a cell of terrorists at the Sa’ad Junction, and together with two police officers, they engaged in a firefight, killing several of them. He continued southward to meet up with his comrades, but en route encountered another group of terrorists, not far from Re’im, and got out of his car to fight against them and was killed.

Shortly after, the commander of the terrorists instructed his forces to enter the party area, where hundreds of partygoers and staff members were hiding.

Dozens of terrorists raided the party area shortly after 9:15 a.m., murdering nearly every person they spotted while taking the other hostages.

The terrorists fired an RPG at the ambulance that had moved to the camping area, killing 18 people who were hiding in and around it. Only two survived that incident.

By 9:50 a.m., the terrorists left the party area and returned to the highway. They were instructed by their commanders in Gaza to head for Be’eri.

At 10:20 a.m., dozens of unaffiliated Palestinians, some of them armed, reached the Nova party area and began to loot the bodies of those killed.

At the same time, further south on Route 232, fighting continued around the IDF tank. A senior reserves officer, Brig. Gen. (res.) Oren Solomon, who was fighting there, reported to his superiors that there were numerous terrorists in the area, although he was unaware of the massacre that had taken place at the party.

The Northern Brigade commander, who understood there was fighting near the Nova party, decided to send the elite Multidomain Unit to the area. The troops never reached Nova, as they got caught up fighting in Re’im at around 11:20 a.m.. The commander of the unit, Col. Roi Yosef Levy, was killed there.

At 10:25 a.m., an Israeli Air Force attack helicopter flew by the Nova party area after it was instructed to reach Re’im, and spotted a convoy of pickup trucks driving on Route 232 — the same terrorists who just murdered dozens at the party.

The helicopter crew, however, was unaware of the party’s existence and had no contact with ground troops there. They decided not to open fire on the Hamas convoy.

The first IDF troops arrived at the Nova party at 11:35 a.m. Soldiers of the Givati Brigade’s Shaked Battalion were sent there from the West Bank by the commander of the Ephraim Regional Brigade. One of the partygoers was an off-duty soldier with the Ephraim Brigade, and had called in for help earlier in the morning.

The Shaked soldiers, part of the battalion chief’s forward command team, advanced into the party compound at 11:50 a.m., where they killed two terrorists.

Over the following hour, the soldiers, joined by members of the Israel Prison Service’s elite Metzada Unit, killed some 15 terrorists in the Nova party area. Some were the Hamas invaders who stayed behind, while others were part of the second wave of infiltrators. Several terrorists were also captured by the troops.

Additional troops reached the party area after 1 p.m., though no fighting was taking place at this stage. The forces rescued those who survived the massacre and treated those wounded.

At 3 p.m., the party area was declared cleared of terrorists.

By 8 a.m. the following day, on October 8, the bodies of the victims were removed from the party area.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday wrapped up his visit to Hungary, heaping praise on the European ally for supporting Israel at international organizations.

“It defends us in the European Union,” Netanyahu said before boarding Wing of Zion to fly to Washington, as a military honor guard saw him off. “It defends us in the UN, and no less than that, in the corrupt International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is directed against all of us — against IDF soldiers, IDF commanders, and the State of Israel.”

He said Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC last week is “a sign of things to come.”

Netanyahu highlighted the discussions with Hungary about the joint production of armaments and the hostages in Gaza, among whom is a Hungarian citizen, Omri Miran.

In Washington, Netanyahu said, he would discuss with US President Donald Trump “the hostages, the completion of the victory in Gaza, and of course the tariff regime that was also imposed on Israel.”

“I hope that I can help in this matter,” Netanyahu said. “That is the intention.”

He did not mention potential discussions on thwarting Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. On Saturday night, his office had said he and Trump would discuss “efforts to reach a hostage deal, Israel-Turkey relations, the Iranian threat, and confronting the International Criminal Court.”

Noting that he is the first world leader to meet with Trump in person about the tariffs, he said, “This reflects the special personal connection and the special connection between the United States and Israel, which is so vital at this time.”

Last week Trump unveiled a sweeping new tariff policy, which included a 17 percent tariff on Israeli goods, alarming manufacturers.

Starvation was likely the leading cause of death for a Palestinian teenager who died in an Israeli prison, according to an Israeli doctor who observed the autopsy.

Seventeen-year-old Walid Ahmad, who had been held for six months without being charged, suffered from extreme malnutrition, and also showed signs of inflammation of the colon and scabies, said a report written by Dr. Daniel Solomon, who watched the autopsy, conducted by Israeli experts, at the request of the boy’s family.

Solomon is a member of Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), an organization that advocates for Palestinian human rights.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of Solomon’s report from the family. It did not conclude a cause of death but said Ahmad was in a state of extreme weight loss and muscle wasting. It also noted that Ahmad had complained to the prison of inadequate food since at least December, citing reports from the prison medical clinic.

Ahmad died on March 22 after collapsing in Megiddo Prison and striking his head, Palestinian officials said, citing eyewitness accounts from other prisoners. Israel’s prison service said a team was appointed to investigate Ahmad’s death and its findings would be sent to the authorized authorities.

Ahmad is the youngest Palestinian prisoner to die in an Israeli prison since the start of the Gaza war, according to PHRI, which has documented Palestinian prisoner deaths. He was taken into custody from his home in the West Bank during a pre-dawn raid in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said.

The autopsy was conducted on March 27 at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, which has not released a report of its findings and did not respond to requests for comment. The Ahmad family’s lawyer, Nadia Daqqa, confirmed Solomon, a gastrointestinal surgeon, was granted permission to observe the autopsy by an Israeli civil court.

Widespread abuse in Israeli prisons, rights groups say
Rights groups say they have documented widespread abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding thousands of Palestinians who were rounded up since the Gaza war started with the devastating Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.

The Palestinian Authority says Israel is holding the bodies of 72 Palestinian prisoners who died in Israeli jails, including 61 who died since the beginning of the war. Israel often holds on to the bodies of dead Palestinians, citing security grounds or for political leverage.

Conditions in Israeli prisons have worsened since the start of the war, former detainees have told the AP. They described beatings, severe overcrowding, insufficient medical care, scabies outbreaks, and poor sanitary conditions.

Megiddo Prison, a maximum security facility where many Palestinian detainees, including teens, are held without charge, is regarded as one of the harshest, said Naji Abbas, head of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel.

Ahmad’s lawyer, Firas al-Jabrini, said Israeli authorities denied his requests to visit his client in prison, but three prisoners held there told him Ahmad suffered from severe diarrhea, vomiting, headaches, and dizziness before he died. They suspected it was caused by dirty water, as well as cheese and yogurt prison guards brought in the morning and that sat out all day while detainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the lawyer said. Ramadan began on February 27 this year.

Malnourished and frail
According to Dr. Solomon’s report, the autopsy showed that Ahmed likely suffered from inflammation of the large intestine, a condition known as colitis that can cause frequent diarrhea and can, in some cases, contribute to death.

However, medical experts said colitis usually doesn’t cause death in young patients and was likely exacerbated by severe malnutrition.

“He suffered from starvation that led to severe malnutrition and in combination with untreated colitis that caused dehydration and electrolyte levels disturbances in his blood which can cause heart rate abnormalities and death,” said Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, the head of the board for Physicians for Human Rights Israel who reviewed the report at the request of the AP.

She said the findings indicated medical neglect, exacerbated by Ahmad’s inability to fight disease or infection because of how malnourished and frail he was.

Dr. Arne Stray-Pedersen, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Oslo in Norway who was not involved in the autopsy, said the report suggests there was a period of prolonged malnutrition and sickness lasting at least a few weeks or months. “Based on the report, I interpret the underlying cause of death to be emaciation-wasting,” he said.

Scabies rashes were also noted on his legs and genital area, the report said. There was also air between his lungs that expanded into his neck and back, it said, which can cause infection. Air can come from small tears in the lungs, which can occur from severe vomiting or coughing, it said.

Ahmad’s family said he was a healthy high schooler who enjoyed playing soccer before he was taken into custody. His father, Khalid Ahmad, said his son sat through four brief court hearings by videoconference, and he noticed at one of them, in February, that his son appeared to be in poor health.

The family hasn’t yet received a death certificate from Israel, the elder Ahmad said Friday, and are hoping Dr. Solomon’s report will help bring his son’s body home.

“We will demand our son’s body for burial,” he said “What is happening in Israeli prisons is a real tragedy, as there is no value for life.”

Around a dozen armed settlers raided the Palestinian village of Tuba in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills on Saturday, in a coordinated attack that locals said was aimed at intimidating Palestinian villagers into fleeing their land.

Police were dispatched to the scene but only arrived after the settlers left, according to residents.

The goal of the raid was to try to provoke Palestinian locals into providing a “pretext” to attack them, the Israeli Beyond the Herd activist group said. The group works in solidarity with Palestinians in the southern West Bank who face regular attacks from settler extremists.

One of the settlers involved in Saturday’s raid was Issachar Manne, a US citizen sanctioned by the Biden administration due to his involvement in attacks on Palestinians. Manne and another US citizen filed a lawsuit against the sanctions that were pending when the Trump administration scrapped them altogether upon taking office.

Tuba is one of a group of Palestinian villages located in Masafer Yatta, which was the subject of “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary on settler violence and IDF demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Since the movie gained notoriety, villagers have faced an uptick in settler attacks.

Locals have said the attacks are designed to intimidate Palestinians into fleeing their land and that they are backed by the state, which rarely prosecutes such incidents.

Last week, around 50 settlers attacked homes in the northern West Bank village of Duma, reportedly injuring three Palestinians, as the settlers torched property and assaulted residents.

After the settler rampage in Duma, Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday declined to characterize it as terrorism, saying: “I don’t define this as ‘terror.’ This is my perspective.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of his hard-right coalition lashed out at the Shin Bet after the Kan public broadcaster published a recording of the chief of the security agency’s Jewish Division saying that radical settler youths were arrested and held without evidence, and calling them “shmucks.”

Netanyahu’s office vowed a thorough investigation of the matter.

In the tape, Cdr. Avishai Mualem — a senior officer in the police’s West Bank division who is suspected of ignoring Jewish nationalist attacks to curry favor with National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — speaks with the Shin Bet official, who can only be identified by the Hebrew initial “Aleph.”

The two discuss arrests made under the controversial practice of administrative detention, which enables individuals to be held without charge for up to six months at a time, under limited court review.

While the practice is primarily deployed against Palestinians to prevent terror, administrative detention has also been used against some extremist Jewish Israelis, which has drawn increasing criticism of the ruling Likud party by its far-right coalition members.

The broadcaster did not specify when the recording was made. In November, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared the end of the use of administrative detention against West Bank settlers, and in January, released those being held without charges.

The recording aired by Kan begins with Mualem and the Shin Bet officer discussing where to hold some Jewish detainees as they wait for the defense minister to sign off on the administrative detention orders.

“Right,” Aleph says in response to Mualem’s suggestion that they be put in holding cells. “We always want to arrest them for interrogation, as much as possible.”

“You see how they deal with Shin Bet investigations. We arrest these shmucks without evidence for a few days,” adds the Shin Bet officer.

“They will tear into us over that,” Muallem protests, but Aleph assures him it is being handled by the Shin Bet chief’s office in coordination with the defense minister.

Aleph is also heard pressing Mualem to arrest potential suspect settlers in the hope of catching them with incriminating material.

“What, arrest them for the sake of it?” Mualem asks.

Aleph also dismisses the IDF presence in the West Bank as being sub-standard, claiming that the army has sent its soldiers to fight in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon while those deployed to the West Bank are “militias, the settlers themselves.”

The recording aired by Kan begins with Mualem and the Shin Bet officer discussing where to hold some Jewish detainees as they wait for the defense minister to sign off on the administrative detention orders.

“Right,” Aleph says in response to Mualem’s suggestion that they be put in holding cells. “We always want to arrest them for interrogation, as much as possible.”

“You see how they deal with Shin Bet investigations. We arrest these shmucks without evidence for a few days,” adds the Shin Bet officer.

“They will tear into us over that,” Muallem protests, but Aleph assures him it is being handled by the Shin Bet chief’s office in coordination with the defense minister.

Aleph is also heard pressing Mualem to arrest potential suspect settlers in the hope of catching them with incriminating material.

“What, arrest them for the sake of it?” Mualem asks.

Aleph also dismisses the IDF presence in the West Bank as being sub-standard, claiming that the army has sent its soldiers to fight in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon while those deployed to the West Bank are “militias, the settlers themselves.”

President Trump announced Monday that the U.S. would begin direct engagement with Iran.

During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Trump said "we're having direct talks with Iran," beginning Saturday. "We have a very big meeting, and we'll see what can happen," he said. The president said Iran is "going to be in great danger" if the direct talks don't go well.

Hours later, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi confirmed talks were set for Saturday, in Oman, but referred to them as "indirect high-level talks."

"It is as much an opportunity as it is a test. The ball is in America's court," he wrote on social media.

Iranian news agency Tasnim later said Araghchi would lead Tehran's delegation and negotiate through a mediator with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Mr. Trump's meeting with Netanyahu took place as new tariffs the president is levying on Israel and the rest of the world are about to go into effect on Wednesday. The U.S. is set to impose 17% tariffs on imports from Israel, effective Wednesday. Other nations, too, are scrambling to try to reverse Mr. Trump's tariffs.

Netanyahu said he told Mr. Trump that Israel would soon address his country's trade deficit with the U.S.

"I can tell you that I said to the president, a very simple thing — we will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States," Netanyahu said. "We intend to do it very quickly. We think it's the right thing to do. And we're also going to eliminate trade barriers."

Still, Mr. Trump didn't indicate he's quite ready to eliminate tariffs on imports from Israel.

It's not a failure, It's delegation.

It's the similar to China's "fishermen militia".

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said on Monday that an autopsy showed that 15 medics and rescuers killed by Israeli forces last month in Gaza were shot in the upper body with “intent to kill.”

The killings occurred in the southern Gaza Strip on March 23, days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the Hamas-ruled enclave, when troops operating in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah opened fire on a convoy of vehicles that they deemed to be “suspicious.”

Palestinians have accused Israeli forces of attempting to cover up the incident by burying the bodies in a mass grave, and claims emerged that some of the bodies had their hands tied and were seemingly shot dead from close range, which the IDF has denied.

In the initial findings from its investigation of the incident, the military asserted that at least six of those killed had been posthumously identified as Hamas operatives. It has not yet named the operatives, and is expected to do so only once its probe is concluded.

In total, eight staff members from the Red Crescent, six from the Hamas-linked Palestinian Civil Defense, and one employee of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, were killed in the incident, according to the UN humanitarian office OCHA and Palestinian rescuers.

Their bodies were found buried near the site of the shooting in what OCHA described as a mass grave.

Dr. Younis Al-Khatib, president of the Red Crescent in the West Bank, told journalists in Ramallah on Monday that an autopsy of the first responders revealed that they had been shot “with intent to kill.”

“There has been an autopsy of the martyrs from the Red Crescent and civil defense teams,” he said. “We cannot disclose everything we know, but I will say that all the martyrs were shot in the upper part of their bodies, with the intent to kill.”

He said that the Red Crescent was calling for “the world to form an independent and impartial international commission of inquiry into the circumstances of the deliberate killing.”

“Why did you hide the bodies?” Khatib said of the Israeli forces involved in the attack.

According to OCHA, the first team, which it said comprised rescuers and not Hamas terrorists, was hit by Israeli forces at dawn.

In the hours that followed, additional rescue and aid teams searching for their colleagues were also struck, OCHA said.

After the incident came to light, the IDF initially claimed that the ambulances were traveling without any headlights or emergency lights, and were uncoordinated.

A video found on the phone of one of the slain medics later surfaced, published by The New York Times, and appeared to show that the emergency vehicles were clearly marked and had their emergency lights on when the IDF opened fire.

The IDF has acknowledged that, based on the video, its initial statement asserting that the ambulances had had their lights off appeared to be incorrect, noting that it was based on the testimony of soldiers involved in the incident.

A longer, 19-minute video segment, taken from the same phone, was published by the Red Crescent on Monday.

While the name of the medic who filmed the attack was not initially released due to his family’s fear of retaliation by the IDF, The New York Times identified him on Monday as Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan.

In the video, said by the Times to have been taken from one of the ambulances dispatched to search for the first missing ambulance, Radwan can be heard saying: “We’re calling their phones and nobody is answering.”

“Ezzedine usually answers, and so do Mustafa and Munther,” he said, according to the English captions provided by the Times.

After happening upon the ambulance of their missing colleagues, the medics exit their vehicles, and gunfire can be heard as they run toward it. Radwan can then be heard reciting the Shahada, a Muslim prayer typically said before death.

At that point, the video goes dark, but the gunfire continues for five minutes. In those five minutes, the Times said, Radwan can be heard saying in Arabic that there are Israelis in the area, and soldiers can be heard yelling unclear orders in Hebrew.

According to the news outlet, Radwan’s final words before the video cuts off are “The Israeli soldiers are coming, the Israeli soldiers are coming.”

The army said that troops then collected the bodies of the 15 medical workers in one spot, covered them in sand and marked the burial spot.

It said that burying bodies in this way was an approved and regular practice during fighting in Gaza, to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.

The Red Crescent said, however, that the bodies had been buried “in a brutal and degrading manner that violates human dignity.”

The IDF also claimed that it promptly notified the UN of the burial spot, but that it took several days for the bodies to be recovered, in coordination with the military.

The UN has said that the mangled ambulances were found buried alongside the bodies. According to the IDF probe, an armored D9 bulldozer pushed the ambulances off the road to open it up, crushing the vehicles in the process.

In Ramallah, Khatib dismissed the accusation that the ambulances were being used by Hamas operatives, saying Israel had failed “to prove even once in 50 years that the Red Crescent or its crews carry or use weapons.”

According to the Times, the IDF declined to answer as to whether or not the men in the ambulances were armed.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has said that the incident was the single most deadly attack on Red Cross or Red Crescent workers anywhere since 2017.

According to the United Nations, at least 1,060 healthcare workers have been killed in the 18 months since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, during which some 1,200 people were killed, and 251 were taken hostage by terrorists.

lmost half of Israelis, specifically 49%, do not believe that you can arrange the release of the remaining Gaza hostages while also toppling Hamas and removing them from their control over the Gaza Strip, an Israel Democracy Institute (IDI)'s Viterbi Family Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research poll published on Thursday found.

IDI added that 46% "think or are certain" that this is possible to achieve.

The poll also found that 68% would prioritize returning the hostages, and 25% would prioritize toppling Hamas if they had to choose only one option.

The question had previously been asked in January 2024 and September 2024, and the most recent results also showed that the "share of those who favor bringing home the hostages as the most important goal has risen steadily, while the share who prioritize toppling Hamas has fallen."

IDI broke down the Jews polled in the survey by political orientation and found that 91% of those on the Left and 80.5% of those in the Center thought that bringing hostages home was more important than toppling Hamas, as compared to 52% of those on the Right.

Among those who believed toppling Hamas is the priority, 74% thought both goals could be achieved simultaneously, while 59% of those who believed returning hostages is the priority believed that they cannot be achieved simultaneously.