[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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^Hamas leaders going into exile as part of a deal would amount to a conditional surrender of Hamas. I don't know if they'd ever be willing to accept that.

Thousands of Israelis, including soldiers, parents of fallen soldiers and relatives of Hamas hostages, took part in a rally on Thursday in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

The rally concluded a five-day cross-country march titled, “Victory March: Keep Going Until IDF Victory,” organized by Reservists Until Victory, a group established by Israeli reservists who served in the Gaza Strip and along Israel’s border with Lebanon since Oct. 7.

Both the march and the concluding rally called on Israel to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza until achieving a decisive victory.

Galit Waldman, the mother of Maj. Ariel Ben Moshe, 27, a commander in the Sayeret Matkal unit who was killed in action in Kibbutz Re’im on Oct. 7, and Hila Baruch Lilian, a resident of Sderot and a representative of the Otef Israel Forum of residents of the Gaza surrounding communities, addressed the protesters in Jerusalem.

Eliyahu Liebman, whose son Elyakim Liebman, 24, was kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza, and Itzik Bunzel, the father of Sgt. Amit Bunzel, 22, a Paratrooper from Shoham who was killed in action in central Gaza on Dec. 6, also addressed the crowd.

“Amit was a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, and his job was to return the kidnapped,” Bunzel said in his speech. “If I had the chance to talk to him I would have told him: Amit, my son, don’t hesitate, kill as many terrorists as possible, do everything you can to return the kidnapped.”

“In the past two weeks, talks of a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of troops raised the alarm. Israelis understand the impact that ending the war now could have on our future,” said Ach, the CEO of the Ad Kan (“It Stops Now”) organization, founded in 2015 by a group of IDF security personnel to fight anti-Israel bias.

Ach also explained that while many members of the Israeli government wanted to take part in the march, the group decided to remain apolitical.

Vered Vaspi Zabri, from Yesod Hamaala, a village in northern Israel near Kiryat Shmona, was among the marchers, walking 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) earlier this week.

“I lost my father in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, I lost my brother in the First Lebanon War in 1982, and I just lost my son in this one,” she told JNS, speaking of her son, Cpt. (res.) Arnon Moshe Avraham Benvenisti Vaspi, 26, an officer in the Givati Brigade’s Reconnaissance Battalion who fell in combat in Gaza on Nov. 20.

“Why would you send my son to war if you are not planning on finishing it? A few years from now, more people will die in terror attacks and more soldiers will fall in battle. There is no alternative to defeating our enemy, whose only reason for existing is to kill Jews,” she added.

During the news conference, the president also discussed the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, referring to Israel's actions in Gaza as "over the top."

Mr. Biden touted his success in convincing Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, although he referred to him as the president of Mexico. Mr. Biden also said he has been pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow aid to enter from Israel as well.

"There are a lot of innocent people who are starving. A lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's gotta stop," Mr. Biden said.

"I'm pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage cease-fire," the president said. Mr. Biden said he had been "working tirelessly" for a "sustained pause in the fighting, in the actions taking place in the Gaza Strip."

"I think if we can get the delay for that, an initial delay, I think that we would be able to extend that so we could increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes," Mr. Biden said.

Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected demands for a cease-fire and said Israel's military would continue moving into the southern Gaza city of Rafa, where more than 1 million people have fled to escape to war.

Mr. Biden also expressed hope that prior negotiations with other leaders in the Middle East regarding Israeli security would continue, and insinuated it was possible Hamas's attack was designed to halt those talks.

Palestinians in Rafah, the packed city on Gaza’s southern border, were terrified Friday of an impending Israeli ground assault — which the United States and aid groups have warned risks “disaster.”

More than half of the enclave's 2.3 million people have sought shelter in Rafah, crowding tents in refugee camps stalked by growing hunger, disease and more recently fear that there will be nowhere to escape if troops enter the city.

Washington said it could not support such an operation without proper planning, world leaders voiced growing alarm, and aid officials warned of a “bloodbath.”

In the face of that pressure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested Friday that civilians would be able to flee before the expected ground assault, which he said was necessary in the campaign against Hamas.

“It is clear that a massive operation in Rafah requires the evacuation of the civilian population from the combat zones,” Netanyahu said in a statement on social media. He ordered his military to prepare a plan but offered no further details.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for further details on the plan from NBC News.

Israeli airstrikes and bombs haven’t spared Rafah in this war — and have ramped up in recent days — but a ground offensive would make an already dire humanitarian situation much worse.

NBC News spoke to several residents who described mounting anxiety in the city, the last major population hub in Gaza that has not been taken over by Israeli troops.

“The last stop was supposed to be Rafah,” Isra Shehada, 33, told an NBC News crew on the bustling streets. “After Rafah, we only have God. Where can we go next ?”

But while Palestinians like Shehada saw Rafah as a last refuge, with at least basic infrastructure and aid present, Israel made clear this week that it views the city on the Egyptian border as a last remaining stronghold for Hamas.

“It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas and leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu's office said Friday. It said he had ordered the military to draw up “a dual plan for both the evacuation of the population and the dismantling of the battalions.”

John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, said that a ground offensive in Rafah is “not something we would support.” Vedant Patel, a State Department spokesman, said that going ahead with such an offensive “with no planning and little thought in an area where there is sheltering of a million people would be a disaster.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Netanyahu's call for an evacuation plan and said a ground assault into Rafah would pose “a real threat and a dangerous prelude to implementing the policy of displacing our people.”

Rafah was home to an estimated 250,000 people before the war, but has since been “stretched beyond its limits,” according to humanitarian officials, as Palestinians heeding Israeli evacuation calls and chasing relative safety fled to the city.

’Already a disaster'
Any attempt to evacuate from the overcrowded city would be neither feasible nor safe, said Andrea De Domenico, who heads the U.N. humanitarian agency responsible for the Palestinian territories.

“People are everywhere. This congestion not only makes it difficult for people to move but also hampers any potential evacuation efforts, and humanitarian operations,” she said in a statement from Gaza.

Satellite imagery shows the sprawling growth of makeshift shelters and tents that have transformed the enclave’s southernmost city over the past two months.

The city has been beset by soaring food prices, contaminated water and spreading disease. Incidents of theft have hampered what little aid is coming through, which charities describe as a “drop in the ocean” compared to the need.

“Rafah is already a disaster,” Amira Riyad, 30, said from an overcrowded hut. She said she was sharing a toilet with more than 50 people and struggles to find diapers for her 1-year-old daughter.

One family resorted to living in a chicken coop, with young children sleeping atop poultry cage shelves with nothing but flimsy mats and some blankets.

Though “the smell of the sewage at night is terrible, and the smell of the chicken is nasty,” Lana Hanoun, 8, said it was still better than the risk of shelling from which the family had fled several times.

But the situation would only be exacerbated by a ground assault.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, which has been the main humanitarian relief provider on the the ground since the onset of hostilities, warned it may be forced to cease operations.

“No war can be allowed in a gigantic refugee camp,” said Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, warning of a “bloodbath” if Israeli operations expand there.

As Palestinians have been pressed toward Egypt’s doorstep, towering concrete walls stand ominously at the border — a reminder of their perilous situation. Egypt has warned against any action that could force a mass displacement of Palestinians across its border.

Egypt's Rafah border crossing with Gaza is mostly sealed, but has been the main entry point for humanitarian aid. The vast majority of Gazans are unable to cross, however.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly believes that given international pressure, Israel only has one month left to complete its upcoming operation in Rafah, aimed at dismantling the Hamas terror group’s remaining operative battalions in Gaza.

According to a Channel 12 news report on Friday evening, the prime minister recently told the small war cabinet that the operation in Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than half of the coastal enclave’s 2.3 million residents are sheltering, will need to be completed before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins around March 10.

The assessment was reportedly made during a discussion about the pending Rafah operation, during which IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told Netanyahu that the Israel Defense Forces was ready to operate, but that it needed the government to first decide what it wanted to do with the displaced Gazans sheltering there.

The IDF chief of staff was also quoted by Channel 12 as saying that the military also needs to know the government’s plans for the Philadelphi Route, the 14-kilometer security road along Gaza’s border with Egypt.

The latter issue needs to be resolved to maintain cooperation with Egypt, given Cairo’s concerns about any Israeli operation along the border and amid fears that Palestinians fleeing Rafah could try and cross into Egypt. Channel 12 claimed that Netanyahu has dragged his feet on reaching decisions on either issue.

Earlier on Friday, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that Netanyahu had directed the IDF to draft a plan for evacuating the civilians in Rafah so that the IDF operation could move forward. But, Channel 12 suggested that the statement was little more than public posturing given that the army has already crafted such plans and is waiting for directives from the political echelon.

“It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu’s office had said in the statement. “On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.”

The PMO announcement came amid US statements that Israel has not conducted the pre-operational planning necessary to ensure that civilians will be kept out of harm’s way and that failure to do so risks “disaster.”

The United Nations was similarly concerned, saying that Palestinian civilians in Rafah need to be protected, but that there should not be any forced mass displacement. “We’re extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

“What is clear is that people need to be protected, but we also do not want to see any forced displacement — forced mass displacement — of people, which is by definition against their will,” Dujarric said. “We would not support in any way forced displacement, which goes against international law.”

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also voiced concern for civilians in Rafah on Friday: “The unprecedented density of Rafah’s population makes it nearly impossible to protect civilians in the event of ground attacks.”

After decades of efforts to keep the Hamas threat in check, Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah — and the Philadelphi Route running between it and Egypt’s border — once again is a major problem for Israel.

Palestinians began digging tunnels under Israel’s border fences during the First Intifada in the late 1980s, and in the ensuing decades, the Israel Defense Forces tried a range of methods to uncover the tunnels and keep terrorist groups from bringing in deadly new weapons.

The focus was on the Philadelphi Route, the 14-kilometer security road dividing the Gazan and Egyptian sections of Rafah. But it was perilous work. During the Second Intifada, the corridor is where 13 IDF soldiers were killed in the 2004 APC Disaster, and Hamas managed to detonate explosives under the JVT outpost, killing five soldiers

Over the objections of Israel’s security services and many officials, Israel withdrew from the Philadelphi Route in the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Israel allowed Egypt to introduce 750 heavily armed border guards, but they failed to prevent a massive increase in smuggling into the Strip.

When Hamas forcibly ejected the Palestinian Authority from Gaza in 2007, they used the tunnels — and occasional destruction of the Egypt border fence — to fill their coffers, and to build up their military capabilities

Now, four months after Hamas used those weapons to massacre 1,200 Israelis and take hundreds more hostage, Rafah has become a tangled quandary for Israel’s leadership, one that threatens to derail the entire war effort.

With the exception of Rafah, Israeli forces have maneuvered into all of Gaza’s cities and driven Hamas fighters underground. It is hard to imagine Israel meeting its war aim of toppling Hamas if it doesn’t take Rafah. Most of the remaining functioning Hamas battalions are in the city, and if Israel doesn’t take control of the border area, the Gaza-ruling terror organization can resume smuggling new weapons in — and potentially hostages or senior leaders out — when the fighting ends.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as much on Friday.

A growing strategic headache
But the circumstances are becoming more problematic for Israel with each passing day.

From the beginning of the war, Israel told Gazans to move south, and over 1 million civilians are now in and around the city.

Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.

“Continuing Israeli strikes on densely populated areas will create an unlivable reality. The scenario of mass displacement is a possibility. The Egyptian position on this has been very clear and straightforward: We are against this policy, and we will not allow it,” said a spokesperson for Egypt’s foreign ministry.

Images in recent weeks circulating on social media have shown Egypt apparently fortifying its defenses at the border, with additional barbed wire and walls.

The US has also been increasingly strident in its warnings about the consequences of an operation in Rafah.

US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Thursday that the US had “yet to see any evidence of serious planning for such an operation,” adding: “To conduct such an operation right now with no planning and little thought in an area” where one million people are sheltering “would be a disaster.”

The White House issued a similar warning.

“Any major military operation in Rafah at this time, under these circumstances, with more than a million – probably more like a million and a half – Palestinians who are seeking refuge and have been seeking refuge in Rafah without due consideration for their safety would be a disaster, and we would not support it,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

Waiting this long to tackle the strategic border area has already made it less likely that the IDF will be able to do so, at least under the conditions it wants.

Putting off the conquest of Rafah and the border may turn into the biggest strategic mistake of Israel’s ground operation against Hamas.

A canceled plan
The roots of the war’s mismanagement go back years before it erupted.

By the time Hamas jeeps were pouring through dozens of breaches in the state-of-the-art border fence on October 7, it had been almost a decade since the IDF had an operational plan ready for conquering the Gaza Strip and defeating Hamas.

Gen. Sami Turgeman, head of the IDF’s Southern Command during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, came into his position and found that there was no such plan. Yoav Gallant, who was in the post when Hamas took over the Strip in 2007, declined to create one, and no one decided to do so despite the rounds of fighting against Hamas in the interim.

Turgeman’s plan had three options, the largest of which was for the takeover of Gaza. The smallest one envisioned brigade-size IDF assaults against Hamas battalions.

The medium option, called Kela David (David’s Sling), would cut off Gaza City and the northern Strip from the south, using Division 162 north of the city and Division 36 to the south.

The plan for retaking Gaza called for four divisions attacking simultaneously, adding an assault by Division 98 on Khan Younis, and Division 252 on Rafah. Each city would be cut off from the others within two weeks, with civilians offered sheltered zones along the coast. After the quick conquering of the Strip, the clearing phase would begin in the cities.

This plan was presented to the cabinet at the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, but was turned down.

After Turgeman moved on in 2015, his operational plan was subsequently canceled and not replaced by any of his successors, which include current Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.

Conquering Gaza was seen as unrealistic given the clear aversion by the political leadership to even countenance reassuming responsibility for two million Gazans.

“Resources are limited,” an officer who worked on operational plans for Gaza during that period told The Times of Israel, “and there was no desire to put resources into a plan that had no chance of being used.”

Indecisive incursion
The lack of a plan to topple Hamas impacted the way the IDF fought after October 7. Because it needed time to draw up plans, the IDF waited three weeks to order the ground incursion into Gaza, not exploiting the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks when sympathy for Israel was at a high on airstrikes that began taking their toll on Gazan civilians.

It also affected the intelligence Israel possessed. If there was no chance of maneuvering deep into Gaza, there was little reason to expend resources on mapping out the Hamas tunnels that did not head toward Israel.

That choice has slowed the IDF operation significantly, and has made it far more dangerous for the maneuvering forces.

And when the incursion came in late October, it was not fought in an aggressive fashion that maximized Israeli advantages.

“When the offensive finally began, it seemed that some of its actions were rooted in the concept of indecisive maneuver,” wrote Brigadier-General (res.) Eran Ortal. “Between a decisive approach aimed at quickly taking over crucial enemy positions and one aimed at eliminating terrorists wherever they were, the IDF’s maneuvers were more in line with the latter. A maneuver approach would call for multiple simultaneous efforts to prevent the adversary from retreating and reorganizing.”

Such an offensive should have begun as quickly as possible, with maximum force, while heading towards multiple locations simultaneously,” Ortal continued.

Heading into Gaza City first made perfect strategic sense. The most effective Hamas battalions in terms of rocket fire were in the northern Strip, and their range would be limited somewhat if Hamas had to fire from further south.

Gaza City was also the center of Hamas’s governing capabilities.

But it is not clear why IDF forces didn’t take Rafah at the same time, as envisioned in the plan for retaking Gaza. There were far fewer civilians there at the time, making it easier for Egypt and the US to accept a major operation there.

And less than a month after the Hamas atrocities — and before Gazan casualties had reached unprecedented levels — there would have been far less room internationally to criticize Israel as it kicked off its ground operation.

‘No compromise’?
According to the Israeli official, there would be “no compromise” on toppling Hamas militarily and politically, which would mean operating in Rafah.

A second Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Thursday that the operation in Rafah will not be a large-scale assault by a full division like a current operation in Khan Younis, but will instead be organized around targeted pinpoint raids.

Israeli forces also have stepped up airstrikes on the city, and Arabic-language reports say IDF ground forces are approaching the edges of Rafah.

None of this means, however, that an operation is a given. An order to “prepare to operate” is different than a directive to attack, and, as Israel is still looking to pressure Hamas to agree to a hostage deal on more favorable terms, threats to take Rafah could make an immediate ceasefire seem more pressing to Hamas leaders.

It may well turn out that the IDF conquers the city, as Netanyahu and his war leadership promise. But the mission would have been far more certain if Israel’s political and military leadership took the Hamas threat more seriously before October 7, and drew up a more aggressive plan in the weeks afterward.

Israel’s prolonged war with Hamas is going to become a significant economic and political burden for the country over the long haul, Moody’s said Friday. So the agency downgraded Israel’s credit rating.

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Israel’s debt rating from A1 to A2 on Friday, underscoring the economic damage of the country’s war with Hamas, which has resulted in thousands of human casualties and stoked geopolitical tensions around the world.

In a Friday statement, Moody’s said the primary driver of its decision was an “assessment that the ongoing military conflict with Hamas, its aftermath and wider consequences materially raise political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future.”

While an A2 rating is still considered investment grade, the downgrade will likely make it more expensive for Israel to borrow money.

In mid-October, less than two weeks after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7, Moody’s warned that Israel’s credit rating was in danger of a downgrade.

At the time, Moody’s said that while Israel’s credit profile had been resilient to military conflict in the past, “the severity of the current military conflict raises the possibility of longer lasting and material credit impact.”

On Friday, the credit ratings agency said its decision was based on Israel’s projected higher budget deficit due to increased military spending, saying it expects Israel’s defense spending to be nearly double the level of 2022 by the end of 2024 and potentially rise even higher in the coming years.

“While there are currently negotiations underway to secure the release of the hostages against a temporary ceasefire and more humanitarian aid into Gaza, there is no clarity on the likelihood, time frame and durability of such an agreement,” the agency said.

Moody’s also warned of the “significant” risk of an escalation of the current conflict, including the potential involvement of Hezbollah, an Islamist group with paramilitary forces to the north of Israel.

Hind Rajab was fleeing the city with her aunt, uncle and three cousins when the car they were travelling in appears to have come face to face with Israeli tanks, and come under fire.

Audio recordings of calls between Hind and emergency call operators suggest that the six-year-old was the only one left alive in the car, hiding from Israeli forces among the bodies of her relatives.

Her pleas for someone to rescue her ended when the phone line was cut amid the sound of more gunfire.

Paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) managed on Saturday to reach the area, which had previously been closed off as an active combat zone.

They found the black Kia car Hind had been travelling in - its windscreen and dashboard smashed to pieces, bullet holes scattered across the side.

One paramedic told journalists that Hind was among the six bodies found inside the car, all of which showed signs of gunfire and shelling.

A few metres away were the remains of another vehicle - completely burnt out, its engine spilling onto the ground. This, the Red Crescent says, is the ambulance sent to fetch Hind.

Its crew - Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun - were killed when the ambulance was bombed by Israeli forces, the organisation says.

In a statement, the PRCS accused Israel of deliberately targeting the ambulance, as soon as it arrived at the scene on 29 January.

"The [Israeli] occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite obtaining prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the scene to rescue the child Hind," it said.

The PRCS told the BBC that it had taken several hours to coordinate access with the Israeli army, in order to send paramedics to Hind.
"We got the coordination, we got the green light," PRCS spokeswoman, Nibal Farsakh, told me earlier this week. "On arrival, [the crew] confirmed that they could see the car where Hind was trapped, and they could see her. The last thing we heard is continuous gunfire."

Recordings of Hind's conversations with call operators - shared publicly by the Red Crescent - sparked a campaign to find out what had happened to her.

Hind's mother told us - before her body was discovered - that she was waiting for her daughter "any moment, any second".

She called on the Red Crescent to publish the details of its coordination with the Israeli army.

We twice asked the army for details on its operations in the area that day, and about the disappearance of Hind and the ambulance sent to retrieve her - it said it was checking.

We have asked again for their response to the allegations made by the Palestinian Red Crescent on Saturday.

The rules of war say medical personnel must be protected and not targeted in a conflict, and that injured people must be given the medical care they need - to the fullest practical extent and with the least possible delay.

Israel has previously accused Hamas of using ambulances to transport its weapons and fighters.

US President Joe Biden issued a memorandum linking American military aid globally to adherence to international humanitarian law, including for Israel, as he called the IDF’s military operation in Gaza “over the top.”

Forms of military aid could be suspended If reports of violations are found credible, according to the National Security Memorandum issued on Thursday night.

Countries receiving military aid have 45 days, by February 8, to assure the US that they would comply with the memorandum or risk a pause in the delivery of that aid.

The US secretaries of defense and state have 90 days to submit a report on whether military aid recipients are complying with international law. After that, such a report will be filed yearly.

At a news briefing Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre downplayed the significance of the memorandum, issued after meetings with Congress.

"I want to be clear: there are no new standards in this memo, we are not imposing new standards for military aid, that is not what is in this memo," Jean-Pierre said. "Instead we are spelling out publicly the existing standards by international law including the law of armed conflict.”

New annual report to be given to Congress
What is new, Jean-Pierre said, is the annual report that will be given to Congress.

Jean-Pierre said this is in line with conversations the White House had with congressional members as they try to work together in a way that makes sense and moves the ball forward.

These are things that already exist that are now put in writing, Jean-Pierre said.

The White House briefed Israel on this memorandum and they reiterated their willingness to provide these types of assurances, Jean-Pierre says.

Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), however, said that the memorandum was “a very big deal” that “has enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance and to make sure that the US government has the tools to take action in cases of non-compliance.”

In a speech on the Senate floor Friday, he said, “It focuses in the first instance on countries that are currently in armed conflict and using US weapons, that would include Israel, that would include Ukraine.”

Biden stressed his role in the provision of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, stating, “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop, number one.”

Members of Congress raised concern over Israel’s human rights violations, The Post previously reported.

Protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv amid nationwide demonstrations Saturday evening, many of which demanded the release of hostages held by the Hamas terror group, while some called for elections.

Demonstrations were held in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Rehovot, Ra’anana, and other locales throughout the country, as Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated efforts to secure a deal stalled, with Hamas making demands Israel has rejected.

At the main rally at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, protesters marched down Kaplan Street. Police on horses attempted to clear the street and push the demonstrators toward the sides, amid cries of “shame” from the crowd.

Meanwhile, a protester equipped with a megaphone read off names of hostages who remain in Hamas captivity.

At least seven protesters were arrested after some blocked part of the Ayalon Highway heading south and set bonfires ablaze, police said.

Protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv amid nationwide demonstrations Saturday evening, many of which demanded the release of hostages held by the Hamas terror group, while some called for elections.

Demonstrations were held in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba, Rehovot, Ra’anana, and other locales throughout the country, as Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated efforts to secure a deal stalled, with Hamas making demands Israel has rejected.

At the main rally at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, protesters marched down Kaplan Street. Police on horses attempted to clear the street and push the demonstrators toward the sides, amid cries of “shame” from the crowd.

Meanwhile, a protester equipped with a megaphone read off names of hostages who remain in Hamas captivity.

At least seven protesters were arrested after some blocked part of the Ayalon Highway heading south and set bonfires ablaze, police said.

At least five other protesters received fines for “obstructing traffic,” according to the police.

Two Knesset members from the Labor party, Gilad Kariv and Naama Lazimi, showed up at the protest on Kaplan Street, using their parliamentary immunity to advocate on behalf of the demonstrators.

The pair mingled with protesters and law enforcement, attempting to reduce tensions between the two groups. When one officer confiscated a demonstrator’s drum, Kariv protested the confiscation and followed the officers. As he questioned the police on the lawfulness of their confiscation, he was forcefully shoved by an officer.

‘Not our way’
Speaking before several thousand people at Hostages Square, protest organizer Sivan Cohen Sabag decried what she described as growing partisanship surrounding the event.

“Several weeks ago we couldn’t have even imagined that hostages would become [seen as] left-wing and soldiers would be [seen as] right-wing,” the co-founder of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.

Last week’s rally took a partisan turn as speakers accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of avoiding a deal because he fears it will bring down his government and lead to elections.

“We could never have imagined that a family of hostages would be assaulted here,” she said.

Cohen Sabag was referencing an altercation last week between Einav Zangauker, mother of Matan Zangauker, who was taken hostage by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, and a passerby who was filmed shoving her and telling her that by demonstrating in front of military headquarters in Tel Aviv, she was “preventing the prime minister from waging the war.”

Such incidents “do not represent our country, it is not our country, it is not our way,” said Cohen Sabag, who went on to express thanks to Israeli troops fighting in Gaza.

Zangauker also spoke at the rally, issuing a call for an end to the fighting in Gaza to retrieve the hostages.

She said and end to the fighting was among the terms “for a deal that could bring the hostages tomorrow morning.” But she claimed Netanyahu was “hiding the terms from us and preventing the deal.”

Hamas is widely reported to have demanded a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners serving sentences for deadly attacks, among many other demands related to aid and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israel has said any demand to end the war is a nonstarter.

Zangauker accused Netanyahu of “not protecting” her from threats such as last week’s altercation. Zangauker, who said she had voted for Netanyahu and his Likud party, urged him “not to get squeezed by [Itamar] Ben Gvir and [Bezalel] Smotrich,” Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners, who have threatened to topple his government if he pursues what they call a “reckless deal.”

She added: ‘I voted for you at the ballot box. When will you vote for me?”

Danny Elgarat, whose brother Itzik Elgarat was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, lambasted Netanyahu, claiming he was engaged in fearmongering over a potential deal. Thousands answered in support with cries of “shame.”

“Netanyahu has started his scare campaign — we know them from the past: ‘Peres will divide Jerusalem’; ‘The Arabs are arriving in droves to vote’; ‘The Iranian nuclear project’ — and now he scares us that there will be a massacre if we accept the terms of the deal [with Hamas],” Elgarat said.

Elgarat said, “Only stopping the war and retrieving the hostages will restore faith in Israel’s sovereignty.”

Two 10-year-old children, Hili Cooper and Or Nohomovitch, told protesters how they miss their grandfather, Amiram Cooper, who was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz.

Eyal Ben-Reuven, a retired major general in the Israel Defense Forces, followed the children, saying: “I trained thousands of soldiers to leave no man behind, ever. This is our moral imperative.”

The price, he added in reference to retrieving the hostages, “will be unbearable.” But he said the people would support the cabinet in making a deal with Hamas.

‘Let’s choose to act before it’s too late’
In Jerusalem, hundreds protested outside the President’s Residence, while an even larger crowd gathered at Paris Square, near the prime minister’s official residence.

Activist Michal Hadas Rubin called on the government to act with responsibility toward “our children who are serving” in the military, noting that her own two children are doing so.

As the crowd called for elections, Rubin said, “Let’s choose to act before it’s too late.”

Major general (res.) Amos Malka, a former head of the Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence Directorate, also spoke at the rally, drawing a link between the coalition that came into power in December 2022 and the events of October 7.

“What’s with this crazy government? This untethered prime minister?” asked Malka. He claimed Netanyahu had dragged Israel into his own war for survival and called him a leader with “zero empathy and zero responsibility.”

He accused Netanyahu of helping to cultivate Hamas in the past, as the crowd yelled in approval.

“2024 is the year when the fate of the country will be determined,” said Malka, referring to the multiple war fronts, the hostages, Israel’s relationship with the US, and its relations with Arab neighbors.

“These kinds of challenges can only be met by a government that has the trust of the country,” said Malka. “And this government does not have the trust of the public.”

Malka concluded by calling for new elections this summer

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have added their voices to a rising tide of criticism of a planned Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Rafah, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that such a campaign was forthcoming.

There is limited space and great risk in putting Rafah under further military escalation due to the growing number of Palestinians there,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Saturday during a press briefing, warning that an escalation would have “dire consequences.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Egyptian officials warned the decades-long peace treaty between Egypt and Israel could be suspended if Israel Defense Forces’ troops enter Rafah, or if any of Rafah’s refugees are forced southward into the Sinai Peninsula.

In addition, Saudi Arabia — which has already conditioned normalization with Israel on an end to hostilities and steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state — issued a statement Saturday warning of “the extremely dangerous repercussions of storming and targeting the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip,” given the city being “the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of people.”

Reuters reported that in an effort to forestall a massive influx of refugees, Egypt has over the past two weeks stationed some 40 tanks near its border with Gaza, after having reinforced the border wall since the beginning of hostilities, both structurally and with surveillance equipment.

On Friday, Israel’s Channel 12 also reported that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi was opposed to Netanyahu’s plan for a swift Rafah campaign, saying that although the military is technically capable of such an operation, it would be unwise to undertake it without coordination with the Egyptians and plans for the city’s massive refugee population.

Netanyahu, according to the report, thinks the IDF would need to wrap up a Rafah campaign by the March 10 start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

Hamas, meanwhile, issued a statement Saturday saying military action in Rafah would have catastrophic repercussions that “may lead to tens of thousands of martyrs and injured,” for which the terror group would hold “the American administration, international community and the Israeli occupation” responsible.

‘We owe it to them’: Families of Israelis killed in war find new hope through sperm extraction

https://twitter.com/PalestineRCS/status ... 8501910745




A six-year-old girl who went missing in Gaza City last month has been found dead, along with several of her relatives and two paramedics who tried to save her.




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Note: That's two different instances of Israel attacking ambulances. Attacking ambulances is standard operating procedure for the IDF, based on the consistent pattern of choosing to do so.