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Several Gulf States, among them Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, passed on intelligence about Iran’s plans to attack Israel, providing vital information that was key to the success of the air defense measures that almost entirely thwarted the massive assault, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday citing Saudi, US, and Egyptian officials.

The cooperation was spearheaded by the US, which has for years been striving to form an informal military partnership to counter threats from Iran, the report said.

While it was already known that Jordan actively participated in the downing of drones heading to Israel through its airspace, the Journal report for the first time revealed the scope of joint activities stretching across the region, and that included countries that have no diplomatic ties with Israel.

The report cited officials as saying that the success in stopping so many drones and missiles was due to Arab countries having passed on intelligence about the Iranian plan, as well as enabling the use of their airspace and providing radar tracking. In some cases, Arab militaries took an active role in intercepting the threats and “supplied their own forces to help” the report said, indicating that Jordan was not the only Arab nation to do so.

The full role played by Saudi Arabia and “other key Arab governments” is being kept quiet, according to the report.

After the April 1 strike and Iran’s threats to retaliate, US officials began pushing Arab governments for intelligence about Iran’s plans for revenge and for help with intercepting an attack, Saudi and Egyptian officials told the Journal.

Initially, some Arab governments were hesitant, fearing that by helping Israel they would come into direct conflict with Iran or face reprisals. In addition, some were wary about being seen as aiding Israel amid its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which began with the Palestinian terror group’s devastating attack on Israel, and which has been the impetus for the spiking regional tensions.

However, eventually, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates agreed to privately pass on information while Jordan agreed to let the US and “other countries’ warplanes” use its airspace. Jordan also said it would use its own jets to intercept missiles and drones, the officials said.

They said that two days before the attack, Iranian officials told Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states about the profile of the response they were planning against Israel and its timing in order that those countries could secure their own airspace. That information was passed on to the US, providing vital details for the US and Israeli defense plans.

As the attack became imminent, Washington ordered the deployment of aircraft and missile defense systems in the region and coordinated defense between Israel and Arab governments, a senior Israeli official told the Journal.

“The challenge was to bring all those countries around Israel” despite its regional isolation, the official said. “It was a diplomatic issue.”

According to the report, missiles and drones were immediately tracked after launch by radars in Persian Gulf countries via a US operations center in Qatar. The information was beamed to fighter jets from “several countries” in the air over Jordan and other countries, as well as to warships and Israel’s missile defense units.

As soon as the drones came within range they were shot down, mostly by Israeli and US fighters, with some by Jordanian, British, and French warplanes, the officials said.

A US official told the journal that during the attack there was a period when over 100 Iranian ballistic missiles were simultaneously in the air and heading for Israel, but the vast majority were shot down by the country’s air-defense systems, both within its borders and beyond.

US officials also noted that half of the Iranian ballistic missiles either failed to launch or crash-landed short of Israel.

Two US officials confirmed that statistic to ABC News. According to that report, five missiles did make it through the defenses causing minor damage at the Nevatim Air Base, including to a C-130 transport aircraft and empty storage facilities.

The tally for US aircraft was 70 drones while two guided-missile destroyers may have stopped up to six missiles, the Journal reported. A US Patriot system near Erbil, Iraq, also bagged one ballistic missile, a US official told the paper.

The US has been working for years to forge military cooperation between Israel and Sunni Arab states that share a common alignment against Iran.

With a formal military alliance not possible under the existing political situation, the US instead worked to build an informal regional air defense cooperation. The Abraham Accords in 2020, which normalized ties between Israel and the UAE as well as Bahrain, gave a boost to the plans. In another significant move, Israel in 2021 was moved from the European theater to the US Central Command.

Dana Stroul, who until December was the most senior civilian official at the Pentagon for the Middle East region, told the Journal that “Israel’s move into Centcom was a game changer” because it made it easier to share intelligence and provide early warning across countries.

The Israeli official who spoke to the Journal agreed, saying, “The Abraham Accords made the Middle East look different… because we could do things not just under the surface but above it. That’s what created this alliance.”

Israel is believed to have significant covert cooperation with Saudi Arabia though the kingdom has repeatedly said it will only establish ties after the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Another Israeli official involved in the regional security cooperation drive said that though intelligence has been shared in the past, the response to the Iran attack “was the first time that we saw the alliance work at full power.”

Aid into Gaza has increased ‘dramatically,’ Kirby says
Israel has increased the amount of aid reaching Gaza “dramatically,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said today, calling for that flow to be sustained.

“In just the last few days, more than 2,000 trucks have been able to get in,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” with around 100 trucks entering the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours.

U.S. looking to further isolate Iran, Kirby says
The Biden administration is working to "further isolate" Iran's regime by increasing economic pressure, White House national security communications adviser John Kirby told reporters today.

"That's the upshot here: a stronger Israel, a weaker Iran, a more unified alliance of partners," Kirby said.

Israel’s response to the Iranian attack may be 'imminent,' official says
srael’s response to the Iranian attack may be "imminent," an Israeli official said Monday.

Speaking after Israel’s war Cabinet met for several hours, the official said Israeli decision-makers believe it's important for any response to closely follow the attack. Several diplomatic and military options were examined during the Cabinet meeting, the official said.

“Any response will be coordinated with the Americans,” the official added.

More than six months since Hamas militants attacked Israel and seized more than 250 hostages, it remains unclear exactly how many of the captives are still alive in Gaza, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

The uncertainty has caused anguish among the families of those held in Gaza and undermined international efforts to negotiate a cease-fire deal and the release of at least some of the hostages, the officials told NBC News.

A proposed cease-fire formula calls for Hamas to free 40 hostages who are women, children or sick and elderly men, and in return, Israel would release possibly hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. But Hamas so far has been unable to confirm it has identified 40 hostages who meet those criteria, and that has bogged down the negotiations, U.S., Israeli and Western officials said.

Far fewer hostages may be alive than is publicly known, but it is difficult to say for certain, given there has been limited visibility into the locations and conditions of some of the hostages, U.S. officials said.

Asked whether there was a firm estimate of how many hostages remained alive, a former senior Israeli official said: “Not at all. No one reliable has this information. It’s all speculation.”

U.S. officials accused Hamas of making demands that it knows are unobtainable.

"Hamas’ refusal to accept a hostage-cease-fire deal shows their disregard for the lives of the Palestinian people," a senior Biden administration official said Wednesday. "They started this war and seem to be perfectly fine with this conflict continuing."

An Israeli official said, “Hamas is dragging its feet, is not interested in a deal and continues to hope for a regional escalation, which is why the negotiations remain stalled.”

Hamas said in a statement Saturday it was prepared to sign on to a “serious and true” deal but renewed its demand for a permanent cease-fire and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops.

According to Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, whose country has acted as an intermediary for the hostage-cease-fire talks along with Egypt and the U.S., the talks have hit a “stumbling block.”

“We are passing through a delicate phase with some stumbling,” he said at a news conference Wednesday, without elaborating. “We are trying as much as possible to address this stumbling block and to move forward.”

Last week, a Hamas official, Basem Naim, said in an interview that a ceasefire is essential to identifying the number of hostages.

“Part of negotiations is to reach a ceasefire agreement to have enough time and safety to collect final and more precise data about the captured Israelis, because they are in different palaces by different groups, some of them are under the rubble killed with our own people, and we negotiate to get heavy equipments for this purpose," Naim said.

A relative of one of the several Americans believed to be held in Gaza said families are in the dark about the fates of their loved ones: “For 185 days, we have received no verification of life of any of these hostages — absent a limited number of videos released early on by the Hamas terrorists.”

The family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid putting their loved one’s fate at risk, said that Israeli security has shown Americans who have traveled to Israel and met with Israel’s security forces that they know where many of the hostages are but that the captives are constantly being moved.

“Every day they are there, we also know that they could die of starvation, illness, injury or murder,” the relative said.

The Biden administration is working under the assumption that five U.S. hostages are still alive and unaccounted for, a U.S. official said. But Washington has better visibility into the locations and conditions of some hostages than others, making it difficult to say with any certainty that all five remain alive.

Beyond the five, the U.S. believes Hamas is holding several more bodies of Americans believed to have been taken into Gaza after they were killed in the militants’ Oct. 7 assault on Israel or shortly thereafter.

Israeli troops have searched hospitals, tunnels and even graveyards in Gaza for hostages or their remains. In February, an Israeli raid in Rafah in southern Gaza rescued two hostages.

Aviva Siegel, who spent 51 days as a hostage in Gaza until she was released as part of the November deal, said her experience in captivity was a terrifying nightmare.

“I was treated like I’m nothing. I didn’t have any human rights. We weren’t allowed to talk. We weren’t allowed to even stand,” Siegel told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell last week.

“They used to starve us and eat in front of us. They used to drink water, and we begged them for water. They used to sometimes bring us just a little bit of water and say that’s the water until tomorrow at 5 o’clock. So we used to have one sip every couple of hours, each of us."

Her husband, Keith, of North Carolina, remains captive.

The US has approved a potential Israeli Rafah operation in exchange for the Jewish state not conducting counterstrikes on Iran, according to a Thursday report from the Qatari newspaper The New Arab

A senior official told The New Arab that "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to obtain American approval for a military operation in Rafah, in exchange for [Israel] refraining from carrying out a wide military operation against Iran in response to its recent attack."
He claimed that "discourse of an Israeli response to Iran contradicts the desires of the American administration, and is not realistic, given the Israeli claims that the United States played the major role in repelling the Iranian attack and preventing its success."

The source noted that "the IDF carried out airstrikes [overnight on Thursday] on several areas adjacent to the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt," adding that "the relevant officials in Egypt were notified before the execution of some of these strikes, which came in the Philadelphi axis at a space adjacent to the border with Egypt.

The report comes among public statements from some Israeli officials expressing desire to retaliate against Iran, with a report published by the KAN broadcasting channel claimed that Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, stated on Thursday that "Israel will react to Iran, and it won't take years - soon Iran's missiles will be equipped with nuclear warheads."
The Qatar report also noted that Egypt is exemplifying "full readiness and preparedness of [its] forces stationed in northern Sinai, along the 14-kilometer border strip with the Gaza Strip, as part of a plan to deal with the scenario of a ground invasion in Rafah."

Egyptian troops stationed in northern Sinai amid Rafah operation
Speaking about the potential Israeli ground invasion, Egyptian law professor Dr. Ayman Salama stated that any modification in the military situation requires Egypt's approval, "and Israel will not be able to establish buffer zones on the Egyptian-Israeli border or modify the security annex of the peace treaty between the two countries under the pretext of urgent security needs in cases of direct threats."

The State Department responded to this reporting, saying regardless of whether Israel responds to Iran's attack, the US will still not support an invasion of Rafah that does not factor in the one million people seeking refuge there and the region itself continuing to be an important conduit for humanitarian aid and conduit for the safe departure of foreign nationals.

"Any kind of operation into Rafah would require serious planning, and we would seriously oppose anything that is done without factoring in those various pieces when considering how to conduct a military operation into Rafah," Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Thursday.

What we know
Israel carried out a limited military strike against Iran and is assessing the strike’s effectiveness and the damage it caused, a source familiar with the situation told NBC News.

Earlier, Israeli officials notified U.S. officials that a response was coming, a source told NBC News.

Iran state media reports that air defense systems were engaged in several provinces and that nuclear sites in Isfahan, in central Iran, are safe.

The U.S. was not involved, a source said.

‘A lot will depend on how much damage was done,’ ex-CIA director Brennan says
Intelligence agencies will be trying to determine the scope of the Israeli strike's damage, and whether there are casualties or how many could increase pressure on Iran to respond, former CIA Director John Brennan said.

“‘A lot will depend on how much damage was done inside of Iran,” Brennan, who headed the agency from 2013 to January 2017, said on MSNBC.

Isfahan, a city in central Iran, is a “target-rich environment,” with an air base, a missile production facility and other areas that could be of interest, Brennan said. The city was also attacked before, when a military facility was struck last year, Iran said at the time.

“What CIA is doing right now is trying to determine exactly what that damage is and trying to then see how the Iranians are going to react,” Brennan said.

“And we may know whether or not we’re going to get into this very dangerous escalatory spiral by some of the initial statements that are going to be coming out of Tehran — whether or not they’re going to say, ‘This was ineffective,’ whether the Iranian defense forces were able to repel some of these strikes, even if they didn’t,” he said.

If Iran claims there are a large number of civilian casualties, it could stoke angry reactions and precede an Iranian strike in response, Brennan said.

"I think if there is a lot of blood that was shed in these strikes, the Iranians are going to really feel compelled to be able to respond somehow to Israel," he said.

Strike in Iran comes on its supreme leader's birthday
The strike, which took place Friday local time, happened on the birthday of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He turns 85.

The Biden administration announced new sanctions Thursday targeting Iran’s missile and drone program after its attack on Israel last weekend.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the sanctions speak to the commitment he and fellow leaders of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations made to collectively ramp up economic pressure on the Iranian government.

Biden also noted that U.S. allies were issuing additional sanctions and measures in an effort to curtail Iran’s destabilizing military programs. The United Kingdom announced sanctions Thursday against Iranian military figures and organizations, and European Union leaders also said this week that they would increase sanctions against Iran.

The Treasury Department said Thursday the U.S. is targeting 16 people and two entities enabling Iran’s drone production, including engine types that powered the unmanned aerial vehicles used in the attack over the weekend.

Iran-backed Hezbollah is determined not to ramp up its monthslong firefight over Lebanon’s southern border, but will respond in kind to any Israeli escalation, the political party and militia’s second-in-command told NBC News in a rare and exclusive interview.

Naim Qassem faulted Israel and the United States for perpetuating tit-for-tat attacks that have killed hundreds in southern Lebanon and displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border. The conflict started with Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which killed more than 1,200 people and sparked Israel’s bloody incursion into the Gaza Strip that has since killed nearly 34,000 people, according to the Ministry of Health in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

“We didn’t expect the war would last this long because we didn’t think that Netanyahu was that foolish, same for Biden and the other countries,” Qassem said, as Israel’s two-front conflict drags into its seventh month.

Qassem said Iran repeated its public messaging to Hezbollah.

“Tehran speaks publicly and clearly. They do not want war and they have responded to the attack on their embassy and that’s it for them,” Qassem said. “I think Iran is honest. This is what they told us and this is what they keep reiterating to the media.”

Qassem offered measured criticism of the three Arab countries — Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that assisted in Israel’s defense against the Iranian salvo Saturday night.

“It wasn’t adequate for any Arab nation to support Israel no matter what justifications they had,” he said. “Their populations will hold them accountable for all those who took this decision.”

Qassem laid equal blame for the civilian losses in Gaza on both Israel and the United States, dismissing a recent public rift between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as little more than cosmetic politics meant to “safeguard America’s image.”

“I consider that Biden and Netanyahu are both complicit in one scheme with very minor differences,” Qassem said.

In an earlier interview in November, Qassem told NBC News that Hezbollah would push more forcefully into its fight with Israel if the Jewish state continued its incursion into Gaza.

But nearly six months later, both Hezbollah and Israel have mostly hewed to “rules of engagement” — an unstated understanding between both sides that has so far tempered the fighting and confined it to the two states’ border regions.

“We will not accept that the Israelis transgress the rules of engagement that are currently set in the south” of Lebanon, he said. “If the Israelis increase their attacks, we will increase our attacks as well.”

While Israel is playing by the rules of engagement for now, senior Israeli officials have threatened to destroy Lebanon if Hezbollah escalates.

In January, an assassination by drone strike in Beirut of a Hamas leader was believed to have been carried out by Israel, ratcheting up tensions then, though Israel did not claim responsibility.

Despite its limited engagement, Qassem said Hezbollah’s fight is “serving its purpose” by “luring the Israeli forces to get busy in the north,” referring to their shared border, rather than Gaza, which borders southern Israel.

“Therefore, we will continue to do so, and we will not wage a full-scale war unless the Israelis decide to get into war against us,” he said. “Then we are ready for the full confrontation.”

Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, while an ambulance driver was killed as he went to pick up wounded from a separate attack by violent Jewish settlers, Palestinian authorities said.

Israeli forces began an extended raid in the early hours of Friday in the Nur Shams area, near the flashpoint Palestinian city of Tulkarm and were still exchanging fire with armed fighters well into Saturday.

Israeli military vehicles massed and bursts of gunfire were heard, while at least three drones were seen hovering above Nur Shams, an area housing refugees and their descendants from the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel.

The Tulkarm Brigades, which groups forces from numerous Palestinian factions, said its fighters exchanged fire with Israeli forces on Saturday.

On Saturday, Palestinian health authorities said at least 14 Palestinians, two of whom were identified by Palestinian sources and officials as a gunman and a 16 year-old boy, were killed during the raid, one of the heaviest casualty totals in the West Bank in months. Another man was killed on Friday.

The Israeli military said a number of militants were killed or arrested during the raid, and at least four soldiers were wounded in exchanges of fire.

In a separate incident, the Palestinian health ministry said a 50-year-old ambulance driver was killed by Israeli gunfire near the village of Al-Sawiya, south of the city of Nablus, as he was making his way to transport people injured during the attack on the village.

It was not immediately clear whether he was shot by settlers. There was no immediate comment from the military.

GAZA STRIKES CONTINUE
Israeli strikes hit the southern city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians are sheltering, as well as Al-Nuseirat in central Gaza, where at least five houses were destroyed, and the Al-Jabalia area in the north, health officials and Hamas media said.

In Rafah, a strike hit a house and killed a father, daughter and pregnant mother, Hamas and Palestinian media outlets said. Doctors at the Kuwaiti hospital were able to save the baby, medics said, making the baby the family's only surviving member.

Five other Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli air strike on the city before midnight, health officials said.

The Israeli military said troops were carrying out raids in central Gaza, where they were engaged in close quarter combat with Palestinian fighters.

Overall, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed 37 Palestinians and wounded 68 over the past 24 hours, Palestinian health authorities said.

The intelligence chief of Israel’s Defense Forces has resigned citing failures linked to the Hamas terror attack carried out on Oct. 7, during which 1,200 people died in Israel and more than 200 were taken hostage.

“On Saturday, October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel, whose consequences are severe and painful. The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task assigned to it,” Major General Aharon Haliva said in a resignation letter supplied by the IDF.

“At the beginning of the war I expressed to you my desire to accept responsibility and finish my duties,” he added. “After more than six months, and at the same time as the investigations begin, I would like to resign from my position.”

Haliva had previously assumed responsibility for failure to prevent the devastating attack, amid mounting domestic criticism and demands for accountability from Israel’s highest echelons. He is the first senior official to step down over the incident.

The United Nations’ human rights office on Tuesday called for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza, including one discovered days ago over which Israeli and Palestinian authorities offered differing accounts.

Palestinian Civil Defense said over the weekend that it had found a mass grave containing 283 bodies on the grounds of Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, two weeks after a similar mass grave was found at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency services organization, said some of the bodies found in Khan Younis were handcuffed, shot in the head or wearing detainee uniforms. He accused Israeli forces of killing and burying them. Israel’s military declined to address those claims on Tuesday, and they could not be independently verified.

On Tuesday, hours after the top U.N. human rights official called for an inquiry into the mass graves, the Israeli military said that its forces had exhumed bodies that were buried by Palestinians “in the area” of Nasser Hospital and examined them as part of an effort to locate hostages. It did not comment on the report of the mass grave at Al-Shifa.

The Israeli military declined to say how many bodies troops had exhumed and reburied, how they died or whether the remains of any hostages had been found at the site. It also did not say how the bodies had been examined to determine if they were those of Israeli hostages.

It was not clear where the people discovered in the mass grave were originally buried. But wartime chaos in Gaza has made it common for Palestinians to bury the dead in mass graves or in courtyards and back gardens in a hurried way that might be unthinkable in times of peace.

In January, an official at Nasser told journalists that hospital workers had buried about 150 people in the hospital yard because nearby fighting had made it too dangerous to travel to a cemetery.

The discovery of the mass grave at Nasser Hospital came two weeks after a mass grave was reported to have been discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after an Israeli military operation there. The U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday that the Gaza government had reported that another 30 bodies were found in two graves there, 12 of which had been identified. The office said it could not confirm the accounts.

The U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, said on Tuesday that an international investigation into the mass graves, not an Israeli one, was needed “given the prevailing climate of impunity”.

The Israeli military raided Nasser Hospital on Feb. 15 to stop what it said was Hamas activity, after ordering the hundreds of displaced people sheltering there to evacuate.

Although the military left the hospital in February, Israeli troops continued to operate in the Khan Younis area before withdrawing from southern Gaza earlier this month, leaving behind widespread destruction. The withdrawal allowed Palestinian emergency services to begin searching for bodies of missing Palestinians.

Doctors at the hospital and the Gazan Health Ministry had said that some people who tried to flee the Nasser compound during the Israeli raid were shot at by Israeli soldiers, with some being killed or wounded. At the time, the Israeli military said in response that it had “opened a secure route” to evacuate the civilians in the area but did not respond to questions about reports that it had shot at Palestinians trying to leave the hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces has conducted all necessary preparations to take Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah and can launch an operation the moment it gets government approval, a senior Israeli defense official said Wednesday.

Israel deems Rafah the last Hamas bastion in the Gaza Strip and is poised to evacuate Palestinian civilians from there and assault Hamas holdouts, the unnamed official told the Reuters news agency, which didn’t specify whether the source was connected to the IDF.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government told the agency that Israel was “moving ahead” with a ground operation, but gave no timeline.

Meanwhile, multiple Israeli reports indicated that top Israeli security officials visited Egypt Wednesday to coordinate the planned offensive in Rafah.

The officials included IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar, according to Channel 13 news. Axios reported that the officials had met Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and Chief of Staff Osama Askar, amid fears in Cairo that an offensive could create a humanitarian catastrophe that will drive tens of thousands of Gazans to breach the border and enter Egypt.

Egypt, which Rafah abuts, has said it warned Israel against pushing into the city. Such a move, Egypt’s State Information Service said, “would lead to massive human massacres, losses [and] widespread destruction.”

The IDF said earlier Wednesday that it was readying to deploy two reserve brigades for missions in the Gaza Strip, apparently as part of its plan to remove Hamas from Rafah.

The 679th “Yiftah” Armored Brigade and the 2nd “Carmeli” Infantry Brigade, which had been operating on the northern border, were set to take responsibility for areas of central Gaza that have remained under Israeli military control since troops largely pulled back from other areas of the Strip earlier this month, according to an Army Radio report.

The move will free up Nahal Brigade troops currently holding the central corridor to join the rest of the 162nd Division in preparing for future operations, including planned offensives in Rafah and central Gaza, military sources said.

Israeli officials said Hamas has six remaining battalions in the Gaza Strip, including four in the southern city of Rafah: Yabna (South); Shaboura (North); Tel Sultan (West); and East Rafah. Two more Hamas battalions remain in central Gaza, in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah camps.

The IDF has so far operated across northern Gaza and Gaza City, in some parts of central Gaza, and in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, saying it has dismantled the 18 Hamas battalions there.

The fighting has pushed an estimated million displaced Gazan civilians into Rafah, with the international community, including the United States, warning that an offensive in the city could significantly worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.

“I have to make a decision whether to leave Rafah because my mother and I are afraid an invasion could happen suddenly and we won’t get time to escape,” said Aya, 30, who has been living temporarily in the city with her family in a school.

Israeli officials said Hamas has six remaining battalions in the Gaza Strip, including four in the southern city of Rafah: Yabna (South); Shaboura (North); Tel Sultan (West); and East Rafah. Two more Hamas battalions remain in central Gaza, in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah camps.

The IDF has so far operated across northern Gaza and Gaza City, in some parts of central Gaza, and in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, saying it has dismantled the 18 Hamas battalions there.

The fighting has pushed an estimated million displaced Gazan civilians into Rafah, with the international community, including the United States, warning that an offensive in the city could significantly worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.

“I have to make a decision whether to leave Rafah because my mother and I are afraid an invasion could happen suddenly and we won’t get time to escape,” said Aya, 30, who has been living temporarily in the city with her family in a school.

After weeks of talks with the US about civilian safeguards, the Defense Ministry has bought 40,000 tents, each with the capacity for 10 to 12 people, for Palestinians relocated from Rafah, Israeli government sources said.

Video circulated online appeared to show rows of square white tents going up in Khan Younis, a city some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from Rafah. Images from satellite company Maxar showing multiple tent camps on Khan Younis land that had been vacant on April 7.

Government sources said Netanyahu’s war cabinet planned to meet in the coming two weeks to authorize civilian evacuations — expected to take around a month — as the first stage of the Rafah sweep. The Defense Ministry and Netanyahu’s office had no immediate comment.

Israel believes Hamas leaders and many operatives are hiding in Rafah, and also that many of the remaining 129 hostages kidnapped in the Hamas-led October 7 atrocities are being held in the city.

Hamas released a video of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin on Wednesday, the first proof that he survived being badly wounded during his capture on October 7.

Goldberg-Polin, then 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ attacks on Israel when more than 1,200 people died and more than 200 people were taken hostage.

He is shown in the undated video with part of his left arm missing several inches above the hand.

Video filmed on October 7 showed Goldberg-Polin being taken hostage with his arm severely injured. A firsthand account from a young woman, who was in a bunker with him when Hamas attacked, said he had helped to throw grenades out, before his arm was blown off from the elbow down.

The latest video shows Goldberg-Polin sitting in a chair, addressing the camera. Gesturing occasionally with his injured arm, he identifies himself and gives his date of birth and parents’ names.

He says he has been “here for almost 200 days,” suggesting the video was filmed shortly before Tuesday, the 200th day of the war.

Goldberg-Polin’s hair is cropped short in the video, which is edited with a number of cuts from wide shot to close up.

He criticizes the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as other Israeli hostages in Hamas propaganda videos have done. Held captive in Gaza for six months, he is almost certainly speaking under duress.

He mentions Israeli government ministers sitting down to holiday dinners with their families, an apparent reference to the Jewish holiday of Passover, which began Monday night and is traditionally celebrated with a family dinner.

He urges his own family to stay strong for him and finishes by saying he hopes he was able to give them some comfort on the holiday.

The Biden administration received the video Monday – two days before Hamas made it public – and officials have since been in contact with Goldberg-Polin’s family, according to a US official. The FBI’s Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell is running point on examining the video for any potential evidence and information that can be gleaned about Goldberg-Polin and his captivity, the official said.

Authorities in Gaza have concluded their search of mass graves at a hospital in the south of the strip and said they have uncovered a total of 392 bodies, including some still wearing surgical gowns.

Speaking at a Thursday news conference, an official from the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said workers have identified 165 bodies at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area earlier this month.

They are still examining the remaining 227 bodies to determine their identities, Mohammed Al Mighayyer said at the news conference in Rafah. “We found three mass graves, the first in front of the morgue, the second behind the morgue, and the third north of the dialysis building,” he added.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said any suggestion that it had buried Palestinian bodies in mass graves was false, and that a grave at the Nasser complex was dug by Palestinians in Gaza some months ago.

The Gaza Civil Defense acknowledged that around 100 bodies were buried in graves at the Nasser hospital before the IDF operation there.

A CNN stringer who visited the scene Sunday spoke to people who said they had buried the bodies of family members who had been killed in the grounds of the hospital as a temporary measure in January. When they returned after the Israeli military withdrew on April 7, they discovered the bodies had been dug up and then placed in at least one collective grave, not all in the initial spots they were buried in, the stringer said.

The Palestinian Civil Defense also showed graphic images on a TV screen at the news conference. CNN has reviewed the photos that appear to show several almost unrecognizable bodies at the complex. The images also include bodies of decomposed children.

A CNN stringer who visited the scene on Sunday and Monday saw several decomposed bodies in surgical gowns. Photos CNN has reviewed show several bodies still wearing hospital wristbands.

CNN footage also shows several other children’s bodies decomposed in the complex.

Al Mighayyer said the Civil Defense “witnessed the presence of children’s bodies in the mass graves at the Nasser Medical Complex, which proves crimes of genocide.” While the group says it is still examining the bodies, they suspect at least 20 civilians were buried alive in the complex, but it did not explain how it knows this, or offer proof, while it continues to investigate.

Al Mighayyer also claimed there had been cases of executions of patients who had been receiving treatment at the hospital. He said several bodies were found with gunshot wounds to their heads and injuries to their bodies.

CNN is unable to verify these claims and cannot confirm the causes of death of those whose bodies are being unearthed, and it is unknown who is responsible for their deaths.

Al Mighayyer said at the news conference that the Palestinian Gaza Civil Defense in Gaza “discovered torture marks on [some] bodies.” CNN cannot independently verify these claims.

Al Mighayyer added that Israeli forces buried several bodies in plastic bags “at a depth of three meters, which made them decompose quickly.” “The occupation deliberately concealed evidence of its crimes in the Nasser Complex by changing the plastic shrouds more than once,” he claimed. Video recorded by CNN shows bodies wrapped in three different colored shrouds: white, black and blue.

The Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza called on the United Nations to form an international committee to investigate the mass graves at the Nasser complex.

Calls for an investigation
Asked about the mass graves at Nasser Hospital at a United Nations briefing in New York on Thursday, Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN Secretary General said the organization has called for an international investigation but said how that will take place is “unclear at this time”.

“Investigators wherever they come from would need to have access to Gaza which would require the permission of a number of countries including Israel,” he added.

Amnesty International has also called for an investigation into the mass graves at Nasser hospital and another hospital in Gaza, the Al-Shifa medical complex, saying there was an “urgent need to grant access to independent human rights investigators.”

“Mass grave sites are potential crime scenes offering vital and time-sensitive forensic evidence; they must be protected until professional forensic experts with the necessary skills and resources can safely carry out adequate exhumations and accurate identification of remains,” it added.