(October 20, 2023)
Former head of Saudi Arabia‘s General Intelligence Presidency and former Saudi ambassador to the US Turki al-Faisal condemned both Hamas and Israel in a speech on Tuesday, saying Hamas committed acts forbidden by Islam and Israel was ‚indiscriminately‘ bombing civilians in Gaza.
„There are no heroes in this conflict, only victims,“ said Faisal in a speech at a conference hosted by Rice University‘s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
(December 10, 2023)
Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.
(…)
Allowing the payments — billions of dollars over roughly a decade — was a gamble by Mr. Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting.
The Qatari payments, while ostensibly a secret, have been widely known and discussed in the Israeli news media for years.
(November 30, 2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
(December 16, 2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department announced criminal charges Tuesday against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and other senior militants in connection with the Oct. 7, 2023, rampage in Israel, marking the first effort by American law enforcement to formally call out the masterminds of the attack.
The seven-count criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City includes charges such as conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and conspiracy to finance terrorism.
“Netanyahu‘s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal, means they will be returned to their families in shrouds. Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” he said
On Sunday, the Israeli military reported the recovery of the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, claiming that Hamas was responsible for their deaths. Obaida said his group holds Israel responsible for the deaths.
He said the new instructions, which he did not detail, were given to guards of hostages after a rescue operation by Israel in June.
Everywhere for 57 years Israel has made life impossible for Palestinians under a brutal military occupation, seeking to realize a “#GreaterIsrael”.
In agreement with the Palestinians in the oPt, an int‘l #ProtectionPresence must be immediately deployed to stop the massacres, wanton destruction and forced displacement.
Unlike Palestinians in Gaza, Israelis can rise up to challenge their leadership. Late-night skirmishes between protesters and the authorities Sunday on Tel Aviv’s usually hyper-busy eight-lane Ayalon Highway were a manifestation of that.
As flames and dense smoke engulfed wooden pallets and tires on the roads, I watched a young man, blue paint spray in hand, scrawl his message to the prime minister in foot-high letters on the roadside wall: “Hostages or revolt.”
The group also blamed Netanyahu for the deaths of Israeli captives, saying they „were killed by his army‘s bullets„.
(…)
Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas‘ political bureau, said the six captives found dead by the Israeli army „were only killed by Zionist bombing„.
Their bodies were found with gunshot wounds to the head and other parts of their bodies, the Ynet news site reported. An autopsy found they were murdered in the 48 hours prior to the discovery of their bodies, the report said.
The Prime Minister‘s Office denied these allegations, saying: „Prime Minister Netanyahu did not receive a warning about the war in Gaza not on the date in question not before October 7. On the contrary, all security officials made it clear that Hamas is deterred and strives to reach an agreement. Also, a few days before October 7, the Shin Bet assessed that Gaza‘s stability is expected to be maintained for a long time.“
The Shin Bet did not comment on the Prime Minister Office‘s response.
In the weeks that followed, Lapid continued, he viewed classified intelligence provided to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that indicated that deterrence had indeed eroded. He also viewed highly classified material made available to him as a former prime minister. On September 18, 2023, there was “a further warning. For me, what was written there was unmistakable: Israel’s deterrence has eroded dramatically; our enemies think they have a rare opportunity to harm us,” Lapid said.
“During the months leading up to the disaster, the prime minister and cabinet ministers received a series of serious, unprecedented warnings. From the middle of 2023 there were more and more voices within the terrorist organizations that said that the moment they had been waiting for had arrived,” he says.
Lapid recalls asking Bar “if these warnings were also brought before the prime minister and cabinet ministers, and the answer was: ‘Of course they were.‘”
„I want to refute the statement that is made time and time again by the current government that, somehow, the political echelon was not aware that Hamas was not deterred,“ Lapid told the paper.
„It was indeed informed. I was informed,“ he said, adding that the intelligence material he saw „was of course, also seen by the prime minister and ministers of the Cabinet.“
„It was clear what they [Hamas] wanted,“ he said.
In a heated exchange, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Yair Lapid clashed over the handling of Hamas’ October 7 attack. Lapid accused Netanyahu of ignoring critical warnings that eroded national security, claiming the PM failed to act despite knowing a violent eruption was looming. In response, Netanyahu fired back, accusing Lapid of ‚spreading lies.‘ Watch for more.
Unnamed senior officials tell Channel 12 news that mediators in ceasefire-hostage deal talks have decided to set aside the thorny issue of Israel’s presence in two Gaza corridors under a potential agreement, and are focusing on other matters.
Egypt stressed to all concerned parties its rejection to any Israeli presence in Rafah Border Crossing or Philadelphi Corridor, a high-profile source told Egyptian media Monday.
A well-informed source in The Hague confirmed to Le Monde on Sunday that an „event is imminent,“ but did not specify the nature of the charges or the names of those involved.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is calling on President Biden to utilize the U.S.‘s influence on the world stage to block the International Criminal Court‘s (ICC) reported plan to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli officials did not disclose the nature of the information that led them to be concerned about potential I.C.C. action, and the court did not comment on the matter.
Arrest warrants from the court would probably be seen in much of the world as a humbling moral rebuke, particularly to Israel, which for months has faced international backlash over its conduct in Gaza, including from President Biden, who called it “over the top.”
Hamas and Israel have remained silent on the fate of a senior military figure of the Palestinian group after his alleged death was unusually announced by the United States.
During a press conference on Monday, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said: “Israel has made significant progress against Hamas… Hamas’ number three, Marwan Issa, was killed in an operation last week.”
(…)
Issa, 59, is the deputy to Mohammed al-Dief, the general commander of the al-Qassam Brigades, and his right-hand man.
(March 16, 2024)
Senior figures from Hamas and Yemen‘s Huthi rebels held a rare meeting to discuss coordinating their actions against Israel, Palestinian factional sources told AFP on Friday. (…)
The Houthis confirmed they would continue their attacks on Red Sea shipping to „support the Palestinian resistance“, according to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad sources.
The rebels‘ leader Abdul Malik al-Huthi said on Thursday their attacks would expand to target ships avoiding the Red Sea by navigating past South Africa‘s Cape of Good Hope.
(Oct 09, 2023)
Most of the movement‘s political leaders have lived in exile outside the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for years, deepening the divide between them and the group‘s military wing known as the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades, who are spearheading the continuing fighting with Israel.
The political leaders have mostly been living in Qatar, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and Egypt.
Speaking to The National, the officials said a handful of Gaza-based Hamas leaders, reportedly as few as three who once served in the Al Qassam Brigades, knew of the attack in advance. As a precaution, they were made to believe that the operation would begin 48 hours after it got under way on Saturday.
(21 August 2014)
However, Israeli intelligence sources told Fox News Wednesday that the Hamas leader was believed to have been killed.
Addressing the public on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dodged the question of Deif’s fate, saying only that “the commanders of terror organizations are a legitimate target, of the highest priority… No one is immune,” he said. Asked again, he refused to elaborate.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, in a Hamas TV interview earlier Wednesday, described Deif as “the dead man” in an apparent slip of the tongue.
(Oct 20th 2023)
Yet hardly anything is known about Deif. For years, Western spies would respond to questions about him with a shrug. Only a handful of photographs have ever appeared in the media – grainy images from his youth. Some speculate that he died long ago and is nothing more than a mythical figurehead cultivated for propaganda purposes.
Five months into the escalation of hostilities, which began with the horrific events in Israel on 7 October, the situation in the Gaza Strip degenerates by the hour. There is nowhere safe for people to go. The civilian death toll and the ongoing captivity of hostages are shocking and unacceptable.
This brutal war has ruptured any sense of a shared humanity.
„As an occupying power, Israel must provide for the basic needs of the population or facilitate the safe and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian relief,“ Spoljaric said.
The war had „ruptured any sense of a shared humanity“, she said.
„The situation in the Gaza Strip degenerates by the hour. There is nowhere safe for people to go. The civilian death toll and the ongoing captivity of hostages are shocking and unacceptable,“ Spoljaric said.
(20.02.2024)
Since 2005, as Dotan Halevy, one of the anthology’s editors puts it in the introduction, a generation has grown up in Gaza “that knows nothing of Israel” (and in Israel, a generation that “knows nothing of Gaza”). Unfortunately, that generation of Israelis is now getting to know Gaza too well. During the Oct. 7 assault, hundreds or even thousands of the Strip’s civilians streamed into southern Israel. They plundered and, alongside the Hamas fighters, murdered and raped—while their faces shone with profound joy.
(14.02.2024)
“The key is the hostage deal,” said one U.S. official among several American and Arab diplomats who discussed the subject on the condition of anonymity to avoid derailing the plan before it is completed.
(16.12.2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
(30.11.2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
Haim Rubinstein from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the campaign group will file a case against Hamas leaders at the ICC.
„We are the families of the hostages who have gone through and are still going through this terrible hell,“ Rubinstein said in a televised briefing from Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv.
„We will file charges against Hamas members and their collaborators and ensure that they pay the heaviest price for the crimes against humanity that they continue to commit.“
(25.01.2024)
Together with international aid and human rights organizations, such as Oxfam and Amnesty International, we appeal to all UN member states to halt the crisis in Gaza and prevent further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of civilian lives. We call on all states to immediately cease the transfer of weapons, components, and ammunition to Israel and Palestinian armed groups as long as there is a risk that they may be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law or human rights.
(July 30, 2014)
Higgins‘s article is worth reading in full. He goes on to outline the type of assistance the Israelis initially gave Yassin, whom the PLO at one time deemed a „collaborator,“ and Gaza‘s other Islamists:
Israel‘s military-led administration in Gaza looked favorably on the paraplegic cleric, who set up a wide network of schools, clinics, a library and kindergartens. Sheikh Yassin formed the Islamist group Mujama al-Islamiya, which was officially recognized by Israel as a charity and then, in 1979, as an association. Israel also endorsed the establishment of the Islamic University of Gaza, which it now regards as a hotbed of militancy. The university was one of the first targets hit by Israeli warplanes in the [2008-9 Operation Cast Lead].
Yassin‘s Mujama would become Hamas, which, it can be argued, was Israel‘s Taliban: an Islamist group whose antecedents had been laid down by the West in a battle against a leftist enemy. Israel jailed Yassin in 1984 on a 12-year sentence after the discovery of hidden arms caches, but he was released a year later. The Israelis must have been more worried about other enemies.
But recent intelligence has shown the extent to which Hamas has been able to build many of its rockets and anti-tank weaponry out of the thousands of munitions that failed to detonate when Israel lobbed them into Gaza, according to weapons experts and Israeli and Western intelligence officials. Hamas is also arming its fighters with weapons stolen from Israeli military bases.
Intelligence gathered during months of fighting revealed that, just as the Israeli authorities misjudged Hamas’s intentions before Oct. 7, they also underestimated its ability to obtain arms.
(26.01.2024)
Israel must take any measures to prevent and punish any incitement of genocidal statements against the Palestinian population.
Israel must take effective measures to provide relief to Palestinians.
It must stop the destruction of infrastructure.
The court states that Israel must submit a report one month from the judgement to show it has complied with the provisional measures. The provisional measures have binding effect.
Israel must share the report with RSA.
The court deems it necessary to emphasise that all parties are bound to international humanitarian law. The court mentions those abducted by Hamas – although mentions nothing about Palestinians political prisoners.
15-2 the judges ruled, that Israel must take all measures to stop acts that contravene Art 2 of the genocide convention.
(November 30, 2023)
“Nothing happens by accident,” said another source. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
According to the investigation, another reason for the large number of targets, and the extensive harm to civilian life in Gaza, is the widespread use of a system called “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which is largely built on artificial intelligence and can “generate” targets almost automatically at a rate that far exceeds what was previously possible. This AI system, as described by a former intelligence officer, essentially facilitates a “mass assassination factory.”
(16.01.2024)
„Hamas once again made cruel use of innocent people,“ the IDF spokesman said in his statement Monday night. He denied Hamas‘ claim that they were hit by IDF airstrikes.
„The building where they were held was not a target, and it was not attacked by our forces. We did not know their location in real time, but we don‘t attack a place where we know that there might be hostages. In retrospect, we know that we attacked targets near the place where they were held.“
(14.01.2024)
(12.01.2024)
The Democratic Socialists of America demand an immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities by the United States against Yemen and an end to diplomatic and military support of Israel. President Biden widened the existing regional war even further by ordering airstrikes against civilian infrastructure in Yemen in an effort to stop that country’s humanitarian blockade of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Since October 7th, Israel has continuously engaged in provocative military aggression, aimed at expanding its brutal war into Lebanon. Israeli spokespeople continue their propaganda efforts to tie Iran to the events of October 7th and have issued calls for retaliation. A cyberattack believed to be the work of Israeli military intelligence has struck Iranian civilian infrastructure and extrajudicial assassinations have targeted senior leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hamas in Syria and Lebanon. The U.S.’s attack on Yemen comes in the context of Yemeni forces having blocked container ships owned by Israelis or headed towards Israeli ports. U.S. airstrikes are taking place while South Africa presents its arguments to the International Court of Justice for provisional measures against Israel for the crime of genocide.
(16.12.2023)
Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.
Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.
According to the statement, „rewards may be provided for information leading to the identification and disruption of any source of revenue for Hamas or its key financial facilitation mechanisms; major Hamas donors or financial facilitators; financial institutions or exchange houses facilitating Hamas transactions.”
He then emphasized, „Lebanon remains committed, as always, to relevant international legitimacy, especially Resolution 1701. However, it is Israel that has breached and surpassed it, as it remains unsatisfied with the level of death and destruction. It is evident to all that the decision of war rests in Israel‘s hands, and it is imperative to restrain and halt its aggression.“
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister held discussions with the army leadership and concerned security agencies to ascertain the details and circumstances surrounding the explosion.
Al-Manar also said an explosion was heard near the Hadi Nasrallah highway close to a road junction.
It gave no details of the explosion, which comes a day before a speech by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.