Today’s Image
Meet President for Life of Turkiye Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He has been leading that country since 2003, 21 years now. He has taken a valued NATO ally and converted it into a full Islamic State. Most recently he requested and received admission into the Russian-China-Iran alliance. Now his country is hosting the Hamas leadership. At the request of the Biden Administration, Qatar had requested that the Hamas leadership be pushed out of Doha along with their staff and entire operations. Hamas has already been operating out of Turkiye for some time with all kinds of money laundering operations there. It is my understanding, but not publicly confirmed, that Israel had agreed with Qatar that it would not conduct any assassinations of Hamas leadership on Qatar soil. No such agreement exists with Turkiye. Israel has already ruled out any possibility of enabling Turkiye to be an intermediary during negotiations on a hostage/ceasefire deal.
Casualties
The IDF reports three soldiers killed in action today: Sgt. First Class (res.) Idan Kenan - 21 (Z’’L), Captain Yogev Pazy - 22 (Z’’L) and Staff Sgt. Noam Eitan - 21 (Z’’L). All were killed during combat operations in Northern Gaza. Pazy is the third member of Minister Gadi Eisenkot’s family to fallin combat. Eisenkot’s son was killed in early December. Kenan was killed by a Hamas sniper.
Rockets & Missiles & Drones
No rockets fired out of Gaza crossed into Israeli air space in the past 1 day.
By end of yesterday about 80 rockets were fired by Hezbollah into Israel in total.
Today, five drones attempted to penetrate Israeli airspace. Two were launched in Iraq and three in Lebanon. The drones from Iraq were intercepted outside Israeli air space. The three from Lebanon inside Israeli air space.
Late this afternoon Hezbollah launched a barrage of 15 rockets into the very northern area of Israel. One person was lightly wounded and treated on site. All the rockets were either intercepted or landed in open areas. Nor reports of damage. Earlier in the day a barrage of 20 rockets were launched in the direction of the coastal city of Haifa. There were no injuries nor damage reported as they were all either intercepted or landed in open areas.
In case you hadn’t noticed the daily volleys of rockets has notched down to well below 100 per day from Hezbollah. Moreover, the IDF’s ability to intercept them has seemed to approve. Most likely these two affects are related.
Lebanon Operations
This evening Israeli fighter jets struck an entirely different neighborhood in Beirut. The IDF provided no details, but Lebanese media claims that the location was the center of activities of the al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, another Jihadi group in Lebanon that regularly attacks Israel. That group is separate but closely aligned with Hezbollah and Hamas. It was reported in the Lebanese media that this strike, unlike all the others, was not preceded by warnings to the residents living nearby.
In one of the fighter jet strikes Hezbollah’s media relations leader was killed, Mohammed Afif. For reasons that have not been disclosed, no advanced warning was provided to the civilians in the building. And in a separate strike in the southern part of Beirut, the former residence of Hassan Nasrallah was hit as it has been used by the terrorist organization as an operations center. Many of their command centers are being destroyed by the IDF so they are struggling to find facilities that are beyond the reach of the IDF. Earlier in the day, fighter jets struck several other facilities in Southern Beirut that were being used as command centers for Hezbollah. You can read more here.
For the first time, it was reported that IDF artillery (not tanks) are now operating within Southern Lebanon. The tanks have been operating there for weeks now. It appears to me that in the absence of a positive response to the ceasefire deal proposal, the IDF is going to continue pushing on towards the Litani River. That is NOT official, but just my view on what is going on.
During the course of ground operations IDF forces uncovered another major tunnel and underground barracks facility in Southern Lebanon flush with weapons and a motorcycle that was to be used in its planned attack on civilians in the Galilee. You can see the tunnel, uncovered arms and the destruction of the tunnel here.
Gaza Operations
Yesterday an IDF fighter jet struck a building in the Gaza City of Beit Lahiya. It, along with Jabaliya and Beit Hanoun are the sites of active fighting between the IDF and Hamas combatants for the past month. Hamas claims that 72 people were killed in the strike. The IDF has launched an investigation into the incident as the number far exceeds what it had expected to have happened. Hopefully, we will hear more over the next week. In general, the IDF has been urging any civilians in the area to leave as far back as two months ago. The IDF even provided a guarded corridor to the humanitarian zone for the civilians. It is not clear why there are still civilians there nor why any might have been in a targeted Hamas facility.
Yemen Operations
The Houthis claim that they launched several drones towards Israel, but the IDF reports that they have seen no signs of them approaching Israeli air space.
Syria/Iran/Jordan/Egypt/Iraq/Turkiye
Yesterday I reported on the succession plans for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei as he is sick. Today there are rumors coming out of Iran that he is in a coma. There are other reports that he already died. If these are true then it circumvents his efforts to place his son in place as successor in advance of his incapacitation. The regime has posted pictures of the Supreme Leader to try and convince the world that he is fine, but the photos appear to date from 2014. So I guess we will have to wait and see if the succession goes forward peacefully or not.
President Herzog was scheduled to attend a climate conference in Azerbaijan. Israel has very good relations with the Moslem country situated on the Caspian Sea. But Turkiye announced that it would not allow his flight to traverse their airspace so he can’t go.
Hostages/Ceasefire
The heads of all Israel’s security branches met today with Defense Minister Katz to discuss the situation of the hostages. All briefed the Minister on the condition of the hostages which is considered “dire”. They contend, as did former Defense Minister Gallant, that the only way to get the hostages out was to agree to Hamas’s conditions of withdrawal from Gaza. They contend that there will also be a provocation or justification that will enable the IDF to re-enter Gaza to take on Hamas. From my view it is not sure that they are correct, but this does appear to be the only way we are going to get the hostages out alive. But to make a decision to withdraw out of Gaza is likely to bring the government down as the extremist factions in the government threaten to pull out unless Hamas is totally destroyed. The Security Leaders are expected to brief the Prime Minister on their views, which are already well known, tonight or tomorrow.
IDF/Government
About 8 days ago I reported on arrests being made of staff members within the Prime Minister’s Office accused of deliberately leaking information to foreign journalists for the purpose of causing harm to the hostage negotiations. It has now been announced that IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi had ordered an investigation into the affair as far back as September. At this time it is not clear if the Prime Minister was involved in this, but it does create questions about the screening process of his staff. The accused are affiliated with one or more of the extremist right wing parties. It now appears that the evidence is strong enough that government prosecutors are going to indict two of the accused. You can read more here.
Now, in the middle of fighting our Justice Minister Yariv Levin announced that he intends to revive the judicial overhaul that he tried to ram down the throats of the country back in 2023. This is after this “guy” has blocked the appointment of a new Supreme Court President
Protests/Politics
On Saturday night a participant in protests outside Prime Minister Netanyahu’s private residence in the coastal city of Ceasaria threw three lit flares in the direction of Netanyahu’s home. This act received condemnations from all the opposition leaders and President Herzog saying such violent acts have no place in the political discourse in Israel. Three suspects have been arrested and are being held for between 5 and 12 days. There is a gag order on any other details.
In response to the recent draft call up of ultra-orthodox a group of less than 50 ultra orthodox protesters briefly blocked a major freeway outside the ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Bnei Brak. The first 1,000 draft notices were sent out to the eligible ultra-orthodox young men today. None of them are full time students as they are working at full time jobs.
And In Your Copious Spare Time…
Please take the time (about 10 minutes) to read this great summary of Yasir Arafat and his Fatah movement through history. Written by friend Seth Franzman, it provides a great summary of his successes and failures… and ultimately how we got to where we are today.
In this report in The Media Line you can see recorded interviews with several residents of Gaza who are now openly expressing criticism of Hamas, and to some extent Israel, for the mess they are in today. The associated video can be found here.
Thank you