The IDF struck targets in Syria after a drone attack on Eilat. The drone truck a school causing damage but no physical injury. The military did not identify those responsible for the attack, in which a UAV towards the Red Sea resort town, 400 kms. (250 miles) from the nearest point in Syrian territory but said it holds the Syria government responsible for any terrorism from its territory but said in a statement that it holds Damascus responsible.
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Prime Minister Banjamin said the IDF was taking measures to avoid harm to civilians in their fighting in Gaza. In an interview to eNews Netanyahu said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was still in the Strip and the troops would reach him.
A possible release of dozens of hostages was being negotiated by Mossad Chief David Barnea and CIA chief William Burns in Qatar on Thursday after Hamas demands included a days-long pause in the war, the release of Palestinians prisoners and the supply of fuel.
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David Barnea, Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani, Willian Barns
(Photo: Yariv Katz, AP)
The security cabinet was briefed on Thursday but Israel said details were still unclear as to how many hostages would be freed and how many prisoners Hamas demanded to be released. Officials add that a pause in the fighting would only be accepted if the number of hostages freed would be substantial.
The IDF said a Patriot missile intercepted an incoming suspicious projectile over the Arava Desert. This was the first time in the war that the Patriot was used. Earlier the IDF said that a surface to surface missile targeting the southern city of Eilat was intercepted by the Arrow defense system at a long distance away from Israel. Earlier sirens were heard in the city and surrounding areas.
As part of the psychological warfare waged against Israel by the Islamist factions in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad released video of 12-year-old Yagil Ben-Yaakov and 76-year old Hana Katzir both abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and held in Gaza claiming they could be released on humanitarian grounds without providing any more details.
Over 1,000 doctors, medics and emergency medical teams on Thursday protested outside the offices of the International Red Cross in Tel Aviv, demanding the organization visit the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Although a month has passed since 239 people were abducted by Hamas terrorists the Red Cross has not visited any of the hostages, provided Israel with a complete list of names of all those held in Gaza, or delivered to them medicines they require.
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Doctors, medics, protest outside offices of the ICRC over failure to visit hostages held in Gaza
(Photo: Adir Yanko)
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The New York Times rejected criticism after its photographer in Gaza was signaled out for filming the Hamas massacre on October 7. The paper said he was covering events as they unfolded as was his job. Yousef Masoud was one of the journalists named by HonestReporting as having been with the Hamas terrorists as they invaded Israel and carried out their atrocities.
Earlier the paper reported on Thursday that Hussein al-Sheikh, PLO secretary general told U.S. officials that the Palestinian Authority would be open to having a role in governing the Gaza Strip after the war if the U.S. commits to a 2-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The IDF said on Thursday that its forces had raided the military quarter of the Hamas terrorist organization in the heart of Gaza City, near the Shifa Hospital.
According to the military, the quarter is the heart of intelligence and operational activities of Hamas and was used, among other things, to plan and prepare Hamas operatives for the murderous attack on October 7th.
The spokesperson described the quarter as including the central intelligence headquarters and the aerial array headquarters of the terrorist organization, as well as Hamas government offices, including the Ministry of Interior and a police station. "It also contains the largest training facilities in the Gaza Strip for urban warfare, military outposts, warehouses and various munitions factories (used to produce rockets, anti-tank missiles, UAVs and explosives). Also in the area are commanders' offices, underground tunnel networks and war-rooms from which the Hamas terrorist organization directs fighting and fire," the IDF said.
Hamas head of politburo Ismail Haniyeh arrived in Egypt on Thursday at the head of a delegation that included other senior Hamas leaders living outside the Strip, to meet the chief intelligence official.
The IDF and the Palestinian Authority on Thursday, transported 2,000 resident of Gaza from the West Bank city of Jericho to the Strip. Some had permits to work in Israel before the start of the war and others were in the West Bank illegally and security agencies feared they would be involved in terrorism.
Mossad Chief David Barnea and CIA Chief William Burns met Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani on Thursday to discuss terms for a release of hostages abducted by Hamas, in return for a pause in the war in Gaza. The talks include the question of whether fuel would be allowed into the Strip after Israel refused to permit its delivery out of concern it would be used by Hamas to run its war machine.
The Prime Minister's office said Israel there would be no ceasefire without the release of the hostages. In a statement the PMO said that agreed on a four hour humanitarian pause everyday to allow resident of northern Gaza to move to the south adding that on Wednesday, 50,000 took advantage of the safe route taking them out of harms way.
Thousands attended the funeral of dual American citizen and lone soldier Maj. Gen. Elisheva Rose Lubin, 20, in Jerusalem late on Thursday morning.
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Funeral of Israel Border Police guard Maj. Gen. Elisheva Rose Lubin, 20
(Photo: Alexi J. Rosenfeld /Getty Images)
Israel's border police said that, after carrying out an investigation into the attack in which Lubin was killed, it appears that a serious disciplinary and operational failure was found in the conduct of one of the team's soldiers, which included abandoning the position, in complete violation of orders and instructions. Accordingly, Border Guard Commander Brigadier Yitzchak decided to remove the soldier from his position and transfer him to another area of the IDF. "In places where we realize there is a failure, we will not compromise and will handle it with determination and commanding courage, while learning lessons and full transparency," the commander said.
A humanitarian conference on Gaza opens in Paris on Thursday. Representatives of the Palestinian Authority are present at the conference, but no representative of Israel, which has said it will maintain security control over the strip at the end of the war, was included.
During the conference, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said that he was concerned about the spillover risk of the situation in Gaza, adding that the West Bank "is boiling." Lazzarini, the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also said there was need for a meaningful continuous humanitarian aid to Gaza including fuel. He said aid coming in through Rafah was inadequate, adding that all crossings into Gaza should be opened.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that there must be a humanitarian pause very quickly in Gaza and that countries must also work for a cease-fire. "Civilians must be protected, that's indispensable and non negotiable and is an immediate necessity," Macron said at the start of the conference.
Jan Egeland, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told the conference that an immediate cease-fire in Gaza was an absolute necessity. "We cannot wait a minute more for a humanitarian cease-fire or lifting of siege which is collective punishment," he said. "Without cease-fire, lifting of siege and indiscriminate bombarding and warfare, the hemorrhage of human lives will continue." Medecins Sans Frontieres chief Isabelle Defourny called southern Gaza safe-zones "fake zones."
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz lays flowers in Berlin as part of memorial events for the 1938 Kristalnacht pogrom
(Photo: Henning Schacht - Pool/Getty Images)
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was "ashamed and outraged" at a recent wave of antisemitic incidents in Germany, warning Berlin would not tolerate such anti-Jewish hatred as he marked the 85th anniversary of the Nazis' Kristallnacht pogrom. Scholz was speaking alongside Jewish leaders at a ceremony in a Berlin synagogue that was among 1,000 that were damaged or destroyed across Germany and Austria by Nazi mobs in the "Night of Broken Glass." The synagogue where Scholz was speaking was also attacked with Molotov cocktails in a surge of antisemitic incidents that followed the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the subsequent Israeli retaliation.
GPO Director Nitzan Chen has demanded explanations from the bureau chiefs of AP, Reuters, CNN and The New York Times regarding the findings in the HonestReporting NGO's report on the involvement of their photographers in the events of October 7th, "which crosses every red line, professional and moral." Four photographers who work for these networks documented the horrors perpetrated by the Hamas terrorists after they broke through border fence with Israel, filming the murder of civilians, the abuse of bodies and the abduction of men and women.
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Photographer Hassan Eslaiah just happened to be at the Gaza border when Hamas terrorists broke through to go massacre Israelis(Photo: Honest
(Photo: HonestReporting)
The National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister's Office also said in a statement issued on Thursday morning that it "views with utmost gravity that photojournalists working with international media joined in covering the brutal acts of murder perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on Saturday October 7th in the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip."
The IDF reported Thursday it had eliminated Ibrahim Abu-Maghsib, a Hamas anti-tank missile commander in charge of the terrorist organization’s Central Camps Brigade in an airstrike. “As part of his position, Maghsib directed and carried out numerous anti-tank missile launches directed at Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers,” the military said in a statement.
IDF soldiers discovered a Hamas weapons manufacturing and storage facility used to produce and store UAVs and weapons, the military announced late Thursday morning. The site was located in a residential building, in close proximity to schools in the center of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza. In the building, Hamas’ explosives and operational plans were found right next to a children's bedroom.
The Israel Defense Forces early Thursday morning announced the name of the 35th soldier killed since the start of the ground war in Gaza. Eliahou Benjamin Elmakayes, 29, of Jerusalem, a soldier of the Combat Engineering Corp’s 8219th Battalion, was killed during fighting in the central Gaza Strip Wednesday.
Additionally, an officer and soldier of the Paratrooper’s 202nd Battalion, a reservist officer of the 551st Brigade’s 697th battalion, and a soldier of the 551st Brigade’s 6551st Battalion were seriously wounded in separate clashes in Gaza yesterday, the IDF says.
After a quiet evening and night, rocket warning sirens blared in Gaza-border communities on Thursday morning.
The IDF spokesman said that during the night long battles took place in western Jabaliya, where soldiers from the Nahal Brigade took control of the Hamas outpost. "The soldiers of the Nahal Brigade's combat team completed an operation to take over Outpost 17, a military stronghold of the terrorist organization in the northern Gaza Strip. During the takeover of the outpost, the soldiers fought against Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who were in the outpost, both above and below ground and in an underground tunnel in the area," the IDF said in a statement. After about 10 hours of fighting, during which they eliminated terrorists and captured many weapons, the takeover of the outpost was completed.
The fighters uncovered terrorist tunnel shafts, including a shaft located near a kindergarten and leading to an extensive underground route. The IDF spokesman added that "during the takeover of the outpost, the Nahal forces located and collected significant operational materials about the enemy's operational plans."
The U.S. carried out an airstrike on a weapons warehouse in eastern Syria used by Iranian-backed militias, including the Revolutionary Guards in Syrua, in retaliation for what has been a growing number of attacks on bases housing U.S. troops in the region for the past several weeks, the Pentagon said.
In Wednesday’s strike, two U.S. F-15 fighter jets dropped multiple bombs on a weapons storage facility near Maysulun in Deir el-Zour that was known to be used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, U.S. officials said.
A couple in their early 20s were moderately and severely wounded late Wednesday in a shooting attack on their car in the northern West Bank.
They kept on driving to a nearby Israeli settlement despite their injuries. A 5-month-old child who was in the car was unharmed.
First responders treated the couple at the scene of the attack, and a helicopter was dispatched to the location.
The IDF said late on Wednesday that it struck “technological assets” used by Hezbollah in Lebanon to “direct terror against Israel" in response to attacks on Israeli targets.
"In response to the launches toward Israel over the past day, IDF fighter jets struck Hezbollah terror infrastructure in Lebanon a short while ago," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said in a statement. "The Hezbollah targets struck include military structures and posts in which the terrorists operated, along with a number of technological assets used to direct terror against Israel."
It added that, "A short while ago, the IDF struck a terrorist cell in Lebanon, that operated adjacent to the area of Biranit in northern Israel."
First published: 08:24, 11.09.23