 This morning, for the latest live updates from Israel, we'll begin this newscast with some breaking news. A third year old man driving in his car near Ben Yamina in the West Bank has been shot to death. It's unclear at this moment if this is a terror attack or a criminal act, but it does appear perhaps to be a terrorist attack. We're going to learn more details on this developing story and bring you the latest information when we get it. This comes in the wake, by the way, of a deadly overnight counterterrorism raid in Janine in the West Bank. Six Palestinians killed in that special operation and four IDF soldiers were hurt as tensions boil in the West Bank. We'll have more details coming up. Also Israel appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front with Lebanon. Global leaders are both sounding the alarm and frantically rushing to visit the Middle East and try and calm tensions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Jordan late last night and will soon visit Israel to meet with war cabinet ministers and IDF generals. It's Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre. Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief is in Lebanon warning about a slow march to regional conflict as border battles with Hezbollah spread deeper into both countries. It is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East. We discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. With us now is I-25 News correspondent Pia Stechelbach joining us from Haifa in the north of Israel. Pia, a lot of questions still remain after yesterday's widespread rocket attack from Hezbollah into northern Israeli communities. Sirens sounding off in dozens of cities. No reports of injuries but there is damage and a lot of questions about the kind of weaponry that was used. What's the latest Pia? Well, yesterday was indeed a very tense and active day here in the north as you mentioned signs were sounding really in dozens of communities all over here in the Israeli north. Hezbollah said that it had launched at least 40 rockets into northern Israel there. And Hezbollah says that this is part of the initial response to the killing of Saleh al-Aroori, the Hamas official that was assassinated in an alleged Israeli strike last Tuesday. The question really here is, is that a new level of escalation that Hezbollah is trying to initiate there? And what is there next to come? Israel has as a protocol attacked Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon such as weapon depots and Hezbollah infrastructure. But Hezbollah as it has announced or as its leader Hassan Nasrallah has announced in his recent speeches is trying to avenge Saleh al-Aroori's death and this might indicate that we're ahead of a new level of escalation here in general in the north. Israel on the other hand Israel's defense minister Joff Galant has vowed to push Hezbollah further away from the border and to also retaliate for these scummages that we've really been seeing since the beginning of the war for three months now. And thousands of residents here on the Israeli side in the north are still evacuating. The question for them, the most important one perhaps is when they will be able to return to their homes because we're not only talking about that rocket fire that has really intensified especially yesterday but also the continuous motor shell and anti-tank missile attacks. On the Lebanese side we do know that the official Lebanese government is not interested in any sort of escalation. We've heard the cat take a prime minister Najib Mikati speaking over the weekend saying that they're not interested in a renewed war with Israel and this bears the potential for a wider regional escalation however this shows you and what a difficult situation official, the official Lebanese government is in having to deal with a militia such as Hezbollah who has been trying to escalate the situation for weeks now. The question here really is how this will continue. The Israeli forces here in the north are and have been on very high alert as we enter a new quite tense day here in the north, Jeff. Pia thanks for that live update from the north. Stay safe, we'll be checking in with you throughout the day. Joining me now is retired IDF Colonel Miri Aiz and now the director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichman University. Good to see you again Miri, I want to ask about first this threat from Hezbollah warning that this was an initial response to the targeted assassination attributed to Israel. This initial response involved dozens of rockets or does appear at least according to video some kind of damage to the Moron IDF base, its positions on Mount Moron. What do you make of the attack yesterday and could there be similar attacks today? Hezbollah is trying to put its position as in its terms the defender of Lebanon and what Jeff, what they're actually doing is they are dragging a country into the war because Hezbollah itself as a hybrid terror organization are Lebanese. They try to attack what they're always going to say is that they only attack Israeli military targets. If there happen to be Israeli communities next to the targets, that doesn't matter. If you put up the map also in addition of where the alerts were yesterday, they can say from year to eternity that all that they were doing was targeting a military base. But everything that they do targets at the exact same time Israeli communities. He would seem much of it. They're using a variety of weapons. And here is the challenge for all of us. Hezbollah because they have had an open it's not a shipping lane. It is a direct land route from Iran through Iraq through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has very advanced different type of weapons, much more exact, guided with very lethal payloads. They've been using all of these weapons for the last three months. Oh my God, three months for the last three months. And they use them again yesterday. It was just more widespread. And we need to look at that as a continuation of what Hezbollah has been doing literally from October 8th, consistently attacking Israel, consistently using guided missiles, guided, different types of guided weapons and rockets and suicide drones and heavy payloads. And yesterday they just did it a bit further inward and stronger in a stronger, more condensed way on that military base on Mount Nero. Myriad seems to be a rather telling comment and as Pia our correspondent alluded to from Lebanon's foreign minister saying that it's up to Hezbollah's control whether or not that there is going to be a full on war, a wider regional war with Israel that the country of Lebanon, it doesn't have a say in Hezbollah's decision to escalate or not escalate. What does that indicate to you about the position of Hezbollah within Lebanon? So he also said about the implementation of 1701, at least for everybody to understand, the implementation of 1701 is to disarm Hezbollah, Hezbollah, the one that has 150,000 rockets that has an enormous amount of guided anti-tank rockets, suicide drones, all of these different capabilities we keep talking about. Who exactly is going to disarm Hezbollah? Lebanon itself as a country has never been able to do so. That's one of the reasons Hezbollah could build up their capabilities. But the international force, the United Nations interim force in Lebanon, Unifil, that has been deployed there from 1979, but from 2006 with this mandate to disarm anybody that is not the Lebanese military, the Lebanese army. And here we are, and it's 2024, and yet again, Lebanon, the Lebanese army cannot disarm Hezbollah. The international community with Unifil cannot do so. And there's that question, so who disarms Hezbollah? And in the meantime, they define what they want to do. They create what is literally a buffer zone inside Israel. As Pia mentioned before, Israeli thousands, tens of thousands of Israelis cannot live in their communities, in their homes, in their cities, in their towns, because Hezbollah is threatening us with those weapons inside Israel. An impossible situation. Mayor, I want to ask quickly about this developing story in the West Bank, this 30-year-old man shot to death in Ben Yemina in the West Bank as he was driving his car. This comes, of course, just hours after this counterterrorism raid in Janine once again, an IDF counterterrorism op to target terrorists and their weapons caches. Six Palestinian terrorists reported killed. Several IDF soldiers seriously injured. Things seem to be heating up in the West Bank, Mary. The Israeli Defense Forces throughout the last three months parallel to attacking and destroying Hamas capabilities in the Gaza Strip are attacking and destroying Hamas and other terror capabilities in the West Bank. We all understand Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip, it's also in the West Bank. By the way, it's also in Lebanon. But right now, we're focused in that sense. And the West Bank has a lot of challenges in that sense. And we need to continue to go out and make sure that we try to find the cache of weapons, the different types that there are. And this will be an ongoing aspect. It is dangerous. It has been over these last three months. Sadly, this time, this is one attack that got through. But the IDF actions in throughout Judea and Samaria are to preempt and to prevent this kind of attack. Sadly, this time it got through. Stay with us, Mary. I want to also note here, of course, the ongoing war in Gaza now in its third month. The IDF spokesman last night says that the military has now completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip. Even as firefights and Hamas booby traps remain a potent and daily risk, the military warns that despite defeating Hamas in North Gaza, there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire from there. The IDF says the focus now is on defeating Hamas in central and southern Gaza. And the military expects ground operations to continue throughout all of 2024. Hamas is made of battalions. Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system, which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms, command and control cells, as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground. The terrorists move in between different areas of the Strip, using this system. They can do it while remaining hidden. Their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites, such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school, which both serve as human shields for Hamas. Hamas terrorists move around without weapons, in civilian clothes, hiding explosives against the IDF forces, in the streets and in the entrances to tunnel shafts. This is what the ground operation looks like. This is the Gaza Strip. It's 141 square miles and populates over 2 million people. This is the northern Gaza Strip. This is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for three months. In the northern Gaza Strip, Hamas had two divisions, with 12 battalions made up of 14,000 terrorists. From the Jabalia area, hundreds of terrorists emerged on October 7 to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night released a new video, statement, calling for government unity amid the ongoing war in Gaza and said that the war will not end until security is restored in both the south and the north. Three months ago, Hamas committed an atrocious massacre. The government, headed by me, directed the IDF to go to war to eliminate the Hamas, bring back the hostages and guarantee that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel. We must not stop the war until we reach all of our objectives. We are not giving the Hamas immunity anywhere. We are fighting to restore security both in the south and in the north. Until then, and for that purpose, we need to put aside everything else and continue united until complete victory. With me now in studio, our senior diplomatic correspondent, Owen Alderman, Owen Netanyahu's latest video statement comes, I may get another weekly protest from the released hostages and families of current captives inside Gaza, another mass protest with hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Netanyahu's latest video statement, speaking about the war and unity, what do you make of it? I don't think he's worried about the family's protest per se, Jeff, but this is a characteristically clever sound bite and video from Prime Minister Netanyahu, why? On the faith of it, nothing to talk about here, right? Nothing extraordinary here, right? Restates the three goals of the war that he's put out there over and over and over again in the last three months, saying Israel won't stop the war until the three goals are achieved. Also something he said repeatedly over the course of the last few months and increasingly over the last few weeks. And then the third statement that all else needs to be put on hold until the war ends. Also nothing extraordinary, but put those together and put them together with Daniel Hagarri's briefing last night and as you correctly said, Jeff, Daniel Hagarri saying in the Israeli military, again saying that 2024 will be a year of fighting and of fighting the war. Meaning, the war is not expected to end through the course of 2024. The three goals of the war won't be fully achieved until the end of 2024 and therefore politics needs to, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, be put on hold until the end of the war, until after 2024, meaning no elections for a very, very long time. Or it's not legitimate, according to Netanyahu, reading between the lines, but not too far between the lines. Not legitimate to take the country to elections until the war is over and until 2025 even, let's say. Jeff, I don't think that either National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir or Benny Gantz will be all that impressed with that. I think Itamar Ben-Gvir certainly wants to get to elections as soon as possible and in Benny Gantz's position in the government will be tested over time as, again, they're going to be more and more of his constituents who come out and say they want him to leave. On the one hand, both of them, especially Benny Gantz, committed to being in this government through the course of the war. But when do we define the end of this war? This is a war that at a very, very clear beginning has had a very, very clear middle, but may not have a very clear end. So Netanyahu is laying the groundwork for a campaign argument. You Itamar Ben-Gvir, and especially you Benny Gantz, you are leaving the government, let's say in six months time, three months time, nine months time, even a year's time. You are leaving the government and bringing this government down while our soldiers are still fighting. While the war in a technical sense and maybe in a real sense is still going on. How can you, the Israeli public, endorse this? And how can you, the Israeli public, switch horses in the middle of the war? You are stuck with me, or you should stay with me, and not with my rivals from right and from center. So again, a very clever political argument that Netanyahu is laying the groundwork to make over an election campaign because Jeff, we're sitting here, what? January 7th, 2024, does any of us actually believe that in January 7th, 2025, that this government's going to be intact? I doubt it. And in that sense, Netanyahu, while he says politics need to be put on the side, is essentially laying the groundwork for an important, from his perspective, political argument. One thing that says that for me in that video statement is it's not, as you mentioned, perhaps about the war. It's the wars. He said that we have to restore security in the south and the north. There are 80,000 families who are not home in the north, and tensions really perhaps boiling over. This border skirmish is now increasing deeper in Israel from Hezbollah, and Israel strikes deeper into Lebanon as well. Dozens of miles sometimes deep into Lebanon, these idea of strikes. The question becomes, as you mentioned, as we approach, let's say, Memorial Day or Independence Day, some of these emotional holidays for Israel, if the war in the north becomes a major focal point, how can the more cabinet ministers leave? Is this an argument where they have that now is the right time to go to elections? Well, listen, I think it's in some sense the other way around. First of all, obviously the status quo in Israel's northern border communities is unacceptable, right? As Mary Eisen was saying, as we've all been saying, it's clearly unacceptable and clearly needs to change. The question is how, and obviously, Jeff, if there is a black and white situation, such as sadly, tragically, we had on October 7th, right? Where Hezbollah really, really wants a war, okay? Where there's an escalation or a quote, unquote, mistake, right? Where Hezbollah attack leads to severe casualties on the Israeli side, or Hezbollah is taking intransigent positions and negotiations, then obviously Israel will go to war to change the situation on the northern border, and this government will have legitimacy to conduct that war. And you're right, Jeff, in connection with that, it would be impossible for ministers to leave the government with that war looming or with that war pending or with that war happening. On the other hand, look, that war is clearly not Israel's plan A. If you look at the interests of all the sides of Israel, certainly the Biden administration as election day in the United States does start to draw nearer. And the Lebanese public, okay, which by a vast majority, including presumably many of Hezbollah's supporters, doesn't want a war. When you look at all of that, it seems to me that there is good reason to believe that these sides will somehow get to yes on some kind of diplomatic agreement that doesn't solve the problem, that kicks the can down the road, but is good enough to convince Israelis to move back into their communities on the border. And part of the reason for that, Jeff, is the politics. This is a government that has legitimacy to conduct the war in Gaza. A thousand percent has legitimacy because this was a war that was absolutely forced on Israel. Every Israeli understands that, and this is the government that was there on October 7th and has the legitimacy to conduct the bulk of this war without going to elections. But if there is a situation in the north where we're in a kind of a gray area, and it's essentially Israel that is initiating the war, aside from the fact we're gonna have a public that's exhausted by the war in the south, does this government, even with Benny Gantz in it, have the legitimacy to be seen as potentially initiating a war in the north, rather than fighting a war of no choice? I'm not sure it does. It may mean that there needs to be an election where those who are then taking their positions as prime minister and ministers or those who are voted in by the Israeli public, and the public has confidence that that government has legitimacy to conduct the war. So I do think the politics matter here, although of course, with that very, very important caveat, that if Zbulla really, truly wants a war, it will get one, no matter what the politics in Israel, and no matter what the rest of the situation here. More to our breaking news that we brought at the top of the hour here, we can confirm that an Israeli commando police officer has been killed in this overnight counterterrorism raid in Janine. This was a major counterterrorism operation that lasted several hours to go after terrorists. There have now been 60 police officers killed since the start of the war three months ago. Want to bring back Mary Eisen into this conversation on the multi-faceted, multi-front battle against Hamas. How deep are Hamas' roots in Janine? How many weapons caches? How many, I guess, terror militia members are there in Janine and in the West Bank that may need to be addressed as part of this war to eradicate Hamas? When we talk about Hamas, I remind ourselves again, we're talking about a hybrid terror organization, meaning Hamas is all over the West Bank. It is a social organization. It is a governmental kind of organization. It's in the mosques. It's all over the place. And it is right now an inspiration for the younger generation, which makes me horrified. And I want to hope that for most people horrified, but because of what they've done, where they're showing action, where they're showing activity, they are an inspiration. The amount of weapons in the West Bank is enormous. It has been a problem for many, many years. It is something which the IDF has not gone against for many years because at the end it takes an operation of going into a city like Janine, which has been area A for many, many years from 2005. It was the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority for it not to have this enormous amount of weapons. And so when we're going in, we need to take care and find the weapons. It's very similar to the Gaza area, where the weapons are going to be under the mosque, under the school, under the hospital, not necessarily with tunneling, but using these different public facilities as the place where the weapons are. I'm talking about tens of thousands of weapons. Most of the weapons that we're talking about are the kind that can be easily smuggled or made in the West Bank. It's different types of explosives, and they use them extensively and including, I think, Saturday, last night in Janine, in an explosion that may have also had casualties, where we had at least several soldiers and police officers that were heavily hurt because they use the explosives, those are the chemists who put that together in the garages, make different types of local explosives, IEDs that can be used. There's a lot of lightweight weapons of the kind that you can do drive by shooting. It doesn't matter if it's light arms or heavier arms. They don't have, until now, we've been very good at preventing the type of weapons which are anti-tank missiles, direct guided type of missiles, because all of those have to be smuggled into the West Bank, either from Jordan or from inside Israel. We're trying to invent them. They have not yet been that successful. So we're talking about an enormous amount of weapons, Jeff. Mary, thank you so much for your analysis here and for being part of I-24 News at this hour. Great to have you. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister of Qatar met with the families of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas as Qatar continues to try and be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal. This is the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre. Qatar does not have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas' political leadership. Six Israeli families are in Doha meeting both with Qatari and American diplomats over the weekend. Oh, and your thoughts here on the Israelis traveling to Doha and the question on whether or not for this trying to mediate a second deal with Hamas, would it be Doha still as the key interlocutor or is Egypt taking the reins there? Well listen, Doha, they both seem to be pretty important, Jeff, right? Both are going to be involved and obviously the Qatari's want to be seen as being involved and that's an important part of the story. Look, it's a strange thing to say given the circumstances. But nonetheless, if it walks like normalization and if it talks like normalization, I mean, look, it's probably, I'm not saying that Qatar is about to normalize with Israel. But you can't escape the fact that when the Qatari leader shakes hands and has a visible meeting with the President of Israel, as happened last month at the climate conference in Dubai. And when the Prime Minister of Qatar meets and speaks about meeting with the families of Israeli hostages who fly to Qatar for that purpose, when there are contacts all the time, albeit not all of them at the highest level and some of them with intelligence officials but nonetheless contacts with Israelis, that this starts to look like normalization. But the fact of normalization. De facto normalization. Similar to what Israel has, let's say arguably with Saudi Arabia. This is much more open than what Israel has with Saudi Arabia. Find me a quote of a Saudi leader meeting with a delegation of Israeli families landing in Riyadh. Find me an open meeting of a Saudi leader with the President of Israel. This is in a sense, much more normalization than Israel has with Saudi Arabia and with other Arab countries. And you're right, it's in a sense de facto and the circumstances obviously make it much more complicated. But you look at Qatar's interest going forward, right? It's need coming out of this war to, I think, rehabilitate its reputation. This is a message also perhaps to the United States. In Washington and even in Europe, right, that you start to see the world from their perspective. And I think they may have an interest in Deure normalization with Israel. Obviously there will have to be changes in policy and concessions made, right, in order to get there. But I asked this to Jason Greenblatt sitting in this chair next to me, right in our broadcast last week. Of course, one of the point people in the Trump administration negotiating the Abraham Accords. And he seemed to agree with this line of reasoning in terms of where he thinks Qatar could be headed. And obviously it's a complicated relationship and famously so. But you can't escape the impression that as the evidence starts to mount that history in a sense, in circumstances, are taking these two countries in a very unlikely but very distinct direction. Oh, and thanks so much for your analysis. Being here also on the program at the Sauer, great to have you. We're going out for a break. We have more live coverage on these developing stories across Israel, more updates from the field and expert analysis here in studio. Stay with us. We'll be back soon. Is in a state of war, families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where she has our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well. Ispano parlantes 24, the only comedian in Spanish, who keeps you informed and connected with the Latin community in Israel, News 24, only in 24 news. I 24 news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel. We'll begin this newscast with some breaking news. A third year old man driving in his car near Ben Yamina in the West Bank has been shot to death. It's unclear at this moment if this is a terror attack or a criminal act, but it does appear perhaps to be a terrorist attack. We're going to learn more details on this developing story and bring you the latest information when we get it. This comes in the wake, by the way, of a deadly overnight counterterrorism raid in Janine in the West Bank. Six Palestinians killed in that special operation and four IDF soldiers were hurt as tensions boil in the West Bank. We'll have more details coming up. Also, Israel appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front with Lebanon. Global leaders are both sounding the alarm and frantically rushing to visit the Middle East and try and calm tensions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Jordan late last night and will soon visit Israel to meet with war cabinet ministers and IDF generals. It's Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre. Meanwhile, the European Union's foreign policy chief is in Lebanon warning about a slow march to regional conflict as border battles with Hezbollah spread deeper into both countries. It is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East. We discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701. With us now is I-25 News correspondent Pia Stechelbach joining us from Haifa in the north of Israel. Pia, a lot of questions still remain after yesterday's wide spread rocket attack from Hezbollah into northern Israeli communities, sirens sounding off in dozens of cities, no reports of injuries, but there is damage and a lot of questions about the kind of weaponry that was used. What's the latest, Pia? Right, Jeff. Well, yesterday was indeed a very tense and active day here in the north. As you mentioned, signs were sounding really in dozens of communities all over here in the Israeli north. Hezbollah said that it had launched at least 40 rockets into northern Israel there. And Hezbollah says that this is part of the initial response to the killing of Saleh Al-Aroori, the Hamas official that was assassinated in an alleged Israeli strike last Tuesday. The question really here is, is that a new level of escalation that Hezbollah is trying to initiate there? And what is there next to come Israel has as a protocol attacked Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, such as weapon depots and Hezbollah infrastructure. But Hezbollah, as it has announced, or as its leader Hassan Nasrallah has announced in his recent speeches, is trying to avenge Saleh Al-Aroori's death. And this might indicate that we're ahead of a new level of escalation here in general in the north. Israel, on the other hand, Israel's defense minister Joff Galant has vowed to push Hezbollah further away from the border and to also retaliate for these scummes that we've really been seeing since the beginning of the war for three months now. And thousands of residents here on the Israeli side in the north are still evacuating. The question for them, the most important one perhaps is when they will be able to return to their homes, because we're not only talking about that rocket fire that has really intensified, especially yesterday, but also the continuous motor shell and anti-tank missile attacks. On the Lebanese side, we do know that the official Lebanese government is not interested in any sort of escalation. We've heard the Kateka Prime Minister Najib Mikati speaking over the weekend, saying that they're not interested in a renewed war with Israel. And this bears the potential for a wider regional escalation. However, this shows you and what a difficult situation the official Lebanese government is in having to deal with a militia such as Hezbollah who has been trying to escalate the situation for weeks now. The question here really is how this will continue. The Israeli forces in the north are and have been on very high alert as we enter a new quite tense day here in the north, Jeff. Pia, thanks for that live update from the north. Stay safe. We'll be checking in with you throughout the day. Joining me now is retired IDF Colonel Mary Eisen, now the director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichman University. Good to see you again, Mili. I want to ask about first this threat from Hezbollah warning that this was an initial response to the targeted assassination attributed to Israel. This initial response involved dozens of rockets or does appear, at least according to video, some kind of damage to the Morone IDF base, its positions on Mount Morone. What do you make of the attack yesterday and could there be similar attacks today? Hezbollah is trying to put its position as in its terms the defender of Lebanon and what Jeff, what they're actually doing is they are dragging a country into the war because Hezbollah itself as a hybrid terror organization are Lebanese. They try to attack what they're always going to say is that they only attack Israeli military targets. If there happen to be Israeli communities next to the targets, that doesn't matter. If you put up the map also in addition of where the alerts were yesterday, they can say from here to eternity that all that they were doing was targeting a military base, but everything that they do targets at the exact same time Israeli communities he would see in Mosheville. They're using a variety of weapons and here is the challenge for all of us. Hezbollah because they have had an open it's not a shipping lane it is a direct land route from Iran through Iraq through Syria to Hezbollah. Hezbollah has very advanced different type of weapons much more exact guided with very lethal payloads. They've been using all of these weapons for the last three months, oh my god three months for the last three months and they used them again yesterday. It was just more widespread and we need to look at that as a continuation of what Hezbollah has been doing literally from October 8th consistently attacking Israel, consistently using guided missiles, guided different types of guided weapons and rockets and suicide drones and heavy payloads and yesterday they just did it a bit further inward and stronger in a stronger more condensed way on that military base on Mount Nero. Mary it seems to be a rather telling comment and as Pia our correspondent alluded to from Lebanon's foreign minister saying that it's up to Hezbollah's control whether or not that there is going to be a full-on war a wider regional war with Israel that the country of Lebanon it doesn't have a say in Hezbollah's decision to escalate or not escalate. What does that indicate to you about the position of Hezbollah within Lebanon? So he also said about the implementation of 1701. Chuck, at least for everybody to understand the implementation of 1701 is to disarm Hezbollah, the one that has 150,000 rockets that has an enormous amount of guided anti-tank rockets, suicide drones all of these different capabilities we keep talking about. Who exactly is going to disarm Hezbollah? Lebanon itself as a country has never been able to do so that's one of the reasons Hezbollah could build up their capabilities but the international force the United Nations interim force in Lebanon Unifil that has been deployed there from 1979 but from 2006 with this mandate to disarm anybody that is not the Lebanese military the Lebanese army and here we are and it's 2024 and yet again Lebanon the Lebanese army cannot disarm Hezbollah the international community with Unifil cannot do so and there's that question so who disarms Hezbollah and in the meantime they define what they want to do they create what is literally a buffer zone inside Israel as Pia mentioned before Israeli thousands tens of thousands of Israelis cannot live in their communities in their homes in their cities in their towns because Hezbollah is threatening us with those weapons inside Israel an impossible situation. Mira I want to ask quickly about this developing story in the West Bank this 30-year-old man shot to death in Ben Yamina in the West Bank as he was driving his car this comes of course just hours after this counterterrorism raid in Janine or once again an IDF counterterrorism op to target terrorists and their weapons caches six Palestinian terrorists reported killed several IDF soldiers seriously injured things seem to be heating up in the West Bank Mary. The Israeli defense forces throughout the last three months parallel to attacking and destroying Hamas capabilities in the Gaza Strip are attacking and destroying Hamas and other terror capabilities in the West Bank we all understand Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip it's also in the West Bank by the way it's also in Lebanon but right now we're focused in that sense and the West Bank has a lot of challenges in that sense and we need to continue to go out and make sure that we try to find the cache of weapons the different types that there are and this will be an ongoing aspect it is dangerous it has been over these last three months sadly this time this is one attack that got through but the IDF actions in throughout Judea and Samaria are to preempt and to prevent this kind of attack sadly this time it got through. Stay with us Mary I want to also note here of course the ongoing war in Gaza now in its third month the IDF spokesman last night says that the military has now completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip even has fire fights and Hamas booby traps remain a potent and daily risk the military warns that despite defeating Hamas in north Gaza there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire from there the IDF says the focus now is on defeating Hamas in central and southern Gaza and the military expects ground operations to continue throughout all of 2024 Hamas is made of battalions Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms command and control cells as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground the terrorists move in between different areas of the strip using this system they can do it while remaining hidden their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school which both serve as human shields for Hamas Hamas terrorists move around without weapons in civilian clothes hiding explosives against the IDF forces in the streets and in the entrances to tunnel shafts this is what the ground operation looks like this is the Gaza Strip it's 141 square miles and populates over two million people this is the northern Gaza Strip this is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for three months in the northern Gaza Strip Hamas had two divisions with 12 battalions made up of 14 000 terrorists from the Jabalia area hundreds of terrorists emerged on october 7th to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night released a new video statement calling for government unity amid the ongoing war in Gaza and said that the war will not end and so security is restored in both the south and the north three months ago Hamas committed an atrocious massacre the government headed by me directed the IDF to go to war to eliminate the Hamas bring back the hostages and guarantee that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel we must not stop the war until we reach all of our objectives we are not giving the Hamas immunity anywhere we are fighting to restore security both in the south and in the north until then and for that purpose we need to put aside everything else and continue united until complete victory with me now in studio our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Altman Owen Netanyahu's latest video statement comes amid yet another weekly protest from the released hostages and families of current captives inside Gaza another mass protest with hundreds of thousands of Israelis Netanyahu's latest video statement speaking about the war and unity what do you make of it yeah i don't think he's worried about the family's protest per se jeff but this is a characteristically clever sound bite and video from prime minister Netanyahu why on the faith of it nothing nothing to talk about here right nothing extraordinary here right restates the three goals of the war that he's put out there over and over and over again in the last three months saying Israel won't stop the war until the three goals are achieved also something he said repeatedly over the course of the last few months and increasingly over the last few weeks and then the third statement that all else needs to be put on hold until the war ends also nothing extraordinary but put those together and put them together with Daniel Hagari's briefing last night and as you correctly said Jeff Daniel Hagari saying in the Israeli military again saying that 2024 will be a year of fighting and a fighting the war meaning the war is not expected to end through the course of 2024 the three goals of the war won't be fully achieved until the end of 2034 and therefore politics needs to according to prime minister Netanyahu be put on hold until the end of the war until after 2024 meaning no elections for a very very long time or it's not legitimate according to Netanyahu reading between the lines but not too far between the lines not legitimate to take the country to elections until the war is over and until 2025 even let's say Jeff I don't think that either national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir or Benny Gantz will be all that impressed with that I think Itamar Ben Gvir certainly wants to get to elections as soon as possible and in Benny Gantz's position in the government will be tested over time as again they're going to be more and more of his constituents who come out and say they want him to leave on the one hand both of them especially been especially Benny Gantz committed to being in this government through the course of the war but when do we define the end of this war this is a war that in a very very clear beginning has had a very very clear middle but may not have a very clear end so Netanyahu is laying the groundwork for a campaign argument you Itamar Ben Gvir and especially you Benny Gantz you are taking that you are leaving the government let's say in six months time three months time nine months time even a year's time you are leaving the government and bringing this government down while our soldiers are still fighting while the war in a technical sense and maybe in a real sense is still going on how can you the Israeli public endorse this and how can you the Israeli public switch horses in the middle of the war you are stuck with me or you should stay with me and not with my rivals from right and from center so again a very clever political argument that Netanyahu is laying the groundwork to make over an election campaign because Jeff we're sitting here what January 7th 2024 does any of us actually believe that in January 7th 2025 that this government is going to be intact I doubt it and in that sense Netanyahu while he says politics may need to need to be put on the side is essentially laying the groundwork for an important from his perspective political argument one thing that says that for me in that video statement is it's not as you mentioned perhaps about the war it's the wars he said that we have to restore security in the south and the north there are 80,000 families who are not home in the north and tensions really perhaps boiling over this border skirmishers now increasing deeper in Israel from Hezbollah and Israel strikes deeper into Lebanon as well dozens of miles sometimes deep into into Lebanon these idea of strikes the question becomes as you mentioned as we approach let's say Memorial Day or Independence Day some of these these emotional holidays for Israel if the war in the north becomes a major focal point how can the more cabinet ministers leave is this a what argument would they have that now is the right time to go to election well listen I think it's in some sense the other way around first of all obviously the status quo in Israel's northern border communities is unacceptable right as Mary Eisen was saying as we've all been saying it's clearly unacceptable and clearly needs to change the question is how and obviously Jeff if there is a black and white situation such as sadly tragically we had an October 7th right where Hezbollah really really wants a war okay where there's an escalation or a quote unquote mistake right where Hezbollah attack leads to severe casualties on the Israeli side or Hezbollah is taking intransigent positions and negotiations then obviously Israel will go to war to change the situation on the northern border and this government will have legitimacy to conduct that war and you're right Jeff as a connection with that it would be impossible for ministers to leave the government with that war looming or with that war pending or with that war happening on the other hand look that war is clearly not Israel's plan a if you look at the interests of all the sides of Israel certainly the Biden administration as election day in the United States does start to draw nearer and the Lebanese public okay which which by a vast majority including presumably many of Hezbollah's supporters doesn't want a war when you look at all of that it seems to me that there is good reason to believe that these sides will somehow get to yes on some kind of diplomatic agreement that doesn't solve the problem that ticks the can down the road but is good enough to convince Israelis to move back into their communities on the border and part of the reason for that Jeff is the politics this is a government that has legitimacy to conduct the war in Gaza a thousand percent has legitimacy because this is a war that was absolutely forced in Israel every Israeli understands that and this is the government that was there on October 7th and has the legitimacy to conduct the bulk of this war without going to elections but if there is a situation in the north where we're in a kind of a gray area and it's essentially Israel that is initiating the war aside from the fact we're going to have a public that's exhausted by the war in the south does this government even with Benny guns in it have the legitimacy to be seen as potentially initiating a war in the north rather than fighting a war of no choice I'm not sure it does it may mean that there needs to be an election where those who are then be taking their positions as prime minister and ministers or those who are voted in by the Israeli public and the public has confidence that that government has legitimacy to conduct the war so I do think the politics matter here although of course with that very very important caveat that if his brother really truly wants a war it will get one no matter what the politics in Israel and no matter what the rest of the situation here more to our breaking news that we brought at the top of the hour here we can confirm that in Israeli commando police officer has been killed in this overnight counter-terrorism raid in Janine this was a major counter-terrorism operation that lasted several hours to go after terrorists there have now been 60 police officers killed since the start of the war three months ago want to bring back Mary Eisen into this conversation on the multifaceted multi-front battle against Hamas how deep are Hamas's roots in Janine how many weapons caches how many I guess terror militia members are there in Janine and in the West Bank that may need to be addressed as part of this war to eradicate Hamas when we talk about Hamas I remind ourselves again we're talking about a hybrid terror organization meaning Hamas is all over the West Bank it is a social organization it is a governmental kind of organization it's in the mosques it's all over the place and it is right now an inspiration for the younger generation which makes me horrified and I want to hope that for most people horrified but because of what they've done where they're showing action where they're showing activity they are an inspiration the amount of weapons in the West Bank is enormous it has been a problem for many many years it is something which the idea has not gone against for many years because at the end it takes an operation of going into a city like Janine which has been area a for many many years from 2005 it was the responsibility of the Palestinian Authority for it not to have this enormous amount of weapons and so when we're going in we need to take care and find the weapons it's very similar to the to the Gaza area where the weapons are going to be under the mosque under the school under the hospital not necessarily with tunneling but using these different public facilities as the place where the weapons are I'm talking about tens of thousands of weapons most of the weapons that we're talking about are the kind that can be easily smuggled or made in the West Bank it's different types of explosives and they use them extensively including I think Saturday last night in Janine in an explosion that may have also had casualties where we had at least several soldiers and police officers that were heavily hurt because they use the explosives those are the chemists who put that together in the garages make different types of local explosives IEDs that can be used there's a lot of lightweight weapons of the kind that you can do drive by shooting doesn't matter if it's on light arms or heavier arms they don't have to to until now we've been very good at preventing the type of weapons which are anti-tank missiles direct guided type of missiles because all of those have to be smuggled into the West Bank either from Jordan or from inside Israel they're trying to invent them they have not yet been not successful so we're talking about an enormous amount of weapons job Mary thank you so much for your analysis here and for being part of I-24 News at this hour great to have you meanwhile the prime minister of Qatar met with the families of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas as Qatar continues to try and be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal this is the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre Qatar does not have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas's political leadership six Israeli families are in Doha meeting both with Qatari and American diplomats over the weekend oh and your thoughts here on the Israelis traveling to Doha and the question on the whether or not for this trying to mediate a second deal with Hamas would it be Doha still as the key interlocutor or is Egypt taking the reins there well listen Doha they both seem to be pretty important Jeff right both are going to be involved and obviously the Qatari's want to be seen as being involved and that's an important part of the story look it's a strange thing to say given the circumstances but nonetheless if it walks like normalization and if it talks like normalization I mean look it's probably I'm not saying that Qatar is about to normalize with Israel but you can't escape the fact that when the Qatari leader shakes hands and has a visible meeting with the president of Israel has happened last month at the climate conference in Dubai and when the prime minister of Qatar meets and speaks about meeting with is the ha the families of Israeli hostages who fly to Qatar for that purpose when there are contacts all the time albeit not all of them at the highest level and some of them with intelligence officials but nonetheless contacts with Israelis that this starts to look like normalization but the fact of normalization de facto normalization similar that's what Israel has let's say arguably with Saudi Arabia this is much more open than what Israel has with Saudi Arabia find me a quote of a Saudi leader meeting with a delegation of Israeli families landing in Riyadh find me an open meeting of a Saudi leader with the president of Israel this is in a sense much more normalization than Israel has with Saudi Arabia and with other Arab countries and you're right it's in a sense de facto and the circumstances obviously make it much more complicated but you look at Qatar's interest going forward right it's need coming out of this war to I think rehabilitate its reputation there's a message also perhaps to the United States in Washington and even in Europe right that you start to see the world from their perspective and I think they may have an interest in Dior a normalization with Israel obviously there will have to be changes in policy and concessions made right in order to get there but I asked this adjacent green blood sitting in this chair next to me right in our broadcast last week of course one of the point people in the Trump administration negotiating the Abraham Accords and and he seemed to agree with this line of reasoning in terms of where he thinks Qatar could be headed and obviously it's a complicated relationship and famously so but you can escape the impression that as the evidence starts to mount that history in a sense in circumstances are taking these two countries in a in a very unlikely but very distinct direction Oh and thanks so much for your analysis being here also on the program at the Sarah great to have you we're going out for a break we have more live coverage on these developing stories across Israel more updates from the field and expert analysis here in studio stay with us we'll be back soon is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to to be fought as well for watching i24 news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel we begin with breaking news as an Israeli border police officer was killed during a deadly overnight counterterrorism raid in the West Bank the IDF and Israeli police say their forces entered the city of Janine to arrest terror terror suspects when a roadside bomb hit a border police vehicle Palestinian authority officials say six Palestinians were killed in the following IDF airstrike this morning Israeli forces are also looking now for a suspected Palestinian terrorist who fatally shot this morning an Israeli man driving his car near Benjamin in the West Bank the manhunt goes on with us now in studios i24 news corresponded an aerial Osir on aerial deadly night in the West Bank attacks suspected attacks continuing into the morning now with this fatal shooting of an Israeli driver in the West Bank tell us more about the operation in Janine we've been hearing there's been several raids into Janine over the last several weeks why so many what's going on in Janine well Janine has been the focal point of IDF operation and border police in the West Bank mainly the northern part of the West Bank for I would say over two years right now because it's believed to be a terror hub it's one of the places one of the areas of the West Bank where the lawlessness and lack of authority of the PA is almost complete and so the IDF is operating there almost on a daily basis for the past two years even before the war and they in this operation as you mentioned border police force riding in a jeep goes over an IED that was placed on the route that's also one of the goals of this operation to of these kinds of operations to uncover these IEDs that are placed under the road one of the members of the force 19-year-old Shai Girmai from the Magav border police she we're seeing her picture right now on the screen she was killed three others are wounded and are in hospital the Palestinians are saying that six terrorists part of one of the cells that activated these explosives on the forces they were killed eliminated by a drone this is a confirmation by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah and in the operation there was also a combat helicopter involved in evacuating the forces now the reason we're mentioning this is we really have seen an uptick of in the use of aerial capabilities of the air force in the West Bank that's a shift that began about four or five months ago and we're seeing it further amplified as the time goes on why I mean we as you mentioned there are near nightly raids and they are sometimes deadly on Israeli forces in Janine specifically the Israelis go in they look to arrest known suspects they uncover weapons caches or facilities then they leave then they come back then they leave why is there a strategic or tactical reason why doesn't Israel stay stay there I mean is it would it be better for this operation to to stay and rooted out all at once rather than returning night after night well first of all areas like Janine, Nablus, Tulkarem three cities Palestinian cities and the adjacent refugee camps have been the main targets of Israeli operations they're not under Israeli civilian control they're under Palestinian civilian control and they're not even under in terms of military control Israel can operate there but indeed the intent is not to rule the area and not to control the day to day but for that to be under the PA but when Israel identifies a military need to go and operate there it does that and the nightly rate of these operations consists of what the IDF calls the lawnmower method of basically you go in every day and you arrest the you arrest the leader or the deputy of the leader and on the next day you arrest his his replacement and when you go in and clashes his replacement is killed and that way you prevent the terror groups there from gaining strength from growing from acquiring know-how and that explains why the IDF has been operating there on a nightly basis simply because the threat is so big I'll just note that since the start of the war since October 7th at least 2300 Palestinian terror suspects have been arrested and about 1300 of them are from Hamas and so another operational necessity is the interrogations and the information that is received from those arrests that also helps the forces moving forward thanks for that analysis Ariel Israel meanwhile may be on the brink of a wider war in the northern front with Lebanon global leaders are both sounding the alarm and also frantically rushing to visit the Middle East and try and calm tensions U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is meeting with drudanian officials right now and he'll soon visit Israel to meet with war cabinet ministers and IDF generals this will be Blinken's fourth visit to Israel since the October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and warning about a slow march to regional conflict it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 with us now is Pia Steckelback our correspondent joining us from Haifa Pia it's interesting that Hezbollah and both Lebanese officials say that they don't want a wider war a wider conflict and get the attacks into Israel intensify dozens of rockets fired yesterday into northern Israel striking a military post in north Israel why strike Israel why intensify the strikes if the goal is to avoid a wider conflict right well Jeff Hezbollah's actions definitely speak a different language what we have seen since this war with Gaza started was basically continuous provocations coming from Hezbollah Hezbollah knows that Israel right now has no interest to let this conflict with Hezbollah escalate into a larger war although we have heard also from the Israeli defense establishment including the defense minister Yav Galan that Israel on the long term wants to push Hezbollah away from its border because I want to remind you that there have been skirmishes with Hezbollah before especially during the summer where Hezbollah plays two tents very close to the Israeli border also crossing the Israeli border so for now for Hezbollah it is a chance to position itself in the Lebanese spectrum to also show its support for the Palestinian cause and to bring itself to basically strengthen its position also in Lebanon there although we do know that the official Lebanese government has no interest as well as Israel in letting this develop into a full front war we've just heard of the weekend from the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon Najib Mikati that he thinks that this has the potential to drag this entire region to a war and that the Lebanese government has no interest as well to let this develop into a war however we saw those at least 40 rockets that Hezbollah said it launched into northern Israel yesterday trigger alarms and several and dozens of communities really all over the north Hezbollah published a video where it claims to have attacked an Israeli military base in the Miran region in the center region of the Israel-Lebanon border and this is what we have seen basically for the past weeks that Hezbollah is first and foremost striking Israeli army bases along the border trying to take out its surveillance system there possibly in preparation for wider attacks Hezbollah has said that yesterday's attacks have been a part of its retaliation for the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas al-Fisheh al-Salih al-Aroori last Tuesday in Beirut and Hezbollah's leader Hassan Asrallah in his recent speeches has vowed that there will be more revenge for the death of Salih al-Aroori whatever that means is very much not clear and this is I think also something that Hezbollah is using to create tension to create that sense of uncertainty to strengthen it that Israeli residents in the north have been feeling saints basically at the beginning of the war now since the beginning of these daily skirmishes because Jeff we're not only talking about rockets that we've seen yesterday we're talking about daily attacks with anti-tank missiles and also mortar shells and we're talking about thousands of residents in the north that have been evacuated and have no idea when they will be able to come back and there are really many of those residents who are demanding a substantial solution because they say they're not willing to return to their homes if they're still Hezbollah sitting on the borders there so there's also a certain level of pressure on the Israeli government on the Israeli security establishment to deal with that threat that is really much very much sitting on Israeli communities that are located very close to the border there now here in Haifa where we're at right now it is still about 50 to 60 kilometers away from the border here the day started relatively normal but we know that Hezbollah has the capability at least it says so to reach every single city in Israel we do know that in comparison to Hamas Hezbollah has wider capabilities when it comes to its rockets it is using more sophisticated military power so tensions are and they remain high here in Israel's north as we seem to have reached a new level of escalation after yesterday's at least 40 rockets that have been fired by Hezbollah Bia, thank you so much for that report was the Hezbollah attack yesterday successful? Well they claim to have hit the military base in Mehron now this military base is the air surveillance base it's called the eyes of the country in the north and what we're seeing now is part of a Hezbollah video that they shared showing hitting the protective domes of these aerial defense systems now this isn't a secret this is all over social media and so the fact that the IDF did not confirm all they confirmed was that 40 rockets were fired at the area of Mehron but indeed in this video we see that not only was the base targeted by rockets but also with entertained missiles at least one entertained missile as can be seen in the video and the goal was to try and affect Israel's capabilities to establish a clear picture of its aerial situation above the north this is a thread that Hezbollah is trying to amplify to engage in as it moves forward especially if there is indeed a war the aerial defense detection systems are critical to defend Israel from Hezbollah's armaments whether it's rockets missiles or drones they have an abundance of all three and they're not going to be shy to use them in large quantities if indeed a situation escalates I will just note that if we're looking at not necessarily Hezbollah's steps we have to look at that detached from the rhetoric of the leaders and see what their steps are on the ground this attack on this basis is not out of the ordinary in terms of their targeting of bases along the border some of them also strategic bases they've been doing this for months I think if we're looking at who is escalating the situation or who is escalating their part of the situation I think we can see since the targeting of Salah al-Rui last week Israel has amplified its attacks in terms of beginning more targeted eliminations on Lebanese soil targeting buildings that are more than one story high this is something that Israel refrained avoided from doing up until now to try and prevent additional casualties and so given the situation that Pia described which is pretty much an inevitable situation for Israel given that Hezbollah is not going anywhere diplomatically at least not at the moment indeed the situation appears to be on a singular trajectory and that is towards further escalation unfortunately let's bring into this conversation IDF reserves a major Elliot Chodoff joining us here into this conversation Sir thanks so much for your time Elliot do you believe in light of yesterday's attack which appears according to the video to have damaged the aerial observation base this IDF post in North Gaza is Israel and Hezbollah on this let's say escalation ladder that will inevitably lead to a wider full war or is there still hope perhaps for a diplomatic solution with some of these contested border points that may see Hezbollah voluntarily withdraw I don't see a diplomatic solution the attack was in northern Israel not north Gaza the northern Air Force Air Control Center look I think we we have to start from from the perspective that Hezbollah wants to destroy Israel it's part of the grand Iranian network pushing through the Middle East for a variety of reasons but destroying Israel is central to their thinking and under those circumstances we're not going to see a long-term diplomatic solution because they're not they're not going to to reduce that as their objective in the short term we do see escalation it's gradual it's creeping I don't think the escalation is going to lead inevitably to war I think the inevitability of war is once again Hezbollah's goal to destroy Israel and our unwillingness to be destroyed there dozens of rockets and missiles fired yesterday they appear to have penetrated the Israeli defense systems they targeted they successfully hit infrastructure belonging to IDF posts we have seen in recent weeks the success in particular of drones it appears the IDF is having difficulty with its iron dome defense system and successfully downing and locating drones as they cross Israeli terrain dozens of communities sent into bomb shelters and into their safe rooms over drone threats the war with Hezbollah do you believe as many are saying this would be extremely ferocious but brief war or may it look differently in light of Hezbollah's arsenal well ferocious for sure the iron dome doesn't have a problem per se the iron dome's problem is that there aren't enough of them Hezbollah can fire many more rockets than iron dome can engage simultaneously and this we knew already from earlier engagements with Hamas and Gaza firing more rockets than iron than iron dome could engage whether the war will be short or not it would certainly be in Israel's interest to make it a short war and I think that's clearly the intent but there's an old rule that says that that no plan survives first contact with the enemy so to to talk about whether it will in fact be short or not is impossible to tell it certainly it would be Israel's intent to make it as short as possible looking back on 2006 we're not we certainly would not want another 34 day war with the intensity of rocket capability that Hezbollah has today I want to turn now to Gaza for a second with you the an idea of spokesman yesterday given an update saying the military has completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip even as firefights and Hamas booby traps remain a potent and daily risk for soldiers the Israeli military warns that despite defeating Hamas in north Gaza there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire on Israel from there the idea says it's focusing now on defeating Hamas in central and southern Gaza and the military expects the ground offensive to continue throughout all of 2024 Hamas is made of battalions Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms command and control cells as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground the terrorists move in between different areas of the Strip using this system they can do it while remaining hidden their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school which both serve as human shields for Hamas Hamas terrorists move around without weapons in civilian clothes hiding explosives against the IDF forces in the streets and in the entrances to tunnel shafts this is what the ground operation looks like this is the Gaza Strip it's 141 square miles and populates over 2 million people this is the northern Gaza Strip this is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for three months in the northern Gaza Strip Hamas had two divisions with 12 battalions made up of 14,000 terrorists from the Jabalia area hundreds of terrorists emerged on October 7th to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities back with IDF reserves Major Elliot Chodof giving us his analysis here tell me in your estimation your analysis on the possibility here of a multi-front war the IDF saying it will need to continue some kind of ground offensive all year long in Gaza but for now the next few weeks will be heavy intense urban fighting in the central part of the Gaza Strip of the Khan Yunus area and the south at the same time as we're talking about perhaps a major flare-up a major escalation in the north how might that how is the preparedness level of the IDF to handle both threats the IDF is certainly prepared we called up reserves immediately after the attacks of October 7th many of those forces were sent up north and remain up north there is an army in the north facing Hezbollah in the south what the IDF spokesperson said was correct but I think we need to be clear that the dismantling of the war the military infrastructure of Hamas in the north means that we're moving more toward a guerrilla type warfare situation in northern Gaza one requires much force and hence divisions have been pulled out of Gaza incidentally the the translation there there are not two divisions Hamas divisions in the north it's two brigades but in any event as a military force those brigades and battalions and their infrastructure have largely been dismantled but that doesn't mean the fighting is over it means as I said it goes more toward guerrilla warfare that requires much less force on the part of the IDF which is why divisions Israeli divisions were pulled out of there Khan Yunus continues to be a front and until what is what was done in the Gaza city area in the north is done to the Khan Yunus Rafiq area in the south we're going to see a decent amount of ground ground force fighting dismantling their military military capabilities bottom line is Israel is capable of fighting a two front war north and south the idea would prefer not to because obviously a two front war is much more complicated than than a one front but but certainly capable of doing it if necessary do you believe that the ground offensive can end without the idea of locating the top Hamas leadership which they have not yet done including Sunwah I think that locating them and eliminating eliminating them is certainly part of the objective as was taking out the elaborate in Beirut the Hamas leadership is on the list and and the list means taking them out can it end without that if they escape they escape dismantling their their military infrastructure is related to but not the same as taking out the leadership so it's multiple objectives but let's not over personalize it taking out even Sinwar and death which would be tremendous both symbolic and practical success achievements for the IDF doesn't mean that that's the end of it there are other leaders others take over we've taken out leaders before other leaders rise up it's it's part of it but that isn't certainly not the end of it major thanks so much for being with us here on the program great to have your analysis tonight 24 news and the prime minister of Qatar met with the families of several Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas Qatar continues to be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal it's the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre Qatar does not still have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas's political leadership but still six Israeli families were welcomed to Qatar to meet in Doha with both Qatari and American diplomats and a teenage girl who spent more than 50 days in Hamas captivity is speaking out about her traumatic ordeals in Gaza she watched her father be murdered right in front of her eyes inside their home before she was dragged to Gaza by terrorists Kolea Meurpal and in their cell and then I was killed and she was killed too we arrived in Gaza you were killed you don't know when it will happen you don't know how it will be seen you don't know if it will happen in the future or something that will happen or the consequences of your death at all all of this is thinking about how the death will go through how it will go through in one day we passed from home to the prison suddenly the door opened and six girls were found and suddenly we realized that there were girls who were also killed many girls were killed they were in difficult situations they were injured very, very difficult and they were injured they were not healed they were protecting themselves or that we helped them protect when we were with them it was already a time that they were released only for five days because there are no more deaths I believe that now it is already in more days because the cells have also been recovered and the blood pressure is going and it is decreasing and it is also a physical pain and also a mental pain I can't believe at all what their situation is about what is the hope of this Errol, there doesn't appear to be progress in a second ceasefire for hostage release deal but Qatar is still pressing ahead with trying to maintain dialogue here are we any closer? Well I'll just first say that it's accounts like this that are being pushed by the released hostages they don't want to be in front of the camera but they're coming back and going to the media because they were themselves there and they're trying to raise awareness this is as you mentioned the first time that the Qatari prime minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Athani hosted families of six Israeli and American citizen hostages showing, trying to say that this is important to Qatar in the message he relayed in the meeting he relayed the message that the elimination of El-Aroori in Beirut last week made the situation more complicated but at the end of the day it could be happening but we're not seeing it enough American pressure on Qatar that is the only thing that has brought Israeli hostages back for sure you can say military pressure has helped has created the situation that is a military assessment you can we can discuss that but what is for sure is American pressure on Qatar that has brought back hostages we are not seeing that in the same force that it was before the previous round not necessarily putting this all on the Americans the situation is indeed changed and Hamas is taking a more firmer stance but indeed at the end of the day Qatar is trying to show that it's engaged I think optics it's great but the question is are they indeed pressuring Hamas as much as they can to bring back the hostages I'm not so sure and the way to ensure that or raise the odds for that is American pressure and these families also meeting with American diplomats in Doha as well as the talks continue Ariel thanks so much for that analysis going out for a break more news ahead more live reporting from the field here as the threat of war continues to heat up in the north the war goes on in the south inside Gaza where the idea continues to battle Hamas terrorists more updates on the situation stay with us we'll be back soon here and I'd like for news is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception it's something that certainly needs to to be fought as well high 24 news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel we begin with breaking news as an Israeli border police officer was killed during a deadly overnight counterterrorism raid in the west bank the IDF and Israeli police say their forces entered the city of Janine to arrest terror suspects when a roadside bomb hit a border police vehicle Palestinian authority officials say six Palestinians were killed in the following idea airstrike this morning Israeli forces are also looking now for a suspected Palestinian terrorists who fatally shocked this morning an Israeli man driving his car near Benjamin in the west bank the manhunt goes on with us now in the studios high 24 news correspondent Ariel Osir on Ariel deadly night in the west bank attacks suspected attacks continuing into the morning now with this fatal shooting of an Israeli driver in the west bank tell us more about the operation in Janine we've been hearing there's been several raids into Janine over the last several weeks why so many what's going on in Janine well Janine has been the focal point of IDF operation and border police in the west bank mainly the northern part of the west bank for I would say over two years right now because it's believed to be a terror hub it's one of the places one of the areas of the west bank where the lawlessness and lack of authority of the PA is almost complete and so the IDF is operating there almost on a daily basis for the past two years even before the war and they in this operation as you mentioned border police force riding in a jeep goes over an IED that was placed on the route that's also one of the goals of this operation two of these kinds of operations to uncover these IEDs that are placed under the road one of the members of the force 19-year-old Shai Girmai from the Magav border police she we're seeing her picture right now on the screen she was killed three others are wounded and are in hospital the Palestinians are saying that six terrorists part of one of the cells that activated these explosives on the forces they were killed eliminated by a drone this is a confirmation by the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah and in the operation there was also a combat helicopter involved in evacuating the forces now the reason we're mentioning this is we really have seen an uptick of in the use of aerial capabilities of the air force in the West Bank that's a shift that began about four or five months ago and we're seeing it further amplified as the time goes on why I mean we as you mentioned there are near nightly raids and they are sometimes deadly on Israeli forces in Janine specifically the Israelis go in they look to arrest known suspects they uncover weapons caches or facilities then they leave then they come back then they leave why is there a strategic or tactical reason why doesn't Israel stay stay there I mean is it would it be better for this operation to to stay and rooted out all at once rather than returning night after night well first of all areas like Janine Nablus Tulkarem three cities Palestinian cities and the adjacent refugee camps have been the main targets of Israeli operations they're not under Israeli civilian control they're under Palestinian civilian control and they're not even under in terms of military control Israel can operate there but indeed the intent is not to rule the area and not to control the day to day but for that to be under the PA but when Israel identifies a military need to go and operate there it does that and the nightly rate of these operations consists of what the IDF calls the lawnmower method of basically you go in every day and you arrest the you arrest the leader or the deputy of the leader and then the next day you arrest his his replacement then when you go in and in clashes his replacement is killed and that way you prevent the terror groups there from gaining strength from growing from acquiring know-how and that explains why the IDF has been operating there on a nightly basis simply because the threat is so big I'll just note that since the start of the war since October 7th at least 2300 Palestinian terror suspects have been arrested and about 1300 of them are from Hamas and so another operational necessity is the interrogations and the information that is received from those arrests that also helps the forces moving forward thanks for that analysis Israel meanwhile may be on the brink of a wider war in the northern front with Lebanon global leaders are both sounding the alarm and also frantically rushing to visit the Middle East and try and calm tensions US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is meeting with drudanian officials right now and he'll soon visit Israel to meet with October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and warning about a slow march to regional conflict it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 with us now is Pia Steckelback our correspondent joining us from Haifa Pia it's interesting that Hezbollah and both Lebanese officials say that they don't want a wider war a wider conflict and get the attacks into Israel intensify dozens of rockets fired yesterday into northern Israel or striking a military post in north Israel why strike Israel why intensify the strikes if the goal is to avoid a wider conflict right well Jeff Hezbollah's actions definitely speak a different language what we have seen since this war with Gaza started was basically continuous provocations coming from Hezbollah Hezbollah knows that Israel right now has no interest to let this conflict with Hezbollah escalate into a larger war although we have heard also from the Israeli defense establishment including the defense minister Yav Galan that Israel on the long term wants to push Hezbollah away from its border because I want to remind you that there have been skirmishes with Hezbollah before especially during the summer where Hezbollah plays two tents very close to the Israeli border also crossing the Israeli border so for now for Hezbollah it is a chance to position itself in the Lebanese spectrum to also show its support for the Palestinian cause and to bring itself to basically strengthen its position also in Lebanon there although we do know that the official Lebanese government has no interest as well as Israel in letting this develop into a full front war we've just heard of the weekend from the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon Najib Mikati that he thinks that this has the potential to drag this entire region to a war and that the Lebanese government has no interest as well to let this develop into a war however we saw those at least 40 rockets that Hezbollah said it launched into northern Israel yesterday Trigel alarms and several and dozens of communities really all over the north Hezbollah published a video where it claims to have attacked an Israeli military base in the Miran region in the center region of the Israel Lebanon border and this is what we've seen basically for the past weeks that Hezbollah is first and foremost striking Israeli army bases along the border trying to take out its surveillance system there possibly in preparation for wider attacks Hezbollah has said that yesterday's attacks have been a part of its retaliation for the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas al-Fisheh al-Salih al-Aroori last Tuesday in Beirut and Hezbollah's leader Hassan Asrallah in his recent speeches has vowed that there will be more revenge for the death of Salih al-Aroori whatever that means is very much not clear and this is I think also something that Hezbollah is using to create tension to create that sense of uncertainty to strengthen it that Israeli residents in the north have been feeling saints basically at the beginning of the war now since the beginning of these daily skirmishers because Jeff we're not only talking about rockets that we've seen yesterday we're talking about daily attacks with anti-tank missiles and also mortar shells and we're talking about thousands of residents in the north that have been evacuated and have no idea when they will be able to come back and there are really many of those residents who are demanding a substantial solution because they say they're not willing to return to their homes if they're still Hezbollah sitting on the borders there so there's also a certain level of pressure on the Israeli government on the Israeli security establishment to deal with that threat that is really much very much sitting on Israeli communities that are located very close to the border there now here in Haifa where we're at right now it is still about 50 to 60 kilometers away from the border here the day started relatively normal but we know that Hezbollah has the capability at least that says so to reach every single city in Israel we do know that in comparison to Hamas Hezbollah has wider capabilities when it comes to its rockets it is using more sophisticated military power so tensions are and they remain high here in Israel's North as we seem to have reached a new level of escalation after yesterday's at least 40 rockets that have been fired by Hezbollah Bia, thank you so much for that report was the Hezbollah attack yesterday successful? Well, they claim to have hit the military base in Miran now this military base is the air surveillance base it's called the eyes of the country in the North and what we're seeing now is part of a Hezbollah video that they shared showing hitting the protective domes of these aerial defense systems now this isn't a secret this is all over social media and so the fact that the IDF did not confirm all they confirmed was that 40 rockets were fired at the area of Miran but indeed in this video we see that not only was the base targeted by rockets but also with entertained missiles at least one entertained missile as can be seen in the video and the goal was to try and affect Israel's capabilities to establish a clear picture of its aerial situation above the North this is a thread that Hezbollah is trying to amplify to engage in as it moves forward especially if there is indeed a war the aerial defense detection systems are critical to defend Israel from Hezbollah's armaments whether it's rockets missiles or drones they have an abundance of all three and they're not going to be shy to use them in large quantities if indeed situation escalates I will just note that if we're looking at not necessarily Hezbollah's steps we have to look at that detached from the rhetoric of the leaders and see what their steps are on the ground this attack on this basis is not out of the ordinary in terms of their targeting of bases along the border some of them also strategic bases they've been doing this for months I think if we're looking at who is escalating the situation or who is escalating their part of the situation I think we can see since the targeting of Salah al-Haroui last week Israel has amplified its attacks in terms of beginning more targeted eliminations on Lebanese soil targeting buildings that are more than one story high this is something that Israel refrained avoided from doing up until now to try and prevent additional casualties and so given the situation that Pia described which is pretty much an inevitable situation for Israel given that Hezbollah is not going anywhere diplomatically at least not at the moment indeed the situation appears to be on a singular trajectory and that is towards further escalation unfortunately let's bring into this conversation IDF reserves a major Elliott Chodoff joining us here into this conversation Sir, thanks so much for your time Elliott, do you believe in light of yesterday's attack which appears according to the video to have damaged the aerial observation base this IDF post in North Gaza is Israel and Hezbollah on this let's say escalation ladder that will inevitably lead to a wider full war or is there still hope perhaps for a diplomatic solution with some of these contested border points that may see Hezbollah voluntarily withdraw I don't see a diplomatic solution the attack was in northern Israel not north Gaza the northern Air Force Air Control Center look I think we have to start from from the perspective that Hezbollah wants to destroy Israel it's part of the grand Iranian network pushing through the Middle East for a variety of reasons but destroying Israel is central to their thinking and under those circumstances we're not going to see a long-term diplomatic solution because they're not they're not going to to reduce that as their objective in the short term we do see escalation it's gradual it's creeping I don't think the escalation is going to lead inevitably to war I think the inevitability of war is once again Hezbollah's goal to destroy Israel and our unwillingness to be destroyed the dozens of rockets and missiles fired yesterday they appear to have penetrated the Israeli defense systems they targeted they successfully hit infrastructure belonging to IDF posts we have seen in recent weeks the success in particular of drones it appears the IDF is having difficulty with its iron dome defense system and successfully downing and locating drones as they cross Israeli terrain dozens of communities sent into bomb shelters and into their safe rooms over drone threats the war with Hezbollah do you believe as many are saying this would be extremely ferocious but brief war or may it look differently in light of Hezbollah's arsenal well ferocious for sure the iron dome doesn't have a problem per se the iron dome's problem is that there aren't enough of them Hezbollah has can fire many more rockets than iron dome can can engage simultaneously and this we knew already from earlier engagements with with Hamas and Gaza firing more rockets than iron than iron dome could engage whether the war will be short or not it would certainly be in Israel's interest to make it a short war and I think that that's clearly the intent but there's an old rule that says that that no plan survives first contact with the enemy so to talk about whether it will in fact be short or not is impossible to tell it certainly it would be Israel's intent to make it as short as possible looking back on 2006 we're not we certainly would not want another 34 day war with the intensity of rocket capability that Hezbollah has today I want to turn now to Gaza for a second with you an idea of spokesman yesterday given an update saying the military has completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza strip even as firefights and Hamas booby traps remain a potent and daily risk for soldiers the Israeli military warns that despite defeating Hamas in north Gaza there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire on Israel from there the idea says it's focusing now on defeating Hamas in central and southern Gaza and the military expects the ground offensive to continue throughout all of 2024 Hamas is made of battalions Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms command and control cells as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground the terrorists move in between different areas of the strip using this system they can do it while remaining hidden their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school which both serve as human shields for Hamas Hamas terrorists move around without weapons in civilian clothes hiding explosives against the IDF forces in the streets and in the entrances to tunnel shafts this is what the ground operation looks like this is the Gaza strip it's 141 square miles and populates over 2 million people this is the northern Gaza strip this is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for three months in the northern Gaza strip Hamas had two divisions with 12 battalions made up of 14,000 terrorists from the Jabalia area hundreds of terrorists emerged on October 7th to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities back with IDF reserves Major Elliot Chodoff giving us his analysis here tell me in your estimation your analysis on the possibility here of a multi-front war the IDF saying we'll need to continue some kind of ground offensive all year long in Gaza but for now the next few weeks will be heavy intense urban fighting in the central part of the Gaza strip of the Khan Yunus area and the south at the same time as we're talking about perhaps a major flare-up a major escalation in the north how might that how is the preparedness level of the IDF to handle both routes the IDF is certainly prepared we called up reserves immediately after the attacks of October 7th many of those forces were sent up north and remain up north so that's there is an army in the north facing Hezbollah in the south what the IDF spokesperson said was correct but I think we need to be clear that the dismantling of the war the military infrastructure of Hamas in the north means that we're moving more toward a guerrilla type warfare situation in northern Gaza it won't require as much force and hence divisions have been pulled out of Gaza incidentally the the translation there are not two divisions Hamas divisions in the north it's two brigades but in any event as as a military force those brigades and battalions in their infrastructure have largely been dismantled but that doesn't mean the fighting is over it means as I said it goes more to a guerrilla warfare that requires much less force on on the part of the IDF which is why divisions Israeli divisions were pulled out of there Kanyunas continues to be a front and until what is what was done in the Gaza city area in the north is done to the Kanyunas Rafiakh area in the south we're going to see a decent amount of ground ground force fighting dismantling their military military capabilities bottom line is Israel is capable of fighting a two front war north and south the idea would prefer not to because obviously a two front war is much more complicated than than a one front but but certainly capable of doing it if necessary do you believe that the ground offensive can end without the idea of locating the top Hamas leadership which they have not yet done including Sunwah I think that locating them and eliminating eliminating them is certainly part of the objective as was taking out the laboratory in Beirut Hamas leadership is on the list and and the list means taking them out can it end without that if they escape they escape dismantling their their military infrastructure is related to but not the same as taking out the leadership so it's multiple objectives but let's not over personalize it taking out even Sunwah and death which would be tremendous both symbolic and practical success achievements for the IDF doesn't mean that that's the end of it there are other leaders others take over we've taken out leaders before other leaders rise up it's it's part of it but that isn't certainly not the end of it major thanks so much for being with us here on the program great to have your analysis tonight 24 news and the prime minister of Qatar met with the families of several Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas Qatar continues to be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal it's the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre Qatar does not still have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas' political leadership but still six Israeli families were welcomed to Qatar to meet in Doha with both Qatari and American diplomats and a teenage girl who spent more than 50 days in Hamas captivity is speaking out about her traumatic ordeals in Gaza she watched her father be murdered right in front of her eyes inside their home before she was dragged to Gaza by terrorists and then I got a thousand and she was killed too and we went to Gaza you were killed you didn't know when it would happen you didn't know how it would happen you didn't know if it would happen in the future or just in the future or in the future you would have to go through all of this we thought how to kill her how to read her how to meet her in one day we moved from home to the prison suddenly the door opened and six girls were waiting and suddenly we realized that there were girls who were also in the way many girls were crying they were getting very difficult they were bleeding very difficult and very painful that they were not crying they were crying for themselves or that we helped them to cry during our time with them it was already a time when they were crying for five days because they were not crying and it was already a time in more days because the girls were also crying and the woman was walking and crying and it was also a physical pain and also a mental pain I can't believe at all what their situation is about what kind of hope is there are we any closer? well I'll just first say that it's accounts like this that are being pushed by the released hostages they don't want to be in front of the camera but they're coming back and going to the media because they were themselves there and they're trying to raise awareness this is, as you mentioned, the first time that the Qatari Prime Minister Mohammad bin Abdul Rahman Athani hosted families of Israeli and American citizen hostages showing, trying to say that this is important to Qatari in the message he relayed in the meeting he relayed the message that the elimination of El-Aroori in Beirut last week made the situation more complicated but at the end of the day it could be happening but we're not seeing it enough American pressure on Qatari that is the only thing that has brought Israeli hostages back for sure you can say military pressure has helped has created the situation that is a military assessment we can discuss that but what is for sure is American pressure on Qatari that has brought back hostages we are not seeing that in the same force that it was before the previous round not decided putting this all on the Americans the situation has indeed changed and Hamas is taking a more firmer stance Qatari is trying to show that it's engaged I think optics it's great but the question is are they indeed pressuring Hamas as much as they can to bring back the hostages I'm not so sure and the way to ensure that or raise the odds for that is American pressure and this family is also meeting with American diplomats in Doha as well as the talks continue Ariel thanks so much for that analysis going out for a break more news ahead as the threat of war continues to heat up in the north war goes on in the south inside Gaza where the idea continues to battle Hamas terrorists more updates on the situation stay with us we'll be back soon here on I-20 news is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that we have to be fought as well watching I-20 news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel as the country appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front with Lebanon global leaders are both sounding the alarm and also frantically rushing to the Middle East right now to try and calm tensions US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting now with Jordanian officials and will soon visit Israel to meet also with war cabinet ministers and idea of generals it is Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and is warning about a slow march to regional conflict it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 let's go live to the north where I'm joined by I-20 correspondent Pia Stechelbach Pia Hezbollah releasing video of their massive rocket attack yesterday on the north and also saying that this was just the initial response to a targeted killing that was attributed to Israel because Hezbollah is saying this is an initial reaction might there be more rocket fire missile attacks in the hours to come right Jeff well this is really the question what is there to come you're right to say that Hezbollah said that what we've seen yesterday at least 40 rockets that have been launched by Hezbollah into different areas of northern Israel is only the initial response Hassan Asrallah in his latest speech on Friday said that there will be further responses further reactions further revenge for that alleged Israeli assassination by Hezbollah in Beirut but he didn't specify in terms of what we can expect he said that the response has been decided about and that it depends on further developments on the battlefield when and how it will be materialized now the question here is how long or how further long can Israeli residents the thousands of Israeli residents in the north that have already been evacuated and also those who are still in their homes but are fearing that wider escalation we are hearing many of them are demanding from the Israeli security establishment to find a substantial solution for Hezbollah posing a threat sitting there on the border Israel has been retaliating on a regular basis to those attacks being committed by Hezbollah we're not only talking about rocket attacks but on a daily basis mortar shells and also anti-tank missiles that are being fired into Israeli communities in the north this is what we've seen so far quite a tit and tat situation Hezbollah is attacking Israel is retaliating now we're hearing from all different sides that they have no interest in an escalation of the situation Israel does not want another war also the Lebanese government has said time and time again that it does not want to drag Lebanon into another war that also the caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati emphasizing over the weekend that he fears that this could actually drag the entire region into another war and that the Lebanese official government has no interest in it Hezbollah keeps escalating the situation with these attacks especially with that intensification that we've seen yesterday and how Hezbollah has released a video as you mentioned from these attacks yesterday also showing the claim targeting of an Israeli military based in the Miran region now we do not have any response or statement from the Israeli military on that attack Hezbollah is claiming that it specifically attacked the aerial surveillance system and this is a technique or a tactic of Hezbollah that we've seen throughout the past weeks that it tries to target the surveillance system of Israeli army bases potentially in preparation for a wider attack if that will come how that will look like is very much an open question here but the situation is very tense and going back to the thousands of Israeli residents that have been evacuated just a couple of minutes ago we were approached by 12 of them from the Israeli community of Shlomi which is about 5 kilometers away from the border and they have been evacuated for weeks now and we're also residents of the Kibbutz along the Gaza border are evacuated they do not have a rise and they do not have any hope in terms of when they will be able to go back there is no certainty in terms of how the situation in the north will develop there is no full on war as of now there's as he put it really there's no horizon in terms of when he will be able to go back and this man spoke in the name of really thousands of people also of course considering the residents on the Lebanese side there are also thousands there left the areas because of the continuous fighting that is going on the Israeli retaliatory attacks here so the northern front is very much an open front the question is and this is a question we've been asking ourselves basically for 3 months now will it develop in a full on war as of now also diplomatic efforts international diplomatic efforts are trying to minimize are trying to keep that front as or not as it is but to really lower the tensions the question is will his valla now after the killing of Sahel Arori as it announced intensified is a tax and if so how would it look like appear you're joining us from Haifa a major one of Israel's biggest cities and certainly it's biggest city in the northern part of the country our tensions high specifically in Haifa do residents are residents there on alert are they taking precautions in case of a Hezbollah attack well Haifa is still about 50 to 60 kilometers away from the Lebanese border here you don't have the feeling that tensions are extraordinarily high however we have to say that tensions have been high since the beginning of the war in Gaza now after this latest assassination of Sahel Arori and the latest threats coming from Hezbollah tensions are not necessarily higher here in Haifa as it is still relatively far away from the Lebanese border but people are very much aware that Hezbollah has the capability to target any Israeli city including Haifa and there have been threats made in the past that Haifa could be one of the cities being targeted now Haifa is also a city that took in a lot of those evacuees from the communities that have been evacuated as of now communities in the range of up to 5 kilometers from the Lebanese border have been evacuated many of them are staying here this is still deemed a relatively safe place but of course in this accounts for all of northern Israel people here are watching the developments on the northern front with great concern yeah thank you so much for that update joining us from Haifa today great to have you here in studio I'm joined by former IDF senior intelligence officer Rafael Urushami Rafael Hezbollah vowing that this was an initial response from the Hezbollah video it does appear that they did successfully damage IDF posts and IDF military installation in the Morone region the IDF not commenting on this do you believe that this could be an opportunity for both Hezbollah and the IDF to climb down from the escalation ladder or is this only the start of something bigger that will spiral perhaps in the days to come until the elimination of Mr. Alaruri and Hezbollah obviously was not interested in escalating neither was the IDF on the other side all of a sudden because of that elimination in the south of the route the Hezbollah would want to escalate all of a sudden because of that one incident I doubted very much on the other hand what do you mean by escalation the fact that the Hezbollah is throwing dozens of rockets a day at Israel that's not an escalation Mr. Anthony Blinken the secretary of state is visiting the Middle East he's afraid of an escalation Iraq, Syria are attacking his American interests the Houthis in the Dead Sea the Hezbollah in Lebanon the Hamas in Gaza there is no escalation we are at war there is an escalation the problem is we are too much thinking of what the Hezbollah intends or doesn't intend to do what Terence thinks or doesn't think this is of no importance what is important is what do we think what do we want to do do we effectively not want to escalate keep a kind of status quo and have let's say between 20 and 40 missiles thrown at us every day as a kind of a routine so not to escalate the 150... where would the escalation be catastrophic this is a war with Hezbollah a total... yes what would be catastrophic is procrastinating what is catastrophic is what we are doing now the 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel are not going anywhere they will be shot at sooner or later whether it's tomorrow or in a year or two years the only difference will be it will be harder more dangerous the Hezbollah will have organized we have the lesson to draw from the south look how we are even ourselves surprised at how structures how organized how many kilometers and communities of tunnels have been dug how many thousands of missiles the Hamas has produced or acquired we are in awe at this that they have developed over the years so we are going to have the same kind of surprise with the Hezbollah certainly not the fact that you delay the problem that you procrastinate doesn't make it disappear on the contrary so if we do not strike now then it's just leaving the initiative to the enemy leaving Tehran to save this ammo because for Tehran the Hezbollah is ammunition it's a proxy that they will use when it's Iran when it be fits Tehran so it's like playing in their hands and they will use it when for instance because of the nuclear of some other threat the Israelis decides to attack more directly Iran itself at which point they will have the Hezbollah as some knife on the side to knife us in the hips if not in the back procrastinating will bring nothing and for the Israelis there should be a clear cut policy so I'm advocating the fact that we should strike now because all the all the reservists are already called under the flags and they have been trained and like the south the northern government reservists have been trained over the last couple of years for the worst case scenario with the Hezbollah they are ready the generals of brigade and divisions are ready so they've been ready for two months already and the waiting is very difficult to wait as well we have an American presence in the military that can help us cope with the missile threat because the frigates and destroyers deploy the military and the Americans have sophisticated air defense system with them and they're going to use them at least for the defense at least we have a mode of economy that is a war mode how long can we keep that war mode and is it good to stop the war mode go back to a normal economy in a year or two again be in a war mode economy all this shows that now is the window of opportunity would we want to strike now we should strike now we also might not strike now and then I'm afraid to say we will have our 7th of October in the north and the following a developing story in Israel this morning right now an Israeli border police officer was killed during a deadly overnight counterterrorism raid in the West Bank the IDF and Israeli police say their forces together entered the city of Jenin to arrest terrorists when a roadside bomb hit a border police vehicle several other police commandos and IDF soldiers were injured in this bomb blast Palestinian authority officials say 6 Palestinians were killed in a following air strike Israeli forces are also looking now for a suspected terrorist who fatally shot this morning an Israeli man driving his car into the West Bank near Benjamin the manhunt is underway and an IDF spokesman says that the military has completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip even as firefights continue and Hamas booby traps remain a potent risk the Israeli military warns that despite defeating Hamas in the north there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire on Israel the IDF says their focus now is on defeating Hamas in the central and southern parts of the Strip and they expect the ground offensive to continue throughout the entire year Hamas is made of battalions Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms command and control cells as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground the terrorists move in between different areas of the Strip using this system they can do it while remaining hidden their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school which both serve as human shields for Hamas Hamas terrorists move around without weapons in civilian clothes hiding explosives against the IDF forces in the streets and in the entrances to tunnel shafts this is what the ground operation looks like this is the Gaza Strip it's 141 square miles and populates over 2 million people this is the northern Gaza Strip this is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for 3 months in the northern Gaza Strip Hamas had 2 divisions with 12 battalions made up of 14,000 terrorists from the Jabalia area hundreds of terrorists emerged on October 7th to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities Rafael what is your assessment of the success and the state of the war in Gaza as the IDF continues operations to destroy Hamas? It is successful we have to understand that it takes time I know that we are naturally impatient especially the Israelis we want things to go fast they cannot go fast it takes a lot of time and as we show now as we see now with the north we get maybe a foretaste of what we call the day after the objective of the war is to dismantle the military power of Hamas it doesn't mean that we will exterminate every terrorist to the last one meaning that the day after will remain a dangerous place to be and we have this example in the West Bank Hamas is not in control but he still has cells operating and posing a very serious threat to Israel so it will be the same there and that's why it's important to understand how law and order can be and especially security imposed on the Gaza Strip at the day after because there will still be that danger even the possibility of rockets being launched towards Israel and of course terrorist attacks against our troops or villages so this means that we're going to need a lot more patience we're going to have to brace ourselves the reservists are not all going home tomorrow morning the national economy is not picking up fully yet again all this is going to take a few months and the north is really now by now showing us the way for the rest of the Gaza Strip how it's going to look so it took three full months of very very intense fighting which intense fighting is probably going to be more or less stopped by American pressure and also maybe by a strategic decision towards the end of January but three full months of this fighting to achieve a control of the theater of operation but not to annihilate completely the threat because there are now terrorists that are acting even more dangerous in a way because they're acting on their own accord not even obeying a kind of strategy or chain of command they are completely disoriented they don't know what to do except one thing shoot at whatever they can and probably in a suicidal way but as the IDF expands its operations and it focuses on Khan Yunus possibly Rafiakh next I mean these areas in south central Gaza can the IDF effectively fight a multi-front war if there needs to be a growing regional conflict with Hezbollah that may necessitate boots on the ground inside Lebanon can the IDF fight an aggressive campaign against both Hamas inside Gaza and Hezbollah inside Lebanon according to what you hear from the Minister of Defense and from the IDF spokesman yes according to the Chief of the Air Force yes the Air Force says it hasn't used all its capacities it hasn't even called all its reservists and it has plenty planes and ammo to take care of the north the main problem will be the ammunition by the way because we have the manpower we have the motivation we have the plans to what we have to do the weak point will be if we get a bit short of certain kinds of ammunition and that's why the American support here is of utmost importance so far as the immigration is still willing and is doing it's utmost to replenish our warehouses that have been seriously emptied I mean we've been throwing thousands and thousands of bombs over Gaza we need to have replenish also we've used a lot of iron dome equipment that need also to be replenished but apart from that everything seems to be under control we have enough fuel as well fuel is very important we're spending a lot a lot of fuel we're almost after all this time we're like doubling the consumption of fuel because of all the tanks and all etc so all these according yet again I'm saying according to the IDF according to the Minister of Defence of Israel there is no problem about the IDF confronting a few different fronts which we are doing in a way right now in a lower intensity but we're doing it the deployment of the troops in the north is a full deployment I mean they're ready for the worst case scenario already they're already there and they're coping with that threat the Central Command is doing an excellent job with a full deployment many many battalions being busy night after night in the West Bank and of course the South so it seems that we're in control the development story we're following in Europe right now a young Israeli couple is recovering from their injuries in Berlin after being attacked for just speaking Hebrew police say an Arabic speaking man heard them speaking Hebrew ran up to them through a bottle at the woman watching the man before running off with us now is journalist James Jackson joining us in Berlin for an update on this case James what's the latest hi there so at this stage the police have been investigating the couple are recovering although they're not being treated in the hospital I've heard also reports that it was with a chair that the woman was attacked rather than the bottle but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't a one-off this has happened a number of times in 2023 both before and after October 7th there was a case last year in the summer where someone was speaking Hebrew on the phone and three guys jumped out of the car and beat him up and another case where actually a firework was involved that was post October 7th so Berlin I think is continuing in its role as a bit of a flashpoint for the conflict which does have a lot of Israelis many of whom are left-leaning refuseniks almost or even just people who like Berlin and can't afford the cost of living in Israel anymore as well as a very large Palestinian population so considering that it's almost surprising there aren't more attacks but that's not to undermine the seriousness of this attack because it was of course people attacked just for being Israeli it was anti-Semitism in the heart and of course many Israelis the left-leaning ones particularly have actually been out protesting the war in Gaza and even getting into conflict with German police here so I think it's quite a complex situation and quite a sad one really Is it safe in Berlin for Israelis to speak Hebrew when they're out on the streets? That's a good question and I'm sure many Hebrew speakers will be asking themselves that and really it probably depends in which area because in Neukön I hate to say it but it might not be safe to speak Hebrew or certain parts of Kreuzberg as well but Berlin is a very big place and those are particular districts with large amounts of Arab and Turkish population so I think in some cases it is in most places it's safe but I think after this cases like this people are going to be questioning it James thank you so much for that report here on this developing story, great to have you and the prime minister of Qatar met with the families of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas as Qatar continues to be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal it's the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre Qatar does not have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas' political leadership six Israeli families are in Doha this weekend meeting with both Qatar and American diplomats and a teenage girl who spent more than 50 days in Hamas captivity is speaking out about her traumatic ordeals in Gaza she watched her father be murdered in front of her eyes in their home and then was dragged to Gaza by terrorists and in their carcass and then my sister was killed and she was killed too and we went to Gaza you were killed you didn't know when it was going to happen, you didn't know how it was going to happen you didn't know if it was going to happen in the future or just a robbery or a crime of all of you all of us think about how the death is going to happen in one day we passed from home to the prison suddenly the door opened and there were six girls and suddenly we realized that there were girls who were also at home many girls were hurt they were injured very, very injured and injured they didn't cry they were freeing themselves or we helped them fight when we were with them they were freeing only five days because they were already in prison because now it's already more days because the terrorists were also killed and the attack was going on and it was also a physical attack and also a mental attack I can't believe at all what their situation is I don't know Rafael, in your assessment what are the chances of a kind of ceasefire for hostage release deal can that still happen in light of everything we've seen in the last few days yes it could still happen it really unfortunately depends upon the Hamas because we do not have any leverage a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip would not bother the Hamas in any way military defeat doesn't bother the Hamas in any way trying to harden the conditions of detention of the terrorists we detained here in Israel or even execute one every hour wouldn't have any effect on the Hamas we have no leverage at all they are so fanatical they are so determined to continue fighting to the last that we have no way to have any effect on them not money-eiser, not political pressure even the politicians of the Hamas do not seem to be able to convince Mr. Sinwar to negotiate or the Qatari who actually financed the Hamas do not seem to have the leverage so we really depend now on the Hamas to negotiate and it might be that unfortunately it's still the military pressure we apply on them that might entice them to ask at least for a truth in exchange of which we will get a few more hostages Rafael thank you so much for your analysis here on I-24 News great to have you in studio with me we're going out for a break more news ahead more live coverage from the field as the threats continue stay with us we'll be back soon and thanks for watching I-24 News is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where she is our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well thanks for watching I-24 News this morning for the latest live updates from Israel as the country appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front with Lebanon global leaders are both sounding the alarm and also frantically rushing to the Middle East right now to try and calm tensions US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting now with Jordanian officials and will soon visit Israel to meet also with war cabinet ministers and IDF generals it is Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and is warning about a slow march to regional conflict it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 let's go live to the north where I'm joined by I-24 News correspondent Pia Stechelback Pia Hezbollah releasing video of their massive rocket attack yesterday on the north and also saying that this was just the initial response to a targeted killing that was attributed to Israel because Hezbollah is saying this is an initial reaction might there be more rocket fire missile attacks in the hours to come? This is really the question what is there to come? You're right to say that Hezbollah said that what we've seen yesterday at least 40 rockets that have been launched by Hezbollah into different areas of northern Israel is only the initial response Hassan Asrallah in his latest speech on Friday said that there will be further responses further reactions, further revenge for that alleged Israeli assassination in Beirut but he didn't specify in terms of what we can expect. He said that the response has been decided about and that it depends on further developments on the battlefield when and how it will be materialized. Now the question here is how long or how further long can Israeli residents the thousands of Israeli residents in the north that have already been evacuated and also those who are still in their homes but are fearing that wider escalation how long can they be left and we are hearing many of them are demanding from the Israeli security establishment to find a substantial solution for Hezbollah posing a threat sitting there on the border. Israel has been retaliating on a regular basis to those attacks being committed by Hezbollah. We're not only talking about rocket attacks but on a daily basis mortar shells and also anti-tank missiles that are being fired into Israeli communities in the north this is what we've seen so far quite a tit and tad attack situation Hezbollah is attacking Israel is retaliating now we're hearing from all different sides that they have no interest in an escalation of the situation. Israel does not want another war. Also the Lebanese government has said time and time again that it does not want to drag Lebanon into another war that also the caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati emphasizing over the weekend that he fears that this could actually drag the entire region into another war and that the Lebanese official government has no interest in it doing so it's escalating the situation with these attacks especially with that intensification that we've seen yesterday and how Hezbollah has released a video as you mentioned from these attacks yesterday also showing the claim targeting of an Israeli military based in the Miran region. Now we do not have any response or statement from the Israeli military on that attack. Hezbollah is claiming that it specifically attacked the aerial surveillance system and this is a technique or a tactic of Hezbollah that we've seen the past weeks that it tries to target the surveillance system of Israeli army bases potentially in preparation for a wider attack. If that will come how that will look like is very much an open questionnaire but the situation is very tense and going back to the thousands of Israeli residents that have been evacuated just a couple of minutes ago we were approached by 12 of them from the Israeli community of Shlomi which is about 5 kilometers away from the border and they have been evacuated for weeks now and they're saying that in a position to the south residents of the Kibbutzim along the Gaza border are evacuated they do not have a rise and they do not have any hope in terms of when they will be able to go back. There is no certainty in terms of how the situation in the north will develop. There is no full-on war as of now there is as he put it really there's no horizon in terms of when he will be able to go back and this man spoke in the name of really thousands of people also of course considering the residents on the Lebanese side there are also thousands there in the areas because of the continuous fighting that is going on the Israeli retaliatory attacks. So the northern front is very much an open front the question is and this is a question we've been asking ourselves basically for three months now will it develop in a full on war as of now also diplomatic efforts international diplomatic efforts are trying to minimize are trying to to keep that front as or not as it is but to really lower the tensions the question is will his valla now after the killing of salha al-aruri as it announced intensified is a tax and if so how would it look like appear you're joining us from Haifa a major one of Israel's biggest cities and certainly its biggest city in the northern part of the country are tensions high specifically in Haifa do residents or residents there on alert are they taking precautions in case of a Hezbollah attack well Haifa is still about 50 to 60 kilometers away from the Lebanese border here you don't have the feeling that tensions are extraordinarily high however we have to say that tensions have been high since the beginning of the war in Gaza now after this latest assassination of salha al-aruri and the latest threats coming from Hezbollah tensions are not necessarily higher here in Haifa as it is still relatively far away from the Lebanese border but people are very much aware that Hezbollah has the capability to target including Haifa and there have been threats made in the past that Haifa could be one of the cities being targeted now Haifa is also a city that took in a lot of those evacuees from the communities that have been evacuated as of now communities in the range of up to five kilometers from the Lebanese border have been evacuated many of them are staying here this is still deemed a relatively safe place but of course in this accounts for all of northern Israel people here are watching the developments on the northern front with a great thank you so much for that update joining us from Haifa today great to have you here in studio I'm joined by former IDF senior intelligence officer Rafael Urushami Rafael Hezbollah vowing that this was an initial response from the Hezbollah video it does appear that they did successfully damage IDF posts and IDF military installation in the Morone region the IDF not commenting on this do you believe that this could be an opportunity for both Hezbollah and the IDF to climb down from the escalation ladder or is this only the start of something bigger that will spiral perhaps in the days to come until the elimination of Mr. Alaruri and Hezbollah obviously was not interested in escalating neither the IDF on the other side all of a sudden because of that elimination in the south of Beirut Hezbollah would want to escalate all of a sudden because of that one incident I doubted very much on the other hand what do you mean by escalation the fact that Hezbollah is throwing dozens of rockets a day at Israel that's not an escalation Mr. Anthony Blinken the Secretary of State is visiting the Middle East he's afraid of an escalation Iraq, Syria are attacking his American interest the Houthis in the Dead Sea the Hezbollah in Lebanon the Hamas in Gaza there is no escalation we are at war, there is an escalation the problem is we are too much thinking of what the Hezbollah intends or doesn't intend to do what Terence thinks or doesn't think this is of no importance what is important is what do we think what do we want to do do we effectively not want to escalate and have let's say between 20 and 40 missiles thrown at us every day as a kind of a routine so not to escalate why would the escalation be catastrophic this is a war with Hezbollah yes, what would be catastrophic is procrastinating what is catastrophic is what we are doing now the 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel are not going anywhere they will be shot at sooner or later whether it's tomorrow or in a year or two years the only difference will be it will be harder, more dangerous the Hezbollah will have organized we have the lesson to draw from the south look how we are even ourselves surprised at how structures how organized, how many kilometers and kilometers of tunnels have been dug how many thousands of missiles the Hamas has produced or acquired we are in awe at this might that they have developed over the years so we are going to have the same kind of surprise with the Hezbollah certainly not the fact that you delay the problem that you procrastinate doesn't make it disappear on the contrary, so if we do not strike now then it's just leaving the initiative to the enemy leaving Tehran to save this ammo because for Tehran the Hezbollah is ammunition it's a proxy that they will use when it's Iran, when it befits Tehran so it's like playing in their hands and they will use it when for instance because of the nuclear of some other threat the Israelis decide to attack more directly Iran itself at which point they will have the Hezbollah as some knife on the side to knife us in the hips if not in the back procrastinating will bring nothing and for the Israelis there should be a clear cut policy so I'm advocating the fact that we should strike now because all the reservists are already called under the flags and they have been trained like the south, the northern command reservists have been trained over the last couple of years for the worst case scenario with the Hezbollah, they are ready the generals of a brigade and divisions are ready to do so they've been ready for two months already and the waiting is very difficult to wait as well we have an American presence in the military that can help us cope with the missile threat because the frigates and destroyers deploy the military and Americans have sophisticated air defense system with them and they're going to use them at least for defense at least we have a mode of economy that is a war mode how long can we keep that war mode and is it good to stop the war mode go back to a normal economy a year or two again being a war mode economy all this shows that now is the window of opportunity would we want to strike now we should strike now we also might not strike now and then I'm afraid to say we will have our 7th of October in the north and the following a developing story in Israel this morning right now an Israeli border police officer was killed during a deadly overnight counter-terrorism raid in the west bank the IDF and Israeli police say their forces together entered the city of Janine to arrest terrorists when a roadside bomb hit a border police vehicle several other police commandos and IDF soldiers were injured in this bomb blast Palestinian authority officials say 6 Palestinians were killed in a following air strike Israeli forces are also looking now for a suspected terrorist who fatally shot this morning an Israeli man driving his car to the bank near Benjamin the manhunt is underway and an IDF spokesman says that the military has completed dismantling the military framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip even as firefights continue and Hamas booby traps remain a potent risk the Israeli military warns that despite defeating Hamas in the north there is still likely to be occasional rocket fire on Israel from there the IDF says their focus now is on defeating Hamas in the central and southern parts of the Strip and they expect the ground offensive to continue throughout the entire year Hamas is made of battalions Hamas battalions use a branched underground tunnel system which has the infrastructure to manufacture weapons and has war rooms, command and control cells as well as capability to launch rockets above and underground the terrorists move in between different areas of the Strip using this system they can do it while remaining hidden their main points of activity are located under and nearby sensitive civilian sites such as the Indonesian hospital you see here next to a school which both serve as human shields for Hamas Hamas terrorists move around without weapons in civilian clothes hiding explosives against the IDF forces in the streets and in the provinces to tunnel shafts this is what the ground operation looks like this is the Gaza Strip it's 141 square miles and populates over 2 million people this is the northern Gaza Strip this is where we started the ground operation and where we have been fighting for 3 months in the northern Gaza Strip Hamas had 2 divisions with 12 battalions made up of 14,000 terrorists from the Jabalia area hundreds of terrorists emerged on October 7th to carry out the atrocious massacres on Israel's southern communities Rafael what is your assessment of the success and the state of the war in Gaza as the IDF continues operations to destroy Hamas it is successful we have to understand that it takes time we are naturally impatient especially the Israelis we want things to go fast they cannot go fast it takes a lot of time and as we show now as we see now with the north we get maybe a foretaste of what we call the day after the objective of the war is the dismantle the military power of Hamas it doesn't mean that we will exterminate every terrorist to the last one meaning that the day after will remain a dangerous place to be we have this example in the west bank Hamas is not in control but he still has cells operating and posing a very serious threat to Israel so it will be the same there and that's why it's important to understand how law and order can be and especially security imposed on the Gaza Strip at the day after because there will still be that danger even the possibility of rockets being launched towards Israel against terrorist attacks against our troops so this means that we're going to need a lot more patience we're going to have to brace ourselves the reservists are not all going home tomorrow morning the national economy is not picking up fully yet again all this is going to take a few months and the north is really now by now showing us the way for the rest of the Gaza Strip how it's going to look so it took three full months of very very intense fighting which intense fighting is probably going to be more or less stopped by American pressure and also maybe by a strategic decision towards the end of January but three full months of this fighting to achieve a control of the theater of operation but not to annihilate completely the threat because there are now terrorist cells that are acting even more dangerous in a way because they're acting on their own accord not even obeying a kind of strategy or chain of command they are completely disoriented they don't know what to do except one thing shoot at whatever they can and probably in a suicidal way but as the IDF expands its operations and it focuses on Khan Yunus possibly Rafiakh next these areas in south-central Gaza can the IDF effectively fight a multi-front war if there needs to be a growing regional conflict with Hezbollah that may necessitate boots on the ground inside Lebanon can the IDF fight an aggressive campaign against both Hamas inside Gaza and Hezbollah inside Lebanon according to what you hear from the Minister of Defense and from the IDF spokesman according to the chief of the air force yes the air force says it hasn't used all its capacities it hasn't even called all its reservists and it has plenty planes and ammo to take care of the north the main problem will be the ammunition by the way because we have them on power we have the motivation we have the plans to what we have to do the weak point will be that if we get to be short of certain kinds of ammunition and that's why the American support here is of utmost importance so far as the imagine illustration is still willing and is doing is utmost to replenish our warehouses that have been seriously emptied I mean we've been throwing thousands of bombs over Gaza we need to have to replenish also we've used a lot of iron dome equipment that need also to be replenished but apart from that everything seems to be under control we have enough fuel as well fuel is very important we're spending a lot of fuel after all this time we're like doubling the consumption of fuel because of all the tanks and all the etc so all this according yet again to the IDF according to the Minister of Defense of Israel there is no problem about the idea of confronting a few different fronts which we are doing in a way right now in a lower intensity but we're doing it the deployment of the troops in the north is a full deployment I mean they're ready for the worst case scenario already they're already there and they're coping with that threat the Central Command is doing an excellent job a full deployment many many battalions being busy night after night in the West Bank and of course the South so it seems that we're in control the developing story we're following in Europe right now a young Israeli couple is recovering from their injuries in Berlin after being attacked for just speaking Hebrew police say in Arabic speaking man heard them speaking Hebrew ran up to them through a bottle at the woman and then started punching a man before running off with us now is journalist James Jackson joining us in Berlin for an update on this case James what's the latest Hi there so at this stage the police have been investigating the couple are recovering although they're not being treated in the hospital I've heard also reports that it was with a chair that the woman was attacked rather than the bottle but I think it's worth pointing out that this isn't a one-off this has happened a number of times in 2023 both before and after October 7th there was a case last year in the summer where someone was speaking is Hebrew on the phone and three guys jumped out of the car and beat him up and another case where actually a firework was involved that was post October 7th so Berlin I think is continuing in its role as a bit of a flash point for the conflict as someone which does have a lot of Israelis many of whom are left-leaning refused nicks almost or even just people who like Berlin and can't afford the cost of living in Israel anymore as well as a very large Palestinian population so considering that it's almost surprising there aren't more attacks but that's not to undermine the seriousness of this attack because it was of course people attacked just for being Israeli it was anti-Semitism in the heart of and of course many Israelis the left-leaning ones particularly have actually been out protesting the war in Gaza and even getting into conflict with German police here so I think it's quite a complex situation and quite a sad one really. Is it safe in Berlin for Israelis to speak Hebrew when they're out on the streets? That's a good question and I'm sure many Hebrew speakers will be asking themselves that and really it probably depends in which area because in Neukön I hate to say it but it might not be safe to speak Hebrew or certain parts of Kreuzberg as well but Berlin is a very big place and those are particular districts with large amounts of Arab and Turkish population so I think in some cases it is safe in most places it's safe but I think in some cases like this people are going to be questioning it James, thank you so much for that report here on this developing story, great to have you and the Prime Minister of Qatar met with the families of Israeli hostages still being held by Hamas as Qatar continues to be a key intermediary in the ongoing but still fruitless negotiations for a second ceasefire deal it's the first time that families of hostages have visited Qatar since the Hamas massacre Qatar does not have formal diplomatic ties to Israel and is the host country for Hamas's political leadership six Israeli families are in Doha this weekend meeting with both Qatar and American diplomats and a teenage girl who spent more than 50 days in Hamas captivity is speaking out about her traumatic ordeals in Gaza she watched her father be murdered in front of her eyes in their home and then was dragged to Gaza by terrorists and in their cellar and then I got a thousand and she was killed too we went to Gaza you are the death you don't know when it will happen you don't know how it will be you don't know if it will happen in the future or maybe in the future or in the near future at all we all think about how death will happen, how it will be in one day we moved from home to the prison suddenly the door opened and there were six girls and suddenly we realized that there are girls who were also alone many girls were hurt they got serious injuries they had very serious injuries and bruises that did not heal they were protecting themselves or that we helped them protect when we were with them only 5 people were injured because there were no injuries and I think it is now more often because the terrorists were also killed and the attack was going on and it was also a physical attack and also a mental attack I can't believe at all what their situation is what is the hope of this Rafael in your assessment ceasefire for hostage release deal can that still happen in light of everything we have seen in the last few days yes it could still happen it really unfortunately depends upon the Hamas because we do not have any leverage a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip would not bother the Hamas in any way military defeat doesn't bother the Hamas in any way trying to harden the conditions of detention of the terrorists we detain here in Israel or even execute one every hour let's say wouldn't have any effect on the Hamas we have no leverage at all they are so fanatical they are so determined to continue fighting to the last that we have no way to have any effect on them not money either not political pressure do not seem to be able to convince Mr. Sinoir to negotiate or the Qatari who actually finance the Hamas do not seem to have the leverage so we really depend now on the Hamas to negotiate and it might be that unfortunately it's still the military pressure we apply on them that might entice them to ask at least for a truth in exchange of which we will get a few more hostages Rafael thank you so much for your analysis here on i24news great to have you in studio with me we're going out for a break more news ahead more live coverage from the field as the threats continue stay with us we'll be back soon and thanks for watching i24news in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well we're watching i24news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel Israel appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front with Lebanon global leaders are sounding the alarm today and also frantically rushing to visit the Middle East to try and calm tensions as the border skirmishes intensify US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is meeting today with Jordanian officials and then we'll soon visit Israel with more cabinet ministers and IDF generals it is Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and is warning about a slow march to regional war it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 Hi i24news correspondent Pia Stechelback is in the northern city of Haifa for us as Hezbollah vows to continue their attacks into Israel Tensions are high in northern Israel after Ansari Hezbollah launched at least 40 rockets into different areas of northern Israel Hezbollah publishing a video of those attacks claims that it has targeted an Israeli army base in the Mehron region in the center area of the Israel-Lebanon border specifically targeting Israel's aerial defense system surveillance system of that specific army base there is no comment of the Israeli military concerning that incident but tensions have been high basically since the beginning of the war with Hezbollah and Hezbollah has vowed retaliation for the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas Leir Salah Al-Aroori last week in Beirut and the question here is really how will that retaliation look like Hassan Nasrallah has announced that the response will depend on further developments on the battlefield but that there will be a revenge for that killing now Israel has reinforced its forces here in the northern region but also thousands of residents still remain to be evacuated from communities in a proximity of 5 kilometers there are many of them to Haifa where we are at right now a major city in Israel's north we have just spoken to an elderly couple that has been evacuated from Shlomi which is a village in proximity of about 5 kilometers on the western side of the Israel-Lebanon border and they were telling us how there is no horizon for them no certainty in terms of when they will be able to return to their homes and that also accounts for the residents on the Lebanese side the fighting that has been going on for 3 months now Israel retaliating for the Hezbollah attacks and we are not only talking about rocket fire that Hezbollah is launching to northern Israel but the daily attacks with motor shells and anti-tank missiles now tensions are high although all sides are emphasizing that there is no interest in a regional war Israel is saying that it is not interested in renewing or restarting a war with Lebanon this is also what we have been hearing from the official Lebanese government however Hezbollah is continuing its provocations they are saying that it is not ready to stop those until the war in Gaza is not finished in solidarity with the Palestinians and here in northern Israel residents and of course the Israeli defense establishment is following these developments with great concern this is Pierre Stechelbach reporting from Haifa for I-24 News and of course the war continues in Gaza as well 3 months on now and just moments ago rocket attacks coming from Gaza into southern Israeli communities no reports yet of any damage or any injuries but another round of attacks from Hamas in Gaza firing onto southern Israeli communities with me now in studio is political analysts to Mark and Hemel and I-24 News senior correspondent Owen Alderman thank you both so much for joining me on Martin this attack yesterday from Hezbollah dozens of rockets fired appears according to Hezbollah posted and the IDF is not commenting on at all appears to show significant damage to an IDF post near the border the is there kind of the so-called escalation ladder tick for tat exchange increasingly is getting deeper and deeper into Israeli territory and also into Lebanon as well as we look live now in the north we can still see some smoke billowing out in the Morone area can there be a diplomatic solution or a resolution to this crisis that avoids full-on regional war well the only reason why I think that there might be and I stress the word might be a diplomatic solution is that both sides really don't want a full scale war it's clear that Hezbollah does not want it I think it's gotten the message that it doesn't want to see Beirut side entire and other cities looking like Gaza destroyed to a large degree and Israel doesn't want it because it wants to keep the focus on Gaza and hopefully find some sort of diplomatic solution some analysts say Israel actually wants it because it's going to happen at some point now is the most opportune time from a strategic standpoint with the north already evacuated with a massive reservists call up unprecedented in modern Israeli history with the ongoing training and availability of resources if there is going to be a war with Hezbollah eventually anyway now might be the best time I think it would have happened already if that was the case if Israel really wanted to because it's starting to reduce reservists throughout the country so I think it would have happened that being said history is full of wars that never were intended to happen that happened anyway and when Israel and Hezbollah are playing such a dangerous game of chicken if you want to call it that one slip up could lead to a massive conflict as I noted at the top here of the newscast a flurry of diplomatic activity the White House President Biden sending a special envoy days ago now the Anthony Blinken is already in the region going to be in Israel expected tomorrow the EU is sending its foreign policy chief as well to the region a flurry of dialogue here can it be fruitful in some way of course of course for exactly the reason that Martin Himmel just mentioned the zone of possible agreement here Jeff between Israel and Hezbollah is probably very very wide again not an agreement that's going to bring peace for all time it's going to fully and finally resolve the situation on Israel's northern border continue your analysis or I'll just note here these are live images here of Anthony Blinken the US Secretary of State who appears to be visiting a World Health Organization Depot warehouse in Jordan taking a tour but again he is he is here in the Middle East as the diplomatic pressure perhaps intensifies yeah you're right Jeff looking at those images depending on how you count this trip Anthony Blinken has either eight or nine stops either eight or nine stops and the stop in Jordan is only stop number three so he's juggling at least three balls in the air right one the issue of the containing or preventing a war in Israel's north between Israel and Hezbollah and as we were just talking about I think there's a wide zone of possible agreement in terms of when the agreement is going to be reached that seems to be where there's more uncertainty right because the word from Lebanon both from the Lebanese government and by fellow travelers if you will if Hezbollah that Hezbollah is not going to agree to the deal until after the war in Gaza ends how do you define the war in Gaza ending it seems to be very very unclear so exactly when the agreement is going to be signed and finalized is a question but it seems it could be negotiated over the course of time these are these are subtleties that I think skill diplomats can finesse and bring the sides together over these are not deal breakers is the fact that Blinken is going to so many countries in the Middle East and does it indicate perhaps a sense of the plan of the American vision for the day after in Gaza who might control how to wind down the war oh that's one of the three balls in the air and it's the most fascinating one you know what Anthony Blinken said on the tarmac before he's taking off from Turkey yesterday Jeff he said we talked to Turkey about what they're going to do in a post-war Gaza in the day after in Gaza how Turkey can contribute to Palestinian governance and so forth I wonder what they'll think in Jerusalem right on stop seven of Anthony Blinken's tour once he shows up in Israel how are people in Jerusalem going to feel about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan taking a leading role in the rehabilitation and governance of a day after Gaza right after Israel's experience with a Hamas friendly Qatar in an October 6th Gaza it's going to be one of the fascinating stories of this trip as the train starts to believe believing the station of the Biden administration planning for a post-war Gaza even as Israel kind of fiddles around with putting the the the final touches on its own vision of the day after Gaza even with obvious the obvious leverage that Israel will have with the IDF actually controlling the territory so the Biden administration is moving forward with talking to the Turks about their involvement with post-war Gaza I suspect Israel much rather that that be the focus of Blinken's talks in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia but be that all as it may certainly you're right Jeff the day after it seems to be a very very important part of this tour and you're absolutely right that Anthony Blinken seems to be casting a wide net in terms of the players who could potentially be involved Martin the IDF saying they have completed the dismantling of the military framework that's the exact military language the spokesman used the framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza strip but they've mentioned the ground offensive needs to continue throughout all of 2024 what do you make of the the various plans for some kind of Palestinian governance in Gaza there's so much speculation will it be clans literally ruling kind of criminal families or clans will it be criminal organizations who end up taking the reins of ruling resting it without elections will there be elections under Israeli supervision and on and on and on you don't know how it will go but with the fact that the IDF saying will be in Gaza for the entirety of the year how do you plan for a day after well we have to divide two things the defense issue and the political issue there's a big problem with the political issue Israel itself doesn't know what it wants for the day after because there's such a big political problem within Netanyahu's government he's got extreme right-wing elections that are saying annex the whole place kick out Palestinians set up Jewish settlements then he's got a vast majority of people in this government who want to find some sort of reasonable autonomous or self-rule for Palestinians in the region and he can't seem to find a consensus with that and because of that there's a big delay Blinken is coming here to talk precisely about the day after but Netanyahu and this government does not have a declared plan for that day so that's one big problem when it comes to the defense I think that what the where Israel is planning to do is basically dismantle the major part of the infrastructure which it has done in the north but is trying to do in the south once it has done that there's not going to be a stop in the fighting there will be guerrilla attacks from Hamas there'll be rocket attacks small-scale rocket attacks and so I think the idea is going to redeploy itself in a buffer zone and then go in and out for more casualties it will start in and out like we're seeing Janine in places like that and speaking of Janine a developing story today in Israel an Israeli border police officer has been killed after a deadly overnight counter terrorism raid in the west bank city of Janine the IDF and Israeli police say their forces combined entered the city of Janine to arrest terrorists who put a roadside bomb which then exploded on a border police vehicle several other police commandos and IDF soldiers were injured in this blast Palestinian authority officials and the IDF now confirming six Palestinians were killed in the following IDF airstrike Israeli forces this morning we're also looking now for a terrorist who fatally shot an Israeli man driving his car near Oprah in the west bank the IDF says they've set up roadblocks on the nearby highways and they're searching for the terrorist shooter and as you mentioned Martin the west bank continues to kind of be a matchbox a tinder box that's on the verge of exploding we have thousands of arrests since October 7th of Palestinians in the west bank but the IDF every night seems to be operating freely to go in make arrests come out return as needed is that the framework perhaps for Gaza as well I believe it is I think that once they dismantle a lot of these tunnels and a lot of the infrastructure and take weapons two things they're going to work on is going in and out on forays because the guerrilla war will continue and secondly and this is a problem with Egypt they have to somehow stop the flow of weapons coming in from Egypt and illicit tunnels coming into Gaza and that might mean creating a presence along the Gaza Egyptian border which is very very sensitive but otherwise they're not going to stop weapons coming in from other places to Gaza Oh and Martin touched on this earlier the transition of this government this war government to destroy Hamas and free the hostages focus so much on Gaza does the government as it's composed would have public legitimacy if there is to be an expanded war in Hezbollah if they were talking about the possibility of preemptive strikes or wider strikes could that lead to would this government have the legitimacy to conduct that war without an election? It depends look Jeff it's the 7th situation or anything approaching that right where it's a cut and dry black and white situation of a war of no choice of course the government would have legitimacy to conduct the war that's the government that would be in place it would be a war of no choice and I think everyone would understand that this is the government that needs to lead that war and essentially to fight it also the scenario that Martin rightly pointed to a quote unquote mistake right one of these Hezbollah attacks an Israeli military position that a mistake leads to big Israeli casualties and again puts Israel in the position of feeling that there's no choice but to escalate and there too I think the government would have legitimacy in fighting the war but for the other range of scenarios and the ones that are most preoccupying the Biden administration and all of us where there's a kind of gray area where the situation in the north is unstable where the residents of Israel's northern communities can't return home where Hezbollah is kind of dragging its feet or not offering terms that would seem to be perfectly acceptable to Israel what in that situation would the government have legitimacy to lead the war and I don't think it would I don't think it would I don't think even with Benny Gantz in the government I don't know whether Israelis would show up to reserve duty on Maas I don't know how the public would feel about mobilizing the public including the nonprofit sector to support that kind of war I don't know even how Gantz himself would feel about staying in the government presumably what would be happening on the right wing flank of that government obviously these are very situation dependent and context dependent and circumstance dependent decisions but I don't think it can be assumed that the government would have legitimacy before another election to escalate in a situation of uncertainty along that border when there might be a feeling that diplomatic options have not been exhausted. Owen Martin thank you both so much for for that analysis and I've been looking at live images here on the screen there's huge plumes of smoke in both the north and in the south these images from Gaza as the IDF continues its attacks on multiple fronts right now as the war intensifies against Hamas positions and as the IDF continues to strike Israeli authorities are sometimes tasked with identifying remains and trying to provide some measure of closure for desperate families here's a story adapted from Israel's Channel 12 news I just never thought or imagined that I would ever face the situation it's really not a simple decision and it's not a decision to be taken lightly at all it has enormous significance Dr. Hagar Mizrachi did not learn this in medical school to make one of the most shocking events of the year to pronounce death without first seeing a body the event is foreign to the world in general and to the world of medicine in particular because we have very strict rules on how to determine death there is a pulse and an ECG should be done we still look for all the signs and at all the doubts to resolve them in order to give the family an answer that is clear and unambiguous until the harsh news about Judy were received she had been thought kidnapped the last time she made contact was during the morning walk with her husband near Niroz last week the family was informed of Gadi's death now it's Judy one of the open cases that Dr. Mizrachi and the committee of which she is a member for many weeks one of the very common cases that Dr. Mizrachi and the committee of which she is a member for many weeks one of the very complex cases we received a description of the circumstances of the incident but we also heard the phone call she made to the Maghen David Adam hotline we read WhatsApp messages with friends and family and watched relevant videos we understood that there was a very very serious injury here we sat more than once to try to understand what happened that black Sabbath raised many dramatic issues one of which is whether it is possible to declare the death of a hostage while in captivity some were murdered and taken to the Gaza Strip some were taken there wounded and did not survive the injury others were murdered in Gaza the ministry of health has established a situation of the hostages headed by Dr. Hagar Mizrachi a committee of experts trying to decide what happened to kidnapped citizens collecting every scrap of information watching hours of video we are on this committee by virtue of our position as doctors we want evidence whose essence is a medical basis it's not just watching videos it's literally sitting and analyzing you look for movements of the eyelids movements of the body a reaction to pain simply analyzing the movies frame by frame we also deal mainly with analyzing gunshot wounds where they hit, where organs were hit and everything together with the fact that there is no medical treatment leads us to our conclusions this is how they came to determine that Aviva Tzili, Ofra Kedar and Inbar Haiman were murdered unlike legal matters where reasonable doubt is enough we sit and if we don't come to a conclusion then we say we haven't yet decided additional material will arrive Hamas will release something some additional information will be received we will incorporate the new bits and watch one more time from beginning to end and then we'll make a decision each decision is made unanimously how much certainty do you need to determine is 99% enough we wait and check the points until we are all convinced for me it is 100% as far as I'm concerned not knowing is the worst thing I can't stay up in the air I need to know Danny Engel was informed that his brother Ronan was kidnapped with his family from their home in Irooz but his gut feeling said he was probably killed after all, Ronan was armed fighting the terrorists who entered the apartment and no one has seen him since it was very alarming me too in this whole situation I hung on to some kind of optimism and forced myself not to eulogize him or to talk about him in the past tense so not to create, you know the situation that there is no Ronan in Engelbert even if he was released today together with two sons Mika in the 17th and Yuval in the 11th four days after his wife and daughters returned from captivity the news was received Ronan was murdered and the body was snatched the death was determined according to a video and other findings that were in the house Karina said that there was a large pool of blood where Ronan was standing other people who returned said that they saw his body out of the house I have this kind of closure they told me, and beyond any doubt Ronan is gone it's the better option than not knowing and continuing to hope we had all these things Ronan and us it was the best option from the beginning and to continue to fight the message the Eeluz family received about the death of Guy the 26 year old musician was a little different in his case there was no video only the knowledge that he was injured and kidnapped but about a month ago they were informed that Maya Regev who returned from captivity gave detailed testimony about their son I asked them, tell me, are you really serious you want me to state as an axiom that my son died in light of the fact that she was a prisoner who was in the room with Guy that she saw him through the curtain and I have no idea what and in light of all the psychological warfare they are doing listen, I'm not ready to accept it but I would love to meet with Maya Regev they really tried to give him CPR and he died from his wounds and at first I refused to believe it and after they took him I have this duty to go and talk to his family in the end, I'm the only person who knows what really happened so I moved the curtain and saw that he really wasn't with us that he was gone after the parents heard Maya the subtleties, the details how she described how they put him in a white bag for the dead they were convinced they sat Shiva and said goodbye to their boy after he died saying goodbye is it's hard to bear it's not goodbye when you can say I'm saying goodbye because I saw that he died we didn't see that Guy is indeed no longer with us we separated from him based on testimony based on information the returning hostages brought with them a lot of new information to the committee about the fate and condition of those who were left behind they say they are not satisfied with this evidence as a sole parameter for example, we knew that someone had been shot and we saw the type of injury and we understood that in this condition he was taken to the Gaza Strip and in this condition we know that in order to treat the gunshot we need very intensive very advanced treatment if at all and over time and on and on it's a culmination of things the CT's later states that he has passed away as long as this body does not arrive in Israel it's not doubt really it's not a question of doubt he won't be knocking on the door tomorrow and entering the house but for me the story hasn't ended the bodies of the hostages who did return to Israel were thoroughly examined by Dr. Mizrachi's committee to confirm the circumstances of their death the CT scan shows us whether there are bullets whether there are clots so far bodies have arrived and apparently Hamas said they were killed because of an IDF attack this is not true these are not the conclusions it is difficult in some cases to determine the exact cause of death but it does not appear that people were injured and the injuries match injuries from shelling the committee deals not only with the dead but also with those who return alive from captivity as a doctor, Hamas also tries to understand something about the medical treatment they received to her surprise, she discovered that they were not given only prescription drugs but also dangerous ones apparently they were given treatment not exactly known in Israel which among other things causes some kind of sedation there was also ketamine in some of the cases ketamine is a drug that is given under anesthesia for surgery and today it is a drug that is used, of course illegally and indeed there was testimony of people who came received ketamine unnecessarily as a form of sedation I'm not sure you want to emerge from captivity as a drug addict there was a prior claim that the terrorists had been given drugs before I don't have any proof of this but I can tell you honestly I can't understand from what I've seen but I say they are not animals because it is unimaginable Thanks for watching i20 for news at this hour we'll be back shortly with more live coverage and more updates here on the regional threat space in Israel today more live studio reporting analysis and guests stay with us as we come back after a break we'll see you soon thanks for watching i20 for news Israel is in a state of war families completely gunned down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well what should i say news this morning for the latest live updates from Israel, Israel appears to be on the brink of a wider war on the northern front of Lebanon, global leaders are sounding the alarm today and also frantically rushing to visit the Middle East to try and calm tensions as the border skirmishers intensify US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is meeting today with Jordanian officials and then we'll soon visit Israel to meet with war cabinet ministers and IDF generals it is Blinken's fourth visit to the Middle East since the October 7th massacre meanwhile the European Union's foreign policy chief is visiting Lebanon and is warning about a slow march to regional war it is a whole international community that has to work for a change in the Middle East we discussed the avenues to guarantee a comprehensive and full implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 I-24 News correspondent Pia Stechelback is in the northern city of Haifa for us as Hezbollah vows to continue their attacks into Israel Tensions are high in northern Israel after Ansari Hezbollah launched at least 40 rockets into different areas of northern Israel Hezbollah, publishing a video of those attacks claims that it has targeted an Israeli army base in the Miran region in the center area of the Israel-Lebanon border targeting Israel's aerial defense system, surveillance system of that specific army base there is no comment of the Israeli military concerning that incident but tensions have been high basically since the beginning of the war with Hezbollah and Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah has vowed retaliation for the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Salah al-Aroori last week in Beirut and the question here is really how will that retaliation look like that the response will depend on further developments on the battlefield but that there will be a revenge for that killing now Israel has reinforced its forces here in the northern region but also thousands of residents still remain to be evacuated from communities in a proximity of 5 kilometers to the border many of them to Haifa here where we are at right now a major city in Israel's north we have just spoken to an elderly couple that has been evacuated from Shlomi which is a village in proximity of about 5 kilometers on the western side of the Israel Lebanon border and they were telling us how there is no horizon for them no certainty in terms of when they will be able to return to their homes that also accounts for the residents on the Lebanese side that have been fleeing the fighting that has been going on for 3 months now Israel retaliating for the Hezbollah attacks and we are not only talking about Hezbollah is launching to northern Israel but the daily attacks with mortar shells and anti-tank missiles now tensions are high although all sides are emphasizing that there is no interest in a regional war Israel is saying that it is not interested in renewing or restarting a war with Lebanon this is also what we have been hearing from the official Lebanese government however Hezbollah is continuing its provocations they are saying that it is not ready to stop those until the war in Gaza is not finished in solidarity with the Palestinians and here in northern Israel residents and of course the Israeli defense establishment is following these developments with great concern this is Pierre Stekelbach reporting from Haifa for I-24 News and of course the war continues in Gaza as well 3 months on now and just moments ago rocket attacks coming from Gaza into southern Israeli communities no reports yet of any damage or any injuries but another round of attacks from Hamas in Gaza firing onto southern Israeli communities with me now in studio is political analyst Martin Hemmel and I-24 News senior correspondent Owen Alderman thank you both so much for joining me Martin this attack yesterday from Hezbollah dozens of rockets fired appears according to the video that Hezbollah posted and the IDF is not commenting on at all appears to show significant damage to an IDF post near the border is there kind of the so called escalation ladder tick for cat exchange increasingly is getting deeper and deeper into Israeli territory and also into Lebanon as well as we look live now in the north we can still see some smoke billowing out in the Morone area can there be a diplomatic solution or a resolution to this crisis that avoids a full on regional war well the only reason why I think that there might be just the word might be a diplomatic solution is that both sides really don't want a full-scale war it's clear that Hezbollah does not want it I think it's gotten the message that it doesn't want to see Beirut side entire and other cities looking like Gaza destroyed to a large degree and Israel doesn't want it because it wants to keep the focus on Gaza and hopefully find some sort of diplomatic solution some analysts say Israel actually wants it because it's going to happen at some point now is the most opportune time from a strategic standpoint with the north already evacuated with a massive reservists call up unprecedented in modern Israeli history with the ongoing training and availability of resources if there is going to be a war with Hezbollah eventually anyway now might be the best time I think it would have happened already if that was the case if Israel really wanted to because it's starting to reduce the reservists throughout the country so I think it would have happened that being said history is full of wars that never were intended to happen that happened anyway and when Israel and Hezbollah are playing such a dangerous game of chicken if you want to call it that that one slip up could lead to a massive conflict. Oh and as I know at the top here of the newscast a flurry of diplomatic activity the White House President Biden a special envoy days ago now the Anthony Blinken is already in the region going to be in Israel expected tomorrow the EU is sending its foreign policy chief as well to the region a flurry of dialogue here can it be fruitful in some way? Of course, of course for exactly the reason that Martin Himmel just mentioned the zone of possible agreement here Jeff between Israel and Hezbollah is probably very, very wide again not an agreement that's going to bring peace at the time it's going to fully and finally resolve the situation on Israel's northern border. Continue your analysis over and I'll just note here these are live images here of Anthony Blinken the US Secretary of State who appears to be visiting a World Health Organization depot warehouse in Jordan taking a tour but again he he is here in the Middle East as the diplomatic pressure perhaps intensifies. Yeah you're right Jeff looking at those images depending on how you count this trip Mr. Blinken has either eight or nine stops either eight or nine stops and the stop in Jordan is only stop number three so he's juggling at least three balls in the air right one the issue of containing or preventing a war in Israel's north between Israel and Hezbollah and as we were just talking about I think there's a wide zone of possible agreement in terms of when the agreement is going to be reached that seems to be where there's more uncertainty right because the word from Lebanon both from the Lebanese and by fellow travelers if you will Hezbollah is that Hezbollah is not going to agree to the deal until after the war in Gaza ends how do you define the war in Gaza ending it seems to be very very unclear so exactly when the agreement is going to be signed and finalized is a question but it seems it could be negotiated over the course of time these are subtleties that I think skilled diplomats can finesse and bring the sides together over these are not deal breakers the fact that Blinken is going to so many countries in the Middle East does it indicate perhaps a sense of the plan of the American vision for the day after in Gaza who might control how to wind down the war oh that's one of the three balls in the air and it's the most fascinating one you know what Anthony Blinken said on the tarmac before he was taking off from Turkey yesterday Jeff he said we talked to Turkey about what they're going to do in a post war in Gaza how Turkey can contribute to Palestinian governance and so forth I wonder what they'll think in Jerusalem right on stop 7 of Anthony Blinken's tour once he shows up in Israel how are people in Jerusalem going to feel about Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan taking a leading role in the rehabilitation and governance of a day after Gaza right after Israel's experience with a Hamas friendly Qatar in an October 6th Gaza it's going to be one of the fascinating stories of this trip as the train starts to believe be leaving the station of the Biden administration planning for a post war Gaza even as Israel kind of fiddles around with putting the the final touches on its own vision of the day after Gaza even with obvious the obvious leverage that Israel will have with the IDF actually controlling the territory so the Biden administration is moving forward with talking to the Turks about their involvement with post war Gaza I suspect Israel much that that be the focus of Blinken's talks in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia but be that all as it may certainly you're right Jeff the day after it seems to be a very very important part of this tour and you're absolutely right that Anthony Blinken seems to be casting a wide net in terms of the players who could potentially be involved Martin the IDF saying they have completed the dismantling of the military framework that's the exact military language the spokesman used the framework of Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip but they've mentioned the ground to continue throughout all of 2024 what do you make of the the various plans for some kind of Palestinian governance in Gaza there's so much speculation will it be clans literally ruling kind of criminal families or clans will it be criminal organizations who end up taking the reins of ruling it at resting it without elections will there be elections under Israeli supervision and on and on and on you don't know how it will go but with the fact that the IDF saying will be in Gaza for the entirety of the year how do you plan for a day after well we have to divide two things the defense issue and the political issue there's a big problem with the political issue Israel itself doesn't know what it wants for the day after because there's such a big political problem within Netanyahu's government he's got extreme right-wing factions that are saying annex the whole place kick out Palestinians set up Jewish settlements then he's got a vast majority of people in his country who have a reasonable autonomous or self-rule for Palestinians in the region and he can't seem to find a consensus with that and because of that there's a big delay blinkin is coming here to talk precisely about the day after but Netanyahu and his government does not have a declared plan for that day so that's one big problem when you talk about the defense I think that what the where Israel is planning to do is basically dismantle the major zone in the north but it's trying to do in the south once it has done that there's not going to be a stop in the fighting there will be guerrilla attacks from Hamas there'll be rocket attacks small-scale rocket attacks and so I think the idea is going to redeploy itself in a buffer zone and then go in and out for strikes it won't stay in the heart of the Gaza population if it does that it will open itself to more casualties it will dart in and out like we're seeing Janine in places like that and Israeli border police officer has been killed after a deadly overnight counter-terrorism raid in the West Bank city of Janine the IDF and Israeli police say their forces combined entered the city of Janine to arrest terrorists who put a roadside bomb which then exploded on a border police vehicle several other police commandos and IDF soldiers were injured in this blast Palestinian authority officials and the IDF now confirming six Palestinians were killed in the following IDF airstrike Israeli forces this morning we're also looking now for a terrorist who fatally shot an Israeli man driving his car near in the West Bank the IDF says they've set up roadblocks on the nearby highways and they're searching for the terrorist shooter and as you mentioned Martin the West Bank continues to kind of be a matchbox a tinderbox that's on the verge of exploding we have thousands of arrests since October 7th of Palestinians in the West Bank but the IDF every night seems to be operating freely to go in make arrests come out return as needed is that the framework perhaps for Gaza as well I believe it is I think that once they dismantle a lot of these tunnels and a lot of the infrastructure and take away a lot of the weapons two things are going to work on is going in and out on forays because the guerrilla war will continue and secondly and this is a problem in Egypt they have to somehow stop the flow of weapons coming in from Egypt and illicit tunnels coming into Gaza and that might mean creating a presence along the Gaza Egyptian border which is very very sensitive but otherwise they're not going to stop weapons coming in from other places to Gaza Martin touched on this earlier the composition of this government this war government to destroy Hamas and free the hostages focus so much on Gaza does the government oppose would have public legitimacy if there is to be an expanded war in Hezbollah if they were talking about the possibility of preemptive strikes or wider strikes could that lead to could with this government have the legitimacy to conduct that war without an election it depends look Jeff it's of an October 7th situation or anything approaching that right where it's a cut and dry black and white situation of a war of no choice of course the government would have legitimacy to conduct the war that's the government that would be in place it would be a war of no choice and I think everyone would understand that this is the government that needs to lead that war and essentially to fight it also the scenario that Martin rightly pointed to a quote-unquote mistake right one of these Hezbollah attacks an Israeli military position that quote-unquote through a mistake leads to big Israeli casualties and again puts Israel in the position of feeling that there's no choice I think the government would have legitimacy in fighting the war but for the other range of scenarios and the ones that are most preoccupying the Biden administration all of us where there's a kind of gray area right where the situation in the north is unstable where the residents of Israel's northern communities can't return home where Hezbollah is kind of dragging its feet are not offering terms that would seem to be perfectly acceptable to Israel what in that situation with the government have legitimacy to lead the war and I don't think it would I don't think it would I don't think even with Benny Gantz in the government I don't know whether Israelis would show up to reserve duty on Maas I don't know how the public would feel about mobilizing the public including the nonprofit sector to support that kind of war I don't know even how Gantz himself would feel about staying in the government presumably what would be happening on the right-wing flank of that government obviously these are very difficult situations situation dependent and context dependent in circumstance dependent decisions but I don't think it can be assumed that the government would have legitimacy before another election to escalate in a in a situation of uncertainty along that border when there might be a feeling that diplomatic options have not been exhausted interesting analysis Owen Martin thank you both so much for for that analysis and I've been looking at live images here on the screen and in the south these images from Gaza as the IDF continues its attacks on multiple fronts right now as the war intensifies against Hamas positions and as the IDF continues to strike Israeli authorities are sometimes tasked with identifying remains and trying to provide some measure of closure for desperate families here's a story adapted from Israel's Channel 12 news I just never thought or imagined that I would ever face a situation it's really not a simple decision and it's not a decision to be taken lightly at all it has enormous significance Dr. Hagar Mizrachi did not learn this in medical school to make one of the most shocking decisions of her career to pronounce death without first seeing a body the event is foreign to the world in general and to the world of medicine in particular because we have very strict rules on how to determine death there is a pulse and an ECG should be done we still look for all the signs and all the doubts to resolve them in order to give the family an answer that is clear and unambiguous until the harsh news about Judy were received she had been thought kidnapped the last time she made contact was during the morning walk with her husband near Niroz last week the family was informed of Gadi's death now it's Judy one of the open cases that Dr. Mizrachi and the committee of which she is a member for many weeks one of the very complex cases we received a description of the circumstances of the incident where the phone call she made to the Maghen David Adam hotline we read whatsapp messages with friends and family and watched relevant videos we understood that there was a very very serious injury here we sat more than once to try to understand that black Sabbath raised many dramatic issues one of which is whether it is possible to declare the death of a hostage while in captivity some were murdered and taken to the Gaza Strip some were taken there wounded and did not survive the injury others were murdered in Gaza the Ministry of Health has established a committee to assess the situation of the hostages headed by Dr. Hagar Mizrachi a committee of experts trying to decide which citizens, collecting every scrap of information, watching hours of video we are on this committee by virtue of our position as doctors we want evidence whose essence is a medical basis it's not just watching videos it's literally sitting and analyzing and looking for breathing movements you look for movements of the eyelids movements of the body a reaction to pain and pain we also deal mainly with analyzing gunshot wounds where they hit, where organs were hit and everything together with the fact that there is no medical treatment leads us to our conclusions this is how they came to determine that Aviva Tsili, Ofra Kedar and Inbar Haiman were murdered unlike legal matters where reasonable doubt is enough here the three doctors on the committee Dr. Mizrachi, Dr. Kugel the CEO of Sharitz at a hospital need to be completely convinced before they tell the family we sit and if we don't come to a conclusion then we say we haven't yet decided additional material will arrive Hamas will release something some additional information will be received we will incorporate the new bits and watch one more time from beginning to end and then we will make a decision each decision is made unanimously how much certainty do you need to determine 99% enough we wait and check the points until we are all convinced for me it is 100% 100% as far as I'm concerned not knowing is the worst thing I can't stay up in the air I need to know Danny Engel was informed that his brother Ronen was kidnapped with his family from their home in Irooz but his gut feeling said he was probably killed after all, Ronen was armed fighting the terrorists who entered the apartment and no one has seen him since it was very alarming me too in this whole situation I hung on to some kind of optimism and forced myself not to eulogize him or to talk about him in the past tense so not to create, you know the situation that there is no Ronen four days after his wife and daughters returned from captivity the news was received Ronen was murdered and the body was snatched the death was determined according to a video and other findings that were in the house Karina said that there was a large pool of blood where Ronen was standing other people who returned said that they saw his body being dragged outside out of the house I have this kind of closure they told me and beyond any doubt Ronen is gone it's the better option than not knowing and continuing to hope the message the Eeluz family received about the death of Guy the 26 year old musician who was at the party in Reim was a little different in his case there was no video only the knowledge that he was injured but about a month ago they were informed that Maya Regev who returned from captivity gave detailed testimony about their son I ask them, tell me, are you really serious you want me to state as an axiom that my son died in light of the fact that she was a prisoner who was in the room with Guy that she saw him through the curtain and she was full of drugs and I have no idea what and in light of all the psychological warfare they are doing they accepted that I would love to meet with Maya Regev they really tried to give him CPR and he died from his wounds and at first I refused to believe it and after they took him I said that I had to see that it was really him I have this duty to go and talk to his family in the end I'm the only person that really happened so I moved the curtain and saw that he really wasn't with us that he was gone after the parents heard Maya the subtleties, the details how she described how they put him in a white bag for the dead they were convinced they sat Shiva and said goodbye to their boy saying goodbye is it's hard to bear it's not goodbye when you can say goodbye because I saw that he died we didn't see that guy is indeed no longer with us we separated from him based on testimony based on information the returning hostages brought with them a lot of new information to the committee about the fate and condition of those who were left behind but they say they are not satisfied with this evidence as a soul parameter for example we knew that someone had been shot because of the type of injury and we understood that in this condition he was taken to the Gaza Strip and in this condition we know that in order to treat the gunshot we need very intensive, very advanced treatment if at all and over time and on and on it's a culmination of things especially if one of the abductees later states that he has passed away as long as this body does not arrive in Israel it's not doubt really it's not a question of doubt I won't be knocking on the door tomorrow and entering the house but for me the story hasn't ended the bodies of the hostages who did return to Israel were thoroughly examined by Dr. Mizrachi's committee to confirm the circumstances of their death the CT scan shows us whether there are bullets whether there are clots so far bodies have arrived and apparently Hamas said they were killed this is not true these are not the conclusions it is difficult in some cases to determine the exact cause of death but it does not appear that people were injured and the injuries match injuries from shelling the committee deals not only with the dead but also with those who return alive from captivity as a doctor Agar Mizrachi also tries to understand something about the medical treatment they received to her surprise she discovered that they were not given only prescription drugs but also dangerous ones apparently they were given treatment not exactly known in Israel which among other things causes some kind of sedation there was also ketamine in some of the cases ketamine is a drug that is given under anesthesia for surgery and today it is a drug that is used of course illegally and indeed there was testimony received ketamine unnecessarily as a form of sedation I'm not sure you want to emerge from captivity as a drug addict there was a prior claim that the terrorists had been given drugs before I don't have any proof of this but I can tell you honestly I can't understand from what I've seen how they did it without it I say they are not animals because it is unimaginable we'll be back shortly with more live coverage and more updates here on the regional threats facing Israel today more live studio reporting analysis and guests stay with us as we come back after a break we'll see you soon, thanks for watching i20 for news Israel is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception certainly needs to be fought as well into the unbelievable tale of the Brodage family Avichai was fighting off terrorists on October 7th only to find out that his wife, Agar, and her three children have been kidnapped into Gaza along with their neighbor's daughter a 4-year-old of Vigaili Dan her parents were murdered after 51 days of Hamas captivity they were all reunited now for the first time there they're talking about how they survived saying how the kids learned to cry silently and how Vigail became a family member in an instant a very powerful piece you have to watch, take a look you look at them like that do you still see the signs, remains of Gaza of October 7th yes, yes it was a war of survival it was always thinking about when will be the next time your children will get food when the sun will rise there will be some light in the room and you won't be in complete darkness every day you think you've reached the bottom of hell there's no getting lower but one day after another you find out there's another step and you take one more step down to hell and you carry your children together with you on your back 51 days they were in hell Hagar with her three children 10 year old Ofri 8 year old Yvonne 4 year old Aurya and the one who in captivity became Hagar's fourth daughter Avigal Iddan also only 4 years old for 51 days Avichai, their father fought for the family that was kidnapped from their home while he was out fighting in the morning when it all started Avichai called me to come and lock the door after him he looked through the door's people to see that there was no terrorists or anything like that I saw that he noticed something he saw Avigai through the people when he stepped out she just ran away he ran after her and shouted Guli, Guli, stop she didn't stop so he had to grab her and bring her over to me I immediately locked the door after him she was covered in blood not hers but her parents I hugged her wrapped her, tried to clean her up she said her older brother said that the mom and dad were dead and that she had to run away and so she did I didn't realize the magnitude of the events until the moment the terrorists entered her home 4 hours later and what happened when they entered I asked the children to cover themselves with blankets they covered themselves I turned off the light and hid there's a space between the door of the safe room and the closet I hid there and held the door as much as I could I'm not particularly strong in the end they managed to get in there were at least 15 terrorists inside the house and when they came in and turned on the light in the safe room I started screaming they're just kids don't do anything to them and then the children took off their blankets screaming they took us in my car the five of us with three other terrorists two sitting in the front one sitting in the back when we entered Gaza there was a huge crowd two were sitting in the back the way we entered Gaza it was one big show for them they hung the horn of the car opened the car doors hit me, pulled my hair and Ophry the terrorists kept grabbing her by the shirt to show everyone what a price he had grabbed it was scary scary this is a moment when you lose control you lose the protection everything you've created for your children those minutes are the minutes that broke everything just moments of horror this is the moment when you were in Gaza what did you think happened to everyone? I don't know sometimes I thought I wouldn't see you again sometimes I thought I wouldn't see Rodney anymore I'll tell you what I was thinking in the car I thought they were going to kill us in the car really? yes because they had guns it was stressful I thought they were going to kill us all in the car instead of at home what do you think after so much time and past and you still stayed there? that we'll never return and that we'll have to live in Gaza that's really what I thought how do you survive there? so it turns out that the body and mind are able to create so many mechanisms of survival that you don't feel anything you don't get sick your mind is empty you're not hungry, you don't smell you just survive for these four little children you're not crying how can I cry? I have four little children that I have to look after that I have to protect in this hell how did you spend your day there? what did it look like? so in the first house we were in we had two notebooks and unsharpened pencils and we messed around with that trying to sharpen them and draw or play we played a lot of country, city me and the big ones and the time passed slowly the days never ended in the second house we were in playing cards so they brought me cards and also some sort of imitation of Taki and we would spend most of the day playing card games lots of talking lots and lots of talking and whispers because it was forbidden it was forbidden to speak loudly they didn't want the neighbors to hear us there might be a snitch who would report that there was Israelis in the house it was forbidden to cry it was forbidden to laugh it was forbidden to shout obviously how do you deal with not being allowed to cry? wow a free learn to cry quietly UV it was hard for him to learn to cry quietly but he eventually succeeded in the little ones it was hard you can't teach a 4 year old kid to cry quietly we celebrated Ohri's 10th birthday there and overnight she turned 20 she was my partner she was the angel that watched over me in this whole story and UV was my sensitive boy who always needed me the most he was suddenly a man he suddenly saw that I had not one for your child to take care of but two of them and he knew how to help me with that and with Orya and Abigay it was difficult it was very difficult Orya is my baby and now I had another little girl who went through hell so that you can leave most of it for them because you have no other choice they're hungry there was great hunger they were starving when I begged for food they told me our children eat only pita a day as well so your children will only eat a pita a day yeah for 24 hours this is what each one of us could eat I don't wish any mother or ever she is to be in a situation where she begs for food to give her children I don't wish that that was Abigay's birthday November 24th and she kept saying I'm still 3 years old I'll celebrate my 4th birthday when I return home we drove in the Red Cross's car and when we arrived I met Hen Goldstein and her children and Hen when she saw me she shouted to me Har Abigay is waiting for you I heard it on the radio the abdukti who was with me at the beginning was with her at the end and she had told her about us that's when I found out Abigay was alive all the barriers came down and the tears started falling and the truth is that what awaited us in Israel it was something that I really did not expect for 51 days in captivity I was sure they forgot about us it was simply unbelievable everyone coming together from citizens who do not know me at all to the doctors and Schneider Medical Center people who really gave to us from the bottom of their hearts I can't believe 4 weeks have already passed I've been here 4 weeks and they haven't there are 129 hostages there is an astronomical number who are not here in the end we're lucky we got our family back it will be a long process but they will be fine we will work on it we will do everything so that the joy will return that the security will return to them there's no other choice mom what my child Western militaries have been shifting the ways of war what lessons we will be learning from the Ukraine and also from the war that Israel has with its borders let's get to Robert Swift with this report the Israel gas offence was protected by some of the best border security technology in the world remote gun turrets, underground sensors to detect tunneling and surveillance balloons the after barrier was built on the assumption that we have technology vision we will tell us when someone is approaching the fence this one collapsed Hamas simply went through it with demolition charges and pickup trucks overwhelming the defences with force of numbers and a few drones believing that its high tech defences sufficed Israel let other more basic considerations fall by the wayside Israel adopted the last I think 20 years asymmetric balance between technology and the number of units main power that it needs on the field it looks like Israel thought in its calculation that the high technology will bring advantage to the battlefield instead of represent of main power inside it since the October 7th attack a number of former Israeli generals have argued for an expanded IDF budget and footprint Ukraine fighting on a very different battlefield also sees its manning levels as a problem locked in a stalemate with a larger foe its chief of staff argues that advances in technologies like electronic warfare are needed to break the deadlock in the 21st century the development of science and as a result the advancement of armaments and military equipment inevitably led to the changes in the tactics of its use the enemy didn't stay behind either you see what is happening specifically in the last few days we have a powerful confrontation specifically in the technological aspect both of the wars defining 2023 show a blurring of low and high technologies on the battlefield in Ukraine the first large example of state on state drone warfare the howitzer, the shovel and the trench as seen on the fields of the First World War as important as the quadcopter and in Gaza urban siege warfare reminiscent of Stalingrad is being waged by the Middle East's most technologically advanced military but low and high tech solutions should not be viewed as opposites in conflict but as complimentary Israel will continue to be a country that relies very much on technology but we have to understand that there are areas and places that you cannot rely only solely on technology you have to go sometimes back to human beings and sometimes to technologies that are not always the cutting edge the infantry soldier on the ground present in war for millennia can become a high tech tool when equipped with the latest weapons, sensors and communications devices even a badly equipped insurgent can become part of the developing information war space when kitted out with a GoPro and an internet connection Kiev has repeatedly demonstrated the significance of this front in modern war Ukraine and Gaza's battles have shown that often a low tech solution can be the best counter to a high tech innovation so we have a pretty weird situation in which simple but smart and cheap solutions really change things on the battlefield as can be seen in the use of trenches or cage armor to protect from the prying eyes and drop munitions of drones both wars have also shown that quantity has a quality all of its own and that high tech doesn't need to mean expensive whether that means in terms of expendable munitions or massed infantry a lesson that western militaries many of which have downsized in recent decades may wish to heed as the threat of state on state warfare grows western militaries will take heed to the developing technological shifts on the battlefields of Ukraine and Israel or sooner or later learn the hard way it's not true that the era of wars is over unfortunately that's not true no peace is guaranteed absolutely not peace is guaranteed and moreover there is an illusion that western nations can have small armies well armed armies of motivated professionals who want to do that unfortunately that may not be true because the epoch of universal peace that we hoped for in the west it seemed to be over 629 october 7 it was the dawn of the day that never ended the nova rave held adjacent to the gaza strip was suddenly stopped by a different music the sound of sirens the Hamas attack from land and air perpetrating the deadliest terror attack in israeli history murdering 364 civilians at the rave alone and kidnapping 40 others we were quite close to the borders unfortunately this community that has around 10,000 members was the biggest community that was hit a third of all the victims the murdered victims from the 7th of october are coming from the party almost 400 people and the number is still rising there are still hostages now we saw that Hamas keep murdering people in captivity and some of them are dancers in the party and this is how my life has been going on for the last three months notifying the death of my friend finding out new information about how they died and notifying new information about how my friends are in that area at the expo Tel Aviv the reminders of a fateful day straw mats, tents, hammocks all retrieved from the place of the massacre the nova 6.9 exhibit takes you back to that morning october 7 so you can feel even if a little bit as if you were there this large expo center becomes a memento accessible all the objects you can see here they were retrieved as they were left in Kibbutz Reim portable toilets riddled with bullets cars burned down this is the result of Hamas killing spree this exhibition was made because Kibbutz Reiri and Kibbutz Neroz the villages around Gaza they have something to show they can show the world this is what was done for us and we have nothing our parties are being built and reassembled in around 5 hours so we decided we're going to rebuild it here and we're going to add to it the burnt cars of our friends even one of the burnt cars here is the one I rode to to this party and the battle cells with the shooting guns everything we could have shown to the world because we have to explain it why for this party we were in such a good place at 628 and at 629 my whole world collapsed the earth was just blank around my feet and everyone else in this party 3,500 people were there 15% were murdered and this exhibition is there to show what happened to us and to show who is the noble community and what we stand for the lost and found area Jews, clothes, bags and other items from the thousands of participants of the rave who had to live all behind in the hope of surviving the massacre an image that alludes to the millions of personal items left by the Jews during the holocaust an image that impacts all visitors for me it's really emotional to be here my best friend was murdered in the party he had a painting store painted all the night and many people came to see his painting in the end he tried to get out and escape and him and the other best friends were murdered in the car I think this presentation is amazing it's really make people feel what they felt and to feel what they been going through in this terrible, terrible time when the attack appeared so it's like a small taste of what happened the hostages square Tel Aviv it's become a focal point in the campaign to raise awareness of the Israelis abducted Tugasa and keep their plight in the public eye one of the items here is quite unique a solitary piano with a slogan on it alone, you are not alone I felt that they need to do something that will make people maybe understand about him more and learn about him more and by playing they will be in contact with him the piano is dedicated to Alon Oil, 22-year-old who was kidnapped to Gaza from the Nova Festival on October 7 Alon is a talented musician planned to study music at the prestigious Rimon Academy in Ramata Sharon, north of Tel Aviv but October 7 changed everything on that night on Friday night we had dinner with our family we came home, he got ready played the piano left the piano open and his brother took him to a friend's house and then from there they drove to the Nova Festival they got there about 5 in the morning so he was like there maybe an hour, an hour and a half and it's all started it started with rockets falling down knowing that they have to get cover from the rockets they got into a car into their car and started to drive north but the police stopped them and told them that they can go forward so they went south and found a shelter a bomb shelter near Reim at that time the Hamas came in and started to throw grenades into the bomb shelter at that time the Hamas came inside and took my son and three others the piano has become one of the most iconic items in this sad square and it has occasionally stopped and play on it some of the players are famous Israeli musicians such as singers Rami Kleinsten and Marina Maximilian for me it was important to say alone you're not alone because it's very important to think of him not being alone and the fact is that we are not alone and the fact that we are thinking about him makes him and us not being alone so it's like a whole you know thing that has to do with that the Hamas's mother Edith has been traveling the world as part of advocacy campaign to promote the message bring them home now I can say now after all that of this time it's been 81 days now today then when I'll see him the first thing I'll tell him that I know him better now because of the beautiful things that his friends are telling me about him and everything that people writing me about him that I have not been able to know before because as a mother you don't know everything your son is doing and now I know and it's beautiful and I want to meet him how he is now and I'll give him a big hug after 2 months of intense fighting in Gaza IDF paratroopers are being treated to a well-deserved spa day courtesy of a small Israeli-owned company the owner of the outfit Alec Shamesh and manager Tal El Nazarian decided to use their expertise to turn a bus into a barbershop to help soldiers serving in the war these additions help the bus look and feel like the real thing my soldiers I have nephews in the soldiers it's my people it's us this is our country and we will do to help our soldiers to be better soldiers and win this war you can't mess with William Manino a hairdresser who's come all the way from Natania because he just loves to cut hair and wants to help the paratroopers in any way he can I am volunteering we are very happy to do so I'm giving my own time to the cause I came here this morning on my day off and this is what I'm doing cutting the hair of the soldiers I also saw chefs cooking for some soldiers it's a treat for these soldiers who've been fighting since October 7th without a break they haven't even had the chance to take off their boots for weeks this is a weird feeling seeing all of this support have made the transition from fighting in the war to here really smooth everyone is helping depending on their skill set and it's a very pleasant feeling for us the IDF is spending a lot of time and effort to ensure an easy transition for us once again, as Israel fights on civilian volunteers find ways to help the fighters taking the pressure off the soldiers for a few days before they go back into battle is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where she is our soldiers are fighting on the front line but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well for the analysis and information of the events of the war Iron swords exclusive interviews and reports from the war zone the reaction of the Spanish-speaking countries News 24, the only media in Spanish that keeps you informed and connected with the Latin community in Israel News 24, only on I24 News security and military officials have acknowledged their intelligence failures that allowed Hamas to plan and execute the October 7th attacks but new details have emerged in a report from the New York Times describing how Hamas financed its activities with the portfolio of investments a financial network that the newspaper says Israel's leaders were aware of but did not shut down with more, here is our correspondent Robert Swift as early as 2015 Israeli and US officials became aware of a network of companies that not only funded Hamas but were owned and controlled by it an empire that was worth an estimated half a billion dollars while organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda have frequently used fronts to launder money Hamas's portfolio was a genuine enterprise launched with seed money to go out to make a profit the New York Times reports it reportedly included mining, chicken farming and road building firms in Sudan two skyscrapers in the United Arab Emirates a property developer in Algeria and trend a real estate company listed on the Turkish stock exchange an Israeli financial intelligence team Task Force Harpoon began tracking the investments flagging up their concerns to US counterparts and the Israeli cabinet but the threat from Iran and the finances it distributed to its proxies Hamas among them ultimately eclipsed fears over the Hamas portfolio and at the time the Israeli security services consensus was that money flowing into Gaza would help tame Hamas rather than arming it for the next attack a strategy led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding this published investigation I am not familiar with it and I suggest you wait until after the war examination and a thorough investigation of all these things will be done and the picture will become clearer while there were some sanctions placed on businesses and individuals in 2022 ultimately the flow of money from it was not disrupted money that Israeli intelligence assesses was directly invested into Hamas's military preparations cyber attack directed against Iran over the past day the backer of the Houthis of course may indicate that Israel is also now seeking its own indirect response to address this issue our correspondent Robert Swift has more in this report as much as 70 percent of the petrol stations across Iran were disrupted Monday with Iranian authorities citing a possible cyber attack as the cause some people say it was hacked some people say well we wonder if maybe there is a shortage but these are all questions that need to be answered by a high-ranking authority Iranian state media singled out hacking group Predatory Sparrow as responsible it has been linked by Israeli media in the past to unit 8200 Israel's Signals Intelligence Agency this cyber attack comes in response to the aggression of the Islamic Republic and its proxies in the region the hackers said in a statement in Persian and English on telegram the incident occurs as Israel's allies search for an appropriate response to Houthi attacks against cargo ships passing the Babel Mandab Strait this is a battle against the Iranian Axis the Iranian Axis of Terror which is now threatening to close the maritime Strait of Babel Mandab this threatens the freedom of navigation of the entire world so in the Red Sea we're leading a multinational maritime task force to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation Iran's support for Houthi attacks on commercial vessels must stop part of Iran's network of proxies the Yemen based group says it will attack any ships approaching Israeli ports while fighting in Gaza continues its drone and missile attacks have escalated in the last week causing numerous shipping lines to cancel voyages through the Red Sea placing a squeeze on the economies of Israel and neighboring countries like Egypt as well as international energy markets a cyber attack may be an efficient means for Israel to reach into Iran in response to the Houthi actions on its southern front the question is whether its impact will be sufficient to alter the Yemeni group's behavior let's talk about Alina Tovenberg a makeup artist and a body painter that is known for her UV body paints and on October 7th she found herself on the front line during the Hamas attack at the Nova Festival near the Gaza border I-24 News reporter Uri Shapira brings her story Alina Tovenberg didn't believe in divine intervention until October 7th for years she's worked as a makeup artist and body painter working at the Nova Festival was only natural for her we came to the field on Thursday and stayed for the entire weekend we decided to stay at Nova I was attracted to the wonderful people who came there the perfect place and the unique atmosphere in the air so I decided to stay at 6.20 am we saw this amazing sunrise I was just finishing painting Eleanor my last painting I gave her a hug and a kiss and went on dancing on the floor everybody was waiting for the sunrise 15 minutes earlier my partner Tomer gave me a glass of tea and told me that he wanted to go to the car because he was tired it seemed very strange to me because he never acts like that but in retrospect this is what for me resembled the first miracle that happened to me I looked to the horizon and I saw heavy smoke to see the smoke inside this beautiful place felt very strange to me and I immediately closed my makeup kit suddenly we started to hear booms the music was still on we could hear the bits but we heard the shooting mixed with the trance music after 3 to 4 minutes they shut down the music and the chaos began it was a sharp transition people were at their peak and suddenly everything was shut down and you find yourself in a war at a certain point Eleanor's partner could not start his car the group found itself in a survivor scenario we split into two areas in one place I took care of girls who were in panic in the other spot Tomer tried to fix the car he asked his brother to bring people to help and he got a call from his brother and heard that he'd been shot Tomer understood that there were terrorists in the area he managed to find someone who helped him fix the car this angel is not with us today we drove like crazy to Kibbutz Rayim a black truck tried to crash into us we managed to escape it was another miracle it was a matter of seconds then we managed to get to Rayim God opened the gate for us Eleanor says that everyone she's painted at night survived one of the people Eleanor remembers the most is a young woman named Eleanor who Eleanor painted when the Hamas attack began Eleanor hid inside a fridge and survived this short soundtrack we hear the moments of horror when Eleanor saying goodbye to her eight-year-old son I painted on Eleanor an image of a woman full of light and hope more than two months after October 7 Eleanor took part in an exhibition in Tel Aviv dedicated to the Nova Rave she rebuilt the boot where she walked at that night I remember every painting I made that night each painting I made that night became a part of me it became a part of my family a part of my story there is Eleanor and there is my art and there is this night and this night laid down roots and suddenly we were given roots now we turn to the story of Ophir Engel one of 110 Hamas hostages that were released from captivity last month now he is attempting to return as best he can to his normal life but the events of October 7 and almost two months in captivity in Gaza still haunt him here's his story adapted from Local Channel 12 the romantic trip of these two teenagers Ophir Engel and his friend Yuval Sharabi to Belgrade in time for Christmas season to see his favorite basketball team Apoll Jerusalem is accompanied with immense distress 18 year old Ophir was released from Gaza two weeks ago but Yuval's father and uncle remain in Hamas captivity how does it feel to fly right now? exciting but weird a little Yuval? a little yes we miss them so much they're probably in the tunnel or in a house on that black Saturday Ophir a 12th grade student from Kibbutz Ramat Rahel near Jerusalem was with 17 year old Yuval in Beiri during the sirens the two together with Yuval's parents and two sisters entered the safe room it was 10 in the morning when the terrorists broke in and what do you see? three terrorists enter with guns two with guns one with a TG first thing they shoot the dog shoot the dog first they're very afraid of dogs and then just take us all downstairs are they speaking with you? in Arabic they say to you itba al-yehud mafi shisrael hadda palestine and there they got us all up they took us to the road and a black car was just waiting there there's a black car waiting for us they motioned in opening the door her father Yossi went in first and then she and I held hands she's already getting in her foot inside already then they take her out and put me in are the women just taken out? no they just leave them with the other two terrorists this is the last image I have in my memory of them are you yelling anything to him? I told him I love you did you hear? did you answer? what I remember is the red eyes fear? shock? because you don't understand what's going on you see her with two terrorists and in captivity you think she is either dead or kidnapped there is no other option, logically and you don't hear anything in captivity about youval? nothing, nothing two terrorists what are they doing with you? the two terrorists just walked away what's going on in the car? they just take us to Gaza the person sitting in front has a weapon aimed at us like this oh really? yes Ophir was kidnapped together with Yossi youval's father and a neighbor 16 year old Amit Chani 54 days in captivity they saw no other hostages Ophir stayed close to his girlfriend's father and youval's father calms you down? yes he reassured us but obviously everyone is scared so it's calming only for a moment play cards I can't look at another card what did you play? a game they taught us are the terrorists also playing with you? yes how did they act towards you? it is relative to a good situation because no they weren't abused yes we were not abused they were simply psychologically abused they keep saying they don't want you who doesn't want you? Israel there is only one demonstration in Israel there is only one demonstration for a week and the families don't want you to come back they don't take action or do anything you're going to stay here for at least a year things like that in your head you say it won't be a year for sure it will be five months did you know you would come back? I figured I'd be back sometime were you afraid to die there? yes I was less afraid that they would kill me because if they wanted to kill me they probably would have killed me on the first day what about bringing food? what food really? there was no food what did you eat? a pita and a half in the morning yes with Labanik so what scared you? from the booms around that the idea of doesn't know our location suddenly a missile would hit fear of death, a house near us was bombed it sounded like it hit ours one of the guards was informed that a relative of his had been killed you say to yourself just as long as you don't come back at us just don't come back at us what feels most difficult moments were when terrorists moved them twice through the heart of the city when they were completely exposed in total darkness when all around non-stop explosions when they transferred you it was always overnight do you see Gazans? obviously yes it was a terrible fear how would you know who's going to turn on you? do you think they care? no they don't care about each other you know some extremists would kill me and the Hamasnik with me and did anyone come see you? they had their boss who would come and bring food once every two days who would bring a packet of pita bread whatever you eat you eat in these three days did he say anything to you? he would come and tell us again that they don't want us and all that he was the main one who was psychologically abusing us did you make a connection with one of them that was more pleasant? the one who guarded us was a bit better didn't he say something like death to the Jews? yes he did say that they know nothing other than that did you try to explain to him say what do you want from me I'm a kid from Israel so he told them a hundred times they said why are you in Israel why did your family come to Israel? what did you answer? I told him my grandfather was born here then he tells me you're lying you're lying why would I lie? so I just said yes do you see Sinwar? no where they told me this is Sinwar when they told me you are returning to Israel he pointed at someone he said this is Sinwar but he was so fat and didn't even look like him do you believe them when they tell you they're coming back the next day? yes because they look happy and to get rid of you? yes we are quite a heavy burden for them what did you say to you before you separated? nothing we were separated in an instant oh just like this? yes just like this I call her and tell her I'm fine, I'm alive everything is good what did she say to me? did you see what he looked like? no you were excited yes yes until I saw him with my own eyes I couldn't believe it is there one moment that you cry or did you suddenly fall apart? I asked the soldier on the minibus what about Yuval, her mother and her sisters and they told me they were fine everything is well with them I was in shock crying, falling apart? the only thing I was worried about I was just shocked that he was there in front of me I collapsed for a second did it surprise you that she suddenly fell to the floor? yes I think she was also a little shocked Ophir who played last year on the Apoel Jerusalem youth basketball team is a die-hard fan the team flew him and his family this week for a match against the Champions League so I had this picture for two months on my shirt and he was in every square and to see him come out of all the demonstrations and the pictures and it comes out to something real on the court, how do you say it? it's double happiness for us Ophir was locked trapped in Gaza for almost two months I don't think any of us expected him to be here I don't think his family expected I don't think he expected to see the smile on the faces not only of Ophir, but his family and to the other families that are here with us as well it moves me a lot Ophir and Yuval's joy at Apoel Jerusalem's victory at the game and the feeling of freedom in Belgrade is momentary the photos of Yuval's father, Yossi and his brother, Eli, in Gaza never leave their mind as well though, heartbreak in Israel after three hostages were killed in a case of mistaken identity now families demand an immediate deal for the release of those still held by the Hamas terror group these families marched in Tel Aviv demanding an end to the fighting so that negotiations can begin they rejected the idea that military force will bring Hamas to the negotiating table Hamas has vowed that there will be no negotiations until a permanent ceasefire has been reached the position of the Israeli state is that Hamas cannot be allowed to endure as the group has vowed to commit more raids, kidnappings and massacres modeled on October 7th that killed 1,200 Israelis the overwhelming majority of which were civilians and in the cruelest and most sadistic ways possible it is believed that the terrorists still hold 128 hostages spread across Gaza not all of whom are still alive Prime Minister Netanyahu he will not succumb to Hamas's demands without the military pressure we would not have succeeded in creating an outline that led to the release of 110 hostages and only continued military pressure will lead to the release of all of our hostages my directive to the negotiating team is based on this pressure ceasefire, remove our troops they have all kinds of demands so what do we understand as soon as we give in Hamas has won we are obligated to eliminate it and return our hostages but will not give up either this goal or that goal and of course this is very concerning to the friends and the families of so many hostages still held by the terrorists one such being Amit Parpara the friend of Noah Argamani who is still being held by those terrorists I'm glad you could be with us there are no words to console you going through with your friends still in captivity what is your reaction when you hear the prime minister say this is not going to force a negotiation so thank you for having us for having me here to talk about it I'd say no there's a lot of feelings come up to your head when you think about all this stuff that are coming up in the news but I certainly believe that Israel is trying its best to get out the hostages in the way that they know and I really hope that the what they are doing right now is going to bring them home safely you have to believe in what you see and you have to believe in the government that we'll do everything to expel them as he said there were so many of us hoping and praying that the military action would succeed in freeing hostages on the ground do you still believe that's a realistic opportunity I think it's always a realistic opportunity I think that coming from both ways not just a deal is a deal but on the other side you can you can never know what is going on on the other side we're dealing with terrorists we're not humans it's not dealing with a country that you know they'll keep the hostages safe they can just run out and bring the hostages back and let them be free you can never know what is really happening I think that what happened is something that should concern the government and should concern us as civilians and should bring us our attention to bring it back to hostages as quick as possible but I believe that the government doesn't what it's best to get them there So we've seen a lot of the families that were marching in Tel Aviv demanding an immediate ceasefire to start negotiating right now where do you fall on this discussion what should be done I think I personally believe that the military may be able to free some hostages but it's there and some I think that we should we should take out the hostages in the deal I don't know if it's ceasefire if it's releasing other hostages I don't know what that really means but I think that taking them out as a whole as a group should be the top priority right now and to release those who are not in any way connected to this war should be the top priority because there's no winning picture without them at home and I think that bringing them whatever ceasefire or whatever it may have been I think that bringing them home should be doing whatever we need to do I know this is going to be a cruel question in light of everything we've seen in the last few days but when you see these news reports we hear the fate of these hostages that were so close to freedom what goes through your mind about the military operation and the people that are still trapped there you need to understand that there's a lot of complex complexion when talking about these kind of military events and the next thing they do I can't blame anyone for what they've done and I think that being there and fighting is hard enough and deciding on the ground is hard I personally know Aris Haim which is the mother of Yatam Haim I was with her on the delegation to Australia and came back a couple of days ago and it seems like when they're there at least and if they're alive they will come out alive this is the hope at least because you know that they want them alive you know that they will come back to you but as we just saw again I can't blame anyone of these missions but as we just saw no one is safe when they are in Khamasens no one is safe and bringing them back should be now and now and some other forms or ways in couple days and should be now because in each second that you think that they might be alive they can get killed Aris and we're talking about people that's the hardest thing that everyone needs to remember I mean thank you very much for being with us on this show and we're all praying that people do come home they're still alive we'll make it back to their families at the end of this ordeal Israel is in a state of war families completely done down in their beds we have no idea where she is our soldiers are fighting on the front lines but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well