 just against Israel. They're protesting against Canadian values. In 24 News' ongoing coverage of Israel at war, I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. A short while ago, air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. In the south, the IDF said troops have surrounded the city of Canunis in the southern Gaza Strip and are operating in its center. The military said the 98th Division broke through the defenses Hamas's Canunis Brigade encircled the city and began to maneuver deeper inside. The IDF has unfortunately had to announce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza, which brings the soldiers total up to 85 slain in the ground operation since October. Staff Sergeant Amit Bonzo and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emanueva-Feleke. The Prime Minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the southern Gaza region. The cabinet said the amount allowed will be the minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister accused the United Nations Secretary of General Attinio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation, calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres's letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and Guterres's invocation of a rare clause in the United Nations Charter that urges the Security Council intervention, Article 99, allows the Secretary of General to bring to the Council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. It's not been used since 1989. In addition to this, Rear Admiral Daniel Higari has remarked on the latest developments on the ground. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground. He is underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible. But in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment, the Shin Bet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. And we are going to open on the northern front where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the Lebanon borders. Never mind, we're having a connection issue. So instead, we are going to get the latest developments on the southern front from Colonel Mary Eisen, director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichman University. Mary, walk us through the latest developments that we're hearing in Hanunis now, not just in circle but troops moving deeper and deeper within. As we look at it right now, Arielle, I think that people also may want to be looking at a map to kind of understand. In the first, because we're already two months into this war, and in the first two months, everybody was very focused on the northern Gaza Strip. But Israel has consistently been attacking different, the IDF has been attacking different targets inside the southern Gaza Strip and especially the city of Hanunis. Hanunis is a city, it's a large city, probably, you know, up to a half a million people in that sense that is on the southern side. And it is the heart, if I can call it in that way, of the Hamas leadership and especially of Yahya Sinjar, who is both the military commander and the sovereign of his own inside the Gaza Strip. And he has been so for many years. He comes from Hanunis, his house is in Hanunis. And in these last few days, the IDF went into the center of, again, this urban populated area to both surround his physical civilian house. When it's clear cut that he and the other military commanders are hiding underground in those underground subterranean tunnel systems. So the IDF is doing a similar but different type of activity, as you can see, going into the urban area where they have the anti-tank positions, the sniper positions, the RPG positions, going on and in attacking and opening and finding the entrance into the shafts that go underground into that subterranean arena. And as we see in that sense, looking from the north to the south, the IDF has continued its action in the north, closing in on the two different neighborhoods that have been, that were the last ones to be taken care of before the pause and are now being systematically cleared of weaponry. And up north, they found the largest cache of weapons until now, an enormous cache of weapons that was found of hundreds of rockets. But because of that had not been fired in Israel. And in that sense, that's a very, it's an example of the systematic way that we're going through in the Gaza Strip right now. That systematic way underscores that the IDF is not underestimating the enemy anymore. But there are some reports coming out over the last 24 hours that shows the scope to which not just the IDF but also the political establishment massively underestimated the enemy in the lead up to October 7th. New report from the Washington Post showing that Hamas even gave intel on the Palestinian Islamic jihad to take the focus off of them using them as a scapegoat. How deep did this deception go? And how did it manage to fool the entirety of the Israeli establishment? It's not just about pooling in that sense is when you're doing a deception type of mode, the underestimation was overall. And we all understand that, but it was immediately understood on October 7th that underestimation means that Hamas did not only deceive what they were doing is they were doing two things at the same time. That's exactly the challenge with this type of hybrid terror organization. It's a social movement. It was governing over the Gaza Strip that it took over violently from 2007. So it was talking to other mediators on bettering the situation inside the Gaza Strip, on giving jobs inside the Gaza Strip. And there's no question that in hindsight they highlighted Palestinian Islamic jihad. Israel was targeting both, but we stopped doing it against Hamas because we totally erroneously thought that perhaps Hamas would be doing something else for the people of the Gaza Strip. And in this sense, Ariel, because we were so wrong, it's one of those things that you want to say, you can't do anything now, but you learn your mistake. And this enormous cache of weapons is where both Palestinian Islamic jihad and Hamas have been investing in these last few years. I don't think the Palestinian Islamic jihad agreed to being the one that the focus would be on. This is part of a greater deception. You learn your lessons from that and you go forward. But we're continuing to act against Hamas now. In that sense, the way that they deceived is only bringing about their own utter destruction. Systematically, step by step in the Gaza Strip, we're not allowing them to keep these cache of weapons. We're not allowing them to use them against Israel. We're not allowing them to keep that subterranean arena. That deception is going to bring their destruction. Well, stay with us on the line because we're going to be discussing this and so much more briefly. But first, we are going to turn our attention to the northern border, but we have reestablished our connection with our correspondent, Zach Anders. Zach, it's good to have you with us. Walk us through what the latest developments are on the northern front. Continued IDF strikes at positions, Hezbollah positions that the IDF says were the points of origin of fire from overnight. There were seven attacks that Hezbollah took credit for yesterday, but the big news was Defense Minister Galant visiting with the mayors and heads of council here on the border and discussing what is the future for the communities here on the north. Many of the leaders want to know when they can come. The people in the communities can come back after this evacuation notice will be lifted. The word from Galant was that they will not allow there to be lifted evacuation order until the reality of the security situation changes to reflect that of the 1701 agreement, which is the agreement that comes after the 2006 Lebanon war, which essentially says to Hezbollah that their forces have to be north of the Latani River. No Hezbollah operatives south of the river between the river and the border. That has been ignored and disregarded entirely for over a decade, but Galant saying for there to be a solid security situation here to lift the evacuation orders that they will need to make sure that the Hezbollah is pushed back beyond the river. So the question then becomes, does that involve offensive capabilities? Are you going to need to apply immense international pressure to get Hezbollah to get Iran to abide by this agreement? It's too early to say, but for the people that live here, it will be quite some time. It looks like for the evacuation is lifted and they're able to return to their homes. Well, thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the north. We are going to expand on that with a new development. We're seeing Israeli reports saying Israel, the United States and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. That's a deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal at Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli officials told local media that one such stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently north of the Latani River in compliance with that UN resolution 1701. That Lebanon and UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. That was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese army. Israel says that should diplomacy fail though, Hezbollah must be forced to retreat on the battlefield. Currently 70,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to that of October 7th. Now to break this down further, we still have Mary Eisen on the line and we are also joined in studio by our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Altman. I want to open with you Owen. This discussion that this potential agreement, what is Lebanon's position on this? Is this something they are actually willing or willful about? Well, look, I mean, obviously the agreement to denote Israel's border with Lebanon, the Lebanese government is going to have to be involved. Ariel, it is at least strictly speaking their country, even if as you're right, they don't necessarily have effective control over the south. When you look at Hezbollah's power and the actual balance of power on the ground, look, at the end of the day, I think this is a stalling tactic from Israel's perspective, right? What are the odds that even over the medium term, Hezbollah is actually going to have an interest in respecting the decisions along that border when their interest is exactly the opposite, trying to invent disputes along that border as a pretense and as a basis for what they call resistance to Israel, right? And the diplomatic efforts to push them beyond the Latani river, we've been there before. You mentioned 1701, the latest in a long stream of agreements that have been meant to push forces hostile to Israel beyond that river. Again, what are the odds that Hezbollah over the medium term in practice respects the agreement. In practice and in full respect to the agreement, I don't think many people have much faith in Hezbollah doing that or frankly see Hezbollah having much of an interest in doing that. But this is a game that I think Israel wants to play, to do what it can to convince the residents of those northern border communities to go home and to at least stall and postpone a conflict with Hezbollah because everyone understands how costly that would be. So this may be the best of bad options for the Israeli government, but let's not dilute ourselves into thinking it's anything more. I want to turn back to Mary because as our correspondent, as Owen just said, Mary, obviously Hezbollah has zero interest in that sort of agreement. So if there is any agreement at all, does it still fall to Israel and only Israel to enforce 1701 and push Hezbollah back beyond the Latani river? So as I agree with everything that Owen was saying, Owen the amazing senior diplomatic correspondent, Owen, you didn't talk about all of the other players. France really wants an agreement inside Lebanon. The United States wants an agreement. France is focused on Lebanon. The United States is very focused on that connection of Hezbollah to Iran. When we're talking about 1701, that is United Nations Resolution Security Council, United Nations Force. When we take the step back and look at Lebanon Hezbollah, I take a step back and I see France and I go further and I see Iran. I think when we're looking at that kind of thing, there's two different issues. There's the one which has to do with one of the Israelis going to go back and live there. My friends who have not been in their homes for almost two months because it's too dangerous because Hezbollah is firing into Israel. People around the world do not understand. This is not a Lebanese conflict. Hezbollah is firing into communities, into Israel every single day, including right now as we're talking this morning. But when it comes to what happens on the Lebanese side, those additional players, not just the United Nations, but France and then behind Hezbollah, Iran, what kind of pressure do you bring out there? And it isn't an easy situation. You can't just ignore the international community, certainly not right now. I think that Israel has an interest to try to see the two different arenas, Hamas and Hezbollah as interconnected and the international community wants to diffuse the northern one. I don't know how you solve this unmathematical equation. We cannot go back to our borders when there are these two hybrid terror organizations, Hamas in the south, Hezbollah inside Lebanon. We can't go back to our communities when they exists with their military capabilities there. How do you get those military capabilities out? I'm not going to discount the idea that international pressure on Lebanon, on Hezbollah, on Iran may do a difference. Well, stay with us so that we can discuss this further. But first, we do want to turn to the southern border where our correspondent, Pierre Kloschenler, is standing by. Pierre, walk us through the latest developments we're seeing on the south. Well, we know from the IDF that there are three focal points in the fighting, the same as yesterday, by the way, the Jebalia refugee camp on the north of Gaza City, southeast of Gaza City in the Shejaya neighborhood, and in Hanyunas in the central sector of the Gaza Strip and the surrounding refugee camps in that sector. Three focal points, but the IDF says that it has managed to breach all the lines of defense of Hamas in these three regions. That means that fighting, close combat fighting is occurring in Jebalia, in Shejaya, as well as in the heart of Hanyunas. All those places have been encircled, so the fighting is within and without those places. And in addition, the ground offensive is supported both by artillery and by aircraft fire and bombardments. The air here in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip is breezing with the muffled sound of artillery shells and aircraft bombing. We hear it clearly, although we don't see much right now in the particular sector in which we are facing, but the offensive is in one word, simply deepening. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for that report from the south. I'm going to turn back to Mary, just to look at the situation in Gaza again. We were speaking before about the deployments around Hanyunas. We're seeing the IDF move deeper and deeper into Hamas's last major stronghold. What is going to be left in Gaza after Hanyunas? That's a really big question, which is very challenging to answer. So as a Hamas stronghold, only the area of Rafa, which is on the Egyptian border, which is pretty much where, again, we're talking about 2.2 million people. As everybody's already said, there's 80% displacement in the Gaza Strip of where they've gone to. They went south, Hanyunas, they're now going more towards the seashore and towards Rafa. But in Ariel, in this case, it's not about conquering the different areas. It's about destroying the leadership, destroying the command and control, capturing the bulk of the capabilities. And in that sense, you will be destroying that military capability that we talk about. I think the focal point will be the leadership itself. And if they go into Rafa, in that sense, as I say, at the heart of the different areas, it means we'll be able to get into more hostages. So I don't think it's about the land and about conquering more places. It's much more about destroying the capabilities, the command and control, which you do in Hanyunas, you do in the northern Gaza Strip, you do in the subterranean arena. And you try through that, pressuring them into getting to a breaking point where they negotiate for the hostages. They're not willing to, again, from my point of view, they stand up and come out with a white flag. If I don't expect them to do that, I need to get to them. And the way to do that is through this military pressure. Right now, hard to see us really going militarily physically into Rafa, but we may have no choice. But as long as Hamas' fighters and their leaders are still alive and they're able to move around very freely, even if they can't move all of their equipment or their infrastructure with them, as long as that network survives, Hamas does too. So I don't agree with you on that extent. I mean, at the end of the day, we have been systematically, again, I very much like that term, because I don't think we're doing things hurriedly. I think that we're trying to be very careful. We're trying to save lives. And it's so hard when you look at the depth and destruction that it comes out of the way that Hamas built its capabilities. They don't have endless capabilities, Ariel. They can't go on. They're already completely dismantled in the northern Gaza Strip. What they're trying to show right now is some kind of control. They have no control. Part of the humanitarian, a large part of this humanitarian disaster, is because we have dismantled Hamas and all they care about is themselves. And so it's like a freefall when it comes to the humanitarian aid that goes on and in, that Hamas are trying to take it to themselves. The humanitarian international organizations, they can't do anything. They're not going to fight against Hamas. But this is a kind of chaos, which is horrible, but it's part of their falling apart. So it's not just that they're not in command and they're not in control. We are absolutely hurting that. And it's more pressure right now, another day, another week, on these different capabilities. It's not just about at the end, one man standing alone and he's going to be the one who stands for Hamas. You go at it and we'll get there step by step. Thank you very much, Mary, for some hopeful words about the war ahead, even though we both know it's nowhere near over yet. Absolutely. We're going to turn back to Owen briefly because we mentioned Guterres and the United Nations invoking clause 99. I don't know, article 91, 99, but we didn't really get to go into the weeds discussing what this is really all about. I want to take the time now to do that because, as Mary mentioned, there's that humanitarian crisis that's growing in Gaza. The UN demanding the war end to avert the crisis, but the war can't end as long as Hamas is on the table. Well, from Antonio Guterres's perspective, that's not the objective. The objective is the humanitarian situation in Gaza itself. Look, on one hand, this is a big deal. He invokes this article for the first time, as you mentioned, maybe in decades, after not having evoked it. For example, saying this is a threat to international peace and security. He didn't do this during the war in Ukraine, during the height of the war in Ukraine at the beginning of 2022, which is actually a much bigger threat to international peace and security. So in that sense, this is a big deal. On the other hand, if you actually look at the letter that Guterres sent to the president of the Security Council, from Israel's perspective, it's not actually all that bad. He comes out, he condemns October 7th squarely, maybe as forcefully or more forcefully than he's ever done. And then just goes out and lays out the facts of what's going on in the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and simply asks the Security Council to step in. And from his perspective, I have a quote, humanitarian ceasefire. All right, this is much more about what Guterres said in the past than what he's saying in the present. He said that the events of October 7th did not happen in a vacuum, okay? That the rapes, that the mutilation, that the murder, that the kidnapping did not happen in a vacuum. Once you say that, unless you are going to get down to your knees and literally lick the shoes of the Israeli ambassador, your relationship with Israel and with the Israeli public is over. You are persona non grata forever, forever. And it doesn't matter what you do from that point going forward, your relationship with Israel is over. Had Guterres not taken that step, I don't think that the Israeli foreign minister and the Israeli government would have reacted the way they have to this step. This step on its own, in one sense you're right, is unusual. But on the other hand, is not something that I think would provoke such a strong reaction. It's provoking a strong reaction because of what Guterres said and did and what that has meant for his relationship with the Israeli government and with the Israeli public. Absolutely. And also adding to that fact that it was not invoked, as you said in Ukraine. It was not invoked with the Islamic State crisis. It was not invoked at the Syrian civil war and so many others. But even so, it wouldn't have provoked this reaction had Guterres not made that comment in the past. Now, the guy has undermined his credibility here in Israel. As you mentioned, the question is the rest of the world, but we're going to find out in the weeks ahead. Now, we are going to turn our attention to the United States. Public shame has forced the University of Pennsylvania to review and revise its policies on harassment after University President Liz McGill faced backlash for refusing to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment of Jewish students on campus. At congressional hearing, McGill tried to frame escalating calls for genocide at her university as a free speech issue. In recent weeks, viral videos show Pro Hamas students marching around University of Pennsylvania chanting, quote, there is only one solution and calling for Jewish genocide. Following the congressional hearing, the president of Harvard University also released a statement saying that people have misunderstood her widely panned remarks that the university will act on calls to genocide only if students act on those calls. A statement that raised eyebrows at the hearing with University President Claudine Gay now saying calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community or any religious or ethnic group are vile. They have no place at Harvard and those who threaten Jewish students will be held to account. Jewish students have said they feel unsafe on campus and noted a level of hypocrisy in university codes of conduct that protect some races, but not others. In that moment, I was focused on our university's longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been. The irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple. For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn's policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today's world, where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated. Penn must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies, and Provost Jackson and I will immediately convene a process to do so. And we're back in studio with Owen Ultiman. I know yesterday we stressed at length the free speech issue. I don't think this is a free speech issue. It is a rank hypocrisy in the codes of conduct issue because Harvard University itself expelled students for singing rap lyrics on campus saying the student was racist. Yet at the same time, a call for genocide is something contextual. I think that might have been a much more accurate way to go after this than trying to frame it at least in Congress as free speech. That is the strongest argument by far against these presidents, that they're applying their rules inconsistently, that their attitudes toward free expression are different in one case than they are in the other. This is the strongest argument against those presidents. That said, Arielle, I fear that in this case, the pro-Israel movement in the American Jewish community are going to win a battle, albeit an important battle, but potentially start a devastating war. The organization FIRE that fights for free expression, particularly on the international university campuses, exactly, put out a tweet on this after the hearing and spoke about how its founder in the 19, gave an example from the 1970s in Britain. When Zionist groups and campuses in Britain called for codes against racist speech, they got it. And then afterwards, Zionism itself was defined as racism and their own speech was restricted. One can easily, broadly speaking, see similar kinds of scenarios play out in the United States. So I fear that the Jewish community is going to win the battle and start a devastating war. It seems that if there are going to be codes, though, they should be enforced universally. If not, though, Harvard seems unable to, and these other universities, hiding behind the banner of universal rights doesn't really work out. But as you're saying yourself, this has potential for a much greater damage in the longer run. That said, thank you very much for explaining it. We are out of time, but we will see you again in just a half hour. Until then, thanks for watching. New 24 News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. A short while ago, air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. In the south, the IDF said troops have surrounded the city of Kanyunas in the southern Gaza Strip and are operating in its center. The military said the 98th division broke through the defenses Hamas's Kanyunas brigade encircled the city and began to maneuver deeper inside. The IDF has unfortunately had to announce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza, which brings the soldiers total up to 85 slain in the ground operation since October. Staff Sergeant Amit Bonzo and Staff Sergeant Alemnu Emanueva-Feleke. The prime minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the southern Gaza region. The cabinet said the amount allowed will be the minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister accused the United Nations Secretary of General Atanio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres's letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and Guterres's invocation of a rare clause in the United Nations Charter that urges the Security Council intervention, Article 99, allows the Secretary of General to bring to the Council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. It's not been used since 1989. In addition to this, Rear Admiral Daniel Higari has remarked on the latest developments on the ground. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground. He is underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible, but in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment, the Shin Bet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. And we are going to open on the northern front where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the Lebanon borders. Never mind, we're having a connection issue. So instead, we are going to get the latest developments on the southern front from Colonel Mary Eisen, Director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichmann University. Mary, walk us through the latest developments that we're hearing Hanunis now, not just in circle, but troops moving deeper and deeper within. As we look at it right now, Arielle, I think that people also want to be looking at a map to kind of understand. In the first, because we're already two months into this war and in the first two months, everybody was very focused on the northern Gaza Strip, but Israel has consistently been attacking different, the IDF has been attacking different targets inside the southern Gaza Strip and especially the city of Hanunis. Hanunis is a city, it's a large city, probably up to a half a million people in that sense that is on the southern side and it is the heart, if I can call it in that way, of the Hamas leadership and especially of Yahya Sinwar. Yahya Sinwar, who is both the military commander and the sovereign of his own, inside the Gaza Strip and he has been so for many years, he comes from Hanunis, his house is in Hanunis, and in these last few days, the IDF went into the center of again this urban populated area to both surround his physical civilian house, when it's clear cut that he and the other military commanders are hiding underground in those underground subterranean tunnel systems. So the IDF is doing a similar but different type of activity, as you can see, going into the urban area where they have the anti-tank positions, the sniper positions, the RPG positions, going on and in attacking and opening and finding the entrance into the shafts that go underground into that subterranean arena. And as we see in that sense, looking from the north to the south, the IDF has continued its action in the north, closing in on the two different neighborhoods that were the last ones to be taken care of before the pause and are now being systematically cleared of weaponry and up north, they found the largest cache of weapons until now, an enormous cache of weapons that was found of hundreds of rockets that because of that have not been fired at Israel. And in that sense, that's a very, it's an example of the systematic way that we're going through in the Gaza Strip right now. That systematic way underscores that the IDF is not underestimating the enemy anymore. But there are some reports coming out over the last 24 hours that shows the scope to which not just the IDF but also the political establishment massively underestimated the enemy in the lead up to October's end. New report from the Washington Post showing that Hamas even gave intel on the Palestinian Islamic jihad to take the focus off of them using them as a scapegoat. How deep did this deception go and how did it manage to fool the entirety of the Israeli establishment? It's not just about pooling in that sense is when you're doing a deception type of mode, the underestimation was overall and we all understand that, but it was immediately understood on October 7th. That underestimation means that Hamas did not only deceive what they were doing is they were doing two things at the same time. That's exactly the challenge with this type of hybrid terror organization. It's a social movement. It was governing over the Gaza Strip that it took over violently from 2007. So it was talking to other mediators on bettering the situation inside the Gaza Strip, on giving jobs inside the Gaza Strip. And there's no question that in hindsight they highlighted Palestinian Islamic jihad Israel was targeting both, but we stopped doing it against Hamas because we totally erroneously thought that perhaps Hamas would be doing something else for the people of the Gaza Strip. And in this sense, Ariel, because we were so wrong, it's one of those things that you want to say you can't do anything now, but you learn your mistake. And the synonymous cache of weapons is where both Palestinian Islamic jihad and Hamas have been investing in these last few years. I don't think the Palestinian Islamic jihad agreed to being the one that the focus would be on. This is part of a greater deception. You learn your lessons from that and you go forward. But we're continuing to act against Hamas now. In that sense, the way that they deceived is only bringing about their own utter destruction systematically step by step in the Gaza Strip. We're not allowing them to keep these cache of weapons. We're not allowing them to use them against Israel. We're not allowing them to keep that subterranean arena. That deception is going to bring their destruction. Well, stay with us on the line because we're going to be discussing this and so much more briefly. But first, we are going to turn our attention to the northern border, but we have reestablished our connection with our correspondent, Zach. And there's Zach. It's good to have you with us. Walk us through what the latest developments are on the northern front. Continued IDF strikes at positions, Hezbollah positions that the IDF says were the points of origin of fire from overnight. There were seven attacks that Hezbollah took credit for yesterday, but the big news was Defense Minister Galant visiting with the mayors and heads of council here on the border and discussing what is the future for the communities here on the north. The many of the leaders want to know when they can come and the people in the communities can come back after this evacuation notice will be lifted. The word from Galant was that they will not allow there to be a lifted evacuation order until the reality, the security situation changes to reflect that of the 1701 agreement, which is the agreement that comes after the 2006 Lebanon War, which essentially says to Hezbollah that their forces have to be north of the Latani River. No Hezbollah operatives south of the river between the river and the border that has been ignored, disregarded entirely for over a decade. But Galant saying for there to be a solid security situation here to lift the evacuation orders that they will need to make sure that the Hezbollah is pushed back beyond the river. So the question then becomes, does that involve offensive capabilities? Are you going to need to apply immense international pressure to get Hezbollah to get Iran to abide by this agreement? It's too early to say, but for the people that live here, it will be quite some time. It looks like for the evacuation is lifted and they're able to return to their homes. Well, thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the north. We are going to expand on that with a new development. We're seeing Israeli reports saying Israel, the United States and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. That's a deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli officials told local media that one such stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently north of the Latani River in compliance with that UN resolution 1701. That Lebanon and UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. That was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese army. Israel says that should diplomacy fail, though, Hezbollah must be forced to retreat on the battlefield. Currently 70,000 Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to that of October 7th. Now, to break this down further, we still have Mary Eisen on the line and we are also joined in studio by our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Altman. I want to open with you, Owen. This discussion that this potential agreement, what is Lebanon's position on this? Is this something they are actually willing or willful about? Well, look, I mean, obviously the agreement to denote Israel's border with Lebanon, the Lebanese government's going to have to be involved, Ariel. It is at least strictly speaking their country, even if as you're right, they don't necessarily have effective control over the south. When you look at Hezbollah's power and the actual balance of power on the ground. Look, at the end of the day, I think this is a stalling tactic from Israel's perspective, right? What are the odds that even over the medium term, Hezbollah is actually going to have an interest in respecting the decisions along that border when their interest is exactly the opposite, trying to invent disputes along that border as a pretense and as a basis for what they call resistance to Israel, right? And the diplomatic efforts to push them beyond the Latani River, we've been there before. You mentioned 1701, the latest in a long stream of agreements that have been meant to push forces hostile to Israel beyond that river. Again, what are the odds that Hezbollah over the medium term in practice respects the agreement. In practice and in full respects the agreement, I don't think many people have much faith in Hezbollah doing that or frankly see Hezbollah having much of an interest in doing that. But this is a game that I think Israel wants to play to do what it can to convince the residents of those northern border communities to go home and to at least stall and postpone a conflict with Hezbollah because everyone understands how costly that would be. So this may be the best of bad options for the Israeli government, but let's not dilute ourselves into thinking it's anything more. I want to turn back to Mary because as our correspondent as Owen just said, Mary, obviously Hezbollah has zero interest in that sort of agreement. So if there is any agreement at all, does it still fall to Israel and only Israel to enforce 1701 and push Hezbollah back beyond the Latani River? So as I agree with everything that Owen was saying, Owen the amazing senior diplomatic correspondent, Owen, you didn't talk about all of the other players. France really wants an agreement inside Lebanon. The United States wants an agreement. France is focused on Lebanon. The United States is very focused on that connection of Hezbollah to Iran. When we're talking about 1701, that is the United Nations Resolution Security Council, United Nations Force. When we take the step back and look at Lebanon Hezbollah, I take a step back and I see France and I go further and I see Iran. I think when we're looking at that kind of thing, there's two different issues. There's the one which has to do with one of the Israelis is going to go back and live there. My friends who have not been in their homes for almost two months because it's too dangerous because Hezbollah is firing into Israel. People around the world do not understand. This is not a Lebanese conflict. Hezbollah is firing into communities, into Israel every single day, including right now as we're talking this morning. But when it comes to what happens on the Lebanese side, those additional players, not just the United Nations, but France and then behind Hezbollah Iran, what kind of pressure do you bring out there? And it isn't an easy situation. You can't just ignore the international community, certainly not right now. I think that Israel has an interest to try to see the two different arenas, Hamas and Hezbollah as interconnected and the international community wants to diffuse the northern one. I don't know how you solve this unmathematical equation. We cannot go back to our borders when there are these two hybrid terror organizations, Hamas in the south, Hezbollah inside Lebanon. We can't go back to our communities when they exist with their military capabilities there. How do you get those military capabilities out? I'm not going to discount the idea that international pressure on Lebanon, on Hezbollah, on Iran may do a difference. Well, stay with us so that we can discuss this further. But first, we do want to turn to the southern border where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by. Pierre, walk us to the latest developments we're seeing on the south. Well, we know from the IDF that there are three focal points in the fighting. The same as yesterday by the way, the Hezbollah refugee camp on the north of Gaza City, southeast of Gaza City in the Shejaya neighborhood and in Hanyouness in the central sector of the Gaza Strip and surrounding refugee camps in that sector. Three focal points, but the IDF says that it has managed to breach all the lines of defense of Hamas in these three regions. That means that fighting, close combat fighting is occurring in Jebalia, in Shejaya, as well as in the heart of Hanyouness. All those places have been encircled, so the fighting is within and without those places. And in addition, the ground offensive is supported both by artillery and by aircraft fire and bombardments. The air here in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip is breezing with the muffled sound of artillery shells and aircraft bombing. We hear it clearly, although we don't see much right now in the particular sector in which we are facing, but the offensive is in one word, simply deepening. Well, thank you very much Pierre for that report from the south. I'm going to turn back to Mary just to look at the situation in Gaza again. We were speaking before about the deployments around Hanyouness. We're seeing the IDF move deeper and deeper into Hamas's last major stronghold. What is going to be left in Gaza after Hanyouness? That's a really big question, which is very challenging to answer. So as a Hamas stronghold, only the area of Rafa, which is on the Egyptian border, which is pretty much where, again, we're talking about 2.2 million people, as everybody has already said, there's 80% displacement in the Gaza Strip and where they've gone to, they went south, Hanyouness, they're now going more towards the seashore and towards Rafa. But in Arielle, in this case, it's not about conquering the different areas. It's about destroying the leadership, destroying the command and control, capturing the bulk of the capabilities. And in that sense, you will be destroying that military capability that we talk about. I think the focal point will be the leadership itself. And if they go into Rafa, in that sense, as I say, at the heart of the different areas, it means we'll be able to get maybe to more hostages. So I don't think it's about the land and about conquering more places. It's much more about destroying the capabilities, the command and control, which you do in Hanyouness, you do in the northern Gaza Strip, you do in the subterranean arena. And you try through that, pressuring them into getting to a breaking point where they negotiate for the hostages. They're not willing to, again, from my point of view, they stand up and come out with a white flag. If I don't expect them to do that, I need to get to them. And the way to do that is through this military pressure. Right now, hard to see us really going militarily, physically into Rafa, but we may have no choice. But as long as Hamas' fighters and their leaders are still alive and they're able to move around very freely, even if they can't move all of their equipment or their infrastructure with them, as long as that network survives, Hamas does too. So I don't agree with you on that extent. I mean, at the end of the day, we have, and systematically, again, I very much like that term because I don't think we're doing things hurriedly. I think that we're trying to be very careful. We're trying to save lives. And it's so hard when you look at the both death and destruction that it comes out of the way that Hamas built its capabilities. They don't have endless capabilities, Ariel. They can't go on. They're already completely dismantled in the northern Gaza Strip. What they're trying to show right now is some kind of control. They have no control. Part of the humanitarian, a large part of this humanitarian disaster, is because we have dismantled Hamas and all they care about is themselves. And so it's like a free-for-all when it comes to the humanitarian aid that goes on and in, that Hamas are trying to take it to themselves. The humanitarian international organizations, they can't do anything. They're not going to fight against Hamas. But this is a kind of chaos, which is horrible, but it's part of their falling apart. So it's not just that they're not in command and they're not in control. We are absolutely hurting them. And it's more pressure right now, another day, another week, on these different capabilities. It's not just about at the end one man standing alone and he's going to be the one who stands for Hamas. You go at it and we'll get there step by step. Well, thank you very much, Mary, for some hopeful words about the warhead, even though we both know it's nowhere near over yet. Absolutely. We're going to turn back to Owen briefly because what we mentioned, Guterres and the United Nations invoking clause 99, I don't know, Article 91, 99, but we didn't really get to go into the weeds discussing what this is really all about. I want to take the time now to do that because, as Mary mentioned, there's that humanitarian crisis that's brewing in Gaza. The UN demanding the war end to avert the crisis, but the war can't end as long as Hamas is on the table. Well, from Antonio Guterres' perspective, that's not the objective. The objective is the humanitarian situation in Gaza itself. Look, on one hand, this is a big deal. He invokes this article for the first time, as you mentioned, maybe in decades after not having evoked it. For example, saying that this is a threat to international peace and security. He didn't do this during the war in Ukraine, during the height of the war in Ukraine at the beginning of 2022, which is actually a much bigger threat to international peace and security. So in that sense, this is a big deal. On the other hand, if you actually look at the letter that Guterres sent to the president of the Security Council, from Israel's perspective, it's not actually all that bad. He comes out, he condemns October 7th squarely, maybe as forcefully or more forcefully than he's ever done. And then just goes out and lays out the facts of what's going on in the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and simply asks the Security Council to step in and from his perspective have a quote, humanitarian ceasefire. This is much more about what Guterres said in the past than what he's saying in the present. He said that the events of October 7th did not happen in a vacuum, okay? That the rapes, that the mutilation, that the murder, that the kidnapping did not happen in a vacuum. Once you say that, unless you are going to get down to your knees and literally lick the shoes of the Israeli ambassador, your relationship with Israel and with the Israeli public is over. You are persona non grata forever, forever. And it doesn't matter what you do from that point going forward, your relationship with Israel is over. Had Guterres not taken that step, I don't think that the Israeli foreign minister and the Israeli government would have reacted the way they have to this step. This step on its own in one sense you're right is unusual, but on the other hand is not something that I think would provoke such a strong reaction. It's provoking a strong reaction because of what Guterres said and did and what that has meant for his relationship with the Israeli government and with the Israeli public. Absolutely, and also adding to that fact that it was not invoked as you said in Ukraine. It was not invoked with the Islamic State crisis. It was not invoked at the Syrian civil war and so many others. But even so it wouldn't have provoked this reaction had Guterres not made that comment in the past. Well, the guy has undermined his credibility here in Israel. As you mentioned, the question is the rest of the world, but we're going to find out in the weeks ahead. Now we are going to turn our attention to the United States. Public shame has forced the University of Pennsylvania to review and revise its policies on harassment after University President Liz McGill faced backlash for refusing to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment of Jewish students on campus. At a congressional hearing, McGill tried to frame escalating calls for genocide at her university as a free speech issue. In recent weeks, viral videos show pro-Hamas students marching around University of Pennsylvania chanting quotes, there is only one solution and calling for Jewish genocide. Following the congressional hearing, the president of Harvard University also released a statement saying that people have misunderstood her widely panned remarks that the university will act on calls to genocide only if students act on those calls. A statement that raised eyebrows at the hearing with university president Claudine Gay now saying calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community or any religious or ethnic group are vile. They have no place at Harvard and those who threaten Jewish students will be held to account. Jewish students have said they feel unsafe on campus and noted a level of hypocrisy in university codes of conduct that protect some races but not others. In that moment, I was focused on our university's long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been. The irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple. For decades, under multiple pan presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn's policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today's world, where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated. Penn must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies, and Provost Jackson and I will immediately convene a process to do so. And we're back in studio with Owen Altman. I know yesterday we stressed at length the free speech issue. I don't think this is a free speech issue. It is a rank hypocrisy in the codes of conduct issue because Harvard University itself expelled students for singing rap lyrics on campus saying the student was racist. Yet at the same time, a call for genocide is something contextual. I think that might have been a much more accurate way to go after this than trying to frame it at least in Congress as free speech. That is the strongest argument by far against these presidents, that they're applying their rules inconsistently, that their attitudes toward free expression are different in one case than they are in the other. This is the strongest argument against those presidents. That said, Arielle, I fear that in this case, the pro-Israel movement and the American Jewish community are going to win a battle, albeit an important battle, but potentially start a devastating war. The organization FIRE that fights for free expression, particularly on the international university campuses, exactly, put out a tweet on this after the hearing and spoke about how its founder in the 19, gave an example from the 1970s in Britain. When Zionist groups and campuses in Britain called for codes against racist speech, they got it. And then afterwards, Zionism itself was defined as racism and their own speech was restricted. One can easily, broadly speaking, see similar kinds of scenarios play out in the United States. So I fear that the Jewish community is going to win the battle and start a devastating war. It seems that if there are going to be codes, though, they should be enforced universally. If not, though, Harvard seems unable to, and these other universities hiding behind the banner of universal rights doesn't really work out. But as you're saying yourself, this has potential for a much greater damage in the longer run. That said, thank you very much for explaining it. We are out of time, but we will see you again in just a half hour. Until then, thanks for watching. Before news is ongoing, coverage of Israel at war. A while ago, air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. And in the south, the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Chanyunas in the southern Gaza Strip and are operating now in its center. The military said the 98th Division broke through the defenses of Hamas's Chanyunas Brigade, encircled the city and began to maneuver inside. The IDF has announced the death of two more soldiers killed during fighting in Gaza. That brings the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive to 85. Staff Sergeant Amit Banzal and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emmanuel Faleke. The Prime Minister's office has reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of Gaza. The cabinet said this amount will be the minimum fuel possible. Israel's Foreign Minister has accused the nation's Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres's letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and Guterres's invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter to urge Security Council intervention. This article 99 allows the Secretary General to bring all the Council's attention to any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security, but it's not been used since 1989. Rear Admiral Daniel Gary has remarked on the latest ground developments. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground. He is underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible, but in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment, the Sinbet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. And we now go live to the south where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by just outside the border town of Styro. Pierre, walk us through the latest developments. We're hearing that IDF troops are moving further and deeper into Hanunis now. Right. I mean, the IDF has broken the lines of defense of the Jibalia refugee camp where the Central Battalion of Jibalia is fighting harsh battles against the IDF in close range. There are many casualties amongst the Hamas terrorists. The IDF in Jibalia took over an outpost with a network of tunnels underneath it, a training ground, weapon storages, and the ground offensive in Jibalia is assisted with air support, navy support, and artillery support. At the same time, the harshest battles probably in Shejaia on the southeast outskirts of Gaza city, also with air support, navy, and artillery support. The Israeli media reports that 200 terrorists have been killed in Jibalia in Shejaia during 50 close range clashes. A clash can be, for instance, a terrorist coming out of a shaft of a tunnel firing an RPG rocket at close range on Israeli soldiers. That's the kind of clashes that you get in Shejaia. In Hanunis also lines of defense broken city and circled fighting at the heart of the city with aerial artillery and navy support, also dozens of infrastructural sites discovered, also destroyed, and harsh battles as well in close range. That's about the situation now. The Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas is also reporting that there are strikes on east of the city of Rafar in the southern sector of the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt, as well as in the central refugee camps such as in Nusrat. There are also aerial strikes there. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for that report from the south showing us the latest on what's going on in the war in Gaza. We turn now to the former deputy head of assessment with the IDF, Jack Neria, Colonel Jack Neria. Thank you very much for being here with us. One of the things that struck me since the end of the temporary ceasefire was the speed by which Israel has advanced in Gaza. Remember the first stages of the war where it took weeks of air bombardment before the troops moved in and then weeks of grinding on the ground in the north of Gaza city to make these advances. Now in the space of less than a week, just days, it seems that Hanyunas is almost ready to fall. What accounts for the speed? Well, first of all, the first of all, there's the issue of timing. We are limited in time because, as the Americans say, we have maximum till January. We don't know if it's the beginning of January and of January, so we have to rush. This is one thing that we didn't have at the beginning. And then now that Hanyunas is invested and we are inside the Hanyunas, the grinding machine will begin to work. And we will just advance steadily until we finish the bastion, the fortifications of Hamas there, over the ground, under the ground. And I think that it's a matter now of time. And the time is of essence. And right now, it's on our side. What is left to do in the Hanyunas area is to take over the border with Egypt, what we call the Philadelphia axis. And this is the axis that commands the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, and from which hundreds of tunnels were dug and brought into Gaza from Sinai, equipment, weapons, ammunition, and even merchandise. And there are some tunnels that are the kind of huge tunnels that you can go inside with the car. And sometimes with trucks. So this is what we're talking about. Now, concerning the advance of Israeli troops, we are surprising every time, every time we're taking by surprise our enemy, because at the beginning, he thought that we wouldn't go into Gaza. So we went into Gaza. Then he said, we wouldn't take the Gaza city. We took Gaza city. And then he said, no, Gaza city and the north part are in the north. So the Hanyunas is very far in the south. Again, and we send there the 98th division, which is specific divisions that know that has been trained for rural warfare. And this is the state of affairs right now. As I say, totally, I mean, the Israeli army is in Gaza, is fighting the last hours with the Jabalia and the Unchargeried refugee camps. I mean, they are called refugee camps, but in fact, there are no more refugee camps since 1948 anyway. They're fortified neighborhoods. Yeah, the neighborhoods. So they have a nickname called the refugee camp. Anyway, there, I mean, the last remnants of Hamas battalions are going to be eliminated. Thus, I mean, we will be shifting all what is left from the north towards the south and in order to accelerate the clashes with Hamas. And I think we would finally, and we know that the battalions that protect Hanyunas are less capable than those who are fighting Israel in the northern part of Gaza. So when do they get desperate? When does the enemy start really losing? Well, I have always in mind the idea that, I mean, since there are, in fact, we are making, we are fighting jihadists. And jihadists have only one issue is to become martyrs. So, I mean, the possibility of surrendering is very slim. It's very slim. And we have to get accustomed to the idea that we might be faced to a situation like the allied in Iraq, faced in Mosul. So this is, I mean, fighting to the end. And we're going to continue this discussion in a brief moment. But first, I want to turn our attention to the northern front as well. Our correspondent, Zach Anders, is standing by on the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through the latest developments on the northern front. Yeah, the six o'clock hour saw another red alert here in Margaloat, the community just above in the hills of Kiret Sharmona. This was another day of seeing the IDF strike, these retaliatory strikes at positions that are targeting the points of origin from where the Hezbollah fighters are launching some of these mortars, these ATGMs, the anti-tank guided missiles overnight. We heard the outgoing artillery consistently throughout the late early morning hours targeting these positions. Hezbollah took credit for seven, seven attacks yesterday. That's a significant number. Have we seen any statements in Lebanese media or statements from Hezbollah about where they see the war in Gaza and whether or not they are going to commit the bulk of their forces anytime soon? And you can answer that in two parts with Nasrallah statements and then the general mood or atmosphere within the general public in Lebanon. Nasrallah statements, of course, is a continuation of that high level rhetoric saying that we will continue to fight here on the northern border until the Gaza is liberated in his own words. But within the public of Lebanon, you have to remember how diverse this country is, how diverse a city like Beirut is with many religious factions, the Christian factions don't necessarily want to be involved from what I'm hearing from a source, a close source, that covers Lebanese politics. They don't want to be involved in the fighting or the potential that this drags them into the wider conflict. So there is not necessarily an appetite for this level of fighting on the southern border. Yesterday's comments from Defense Minister Galant about what the security situation will need to be here in the future was something that we'll have to wait and see how Hezbollah reacts because his comments are some of the strongest we've seen since the start of the war that Hezbollah will need to retreat beyond the Lattani River and honor the 1701 agreement, this internationally recognized agreement that there will be no Hezbollah fighters below this river creating a buffer zone between the river and the border itself. So that has yet to be seen how Hezbollah reacts to this statement. And again, their fighting has been limited, you could say, to these exchanges with rockets and mortars that are happening at a distance. There hasn't been full-fledged, full-scale ground incursions with units, divisions fighting one another on the ground. Well, Zach, thank you very much for that report from the north. We're going to go a little bit deeper into that now because there are some new Israeli reports that say Israel, the United States, and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position, a deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli officials have told local media that one stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently north of the Lattani River in compliance with the UN resolution 1701, that Lebanon and UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. That was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese military. Israel does say though that if diplomacy fails, Hezbollah will be forced to retreat on the battlefield. Remember there are 70,000 Israelis that have been displaced from the northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to October 7th. We're going to return to the studio with Colonel Jack Neria on this one. We see this potential deal being discussed. One, is this realistic because Hezbollah has no interest in this deal and they're still going to be forced to retreat. Is that going to all be on Israel's hands? You're so right that Hezbollah has no interest at all with this deal. Moreover, 1701 that we keep on talking about stipulates the elimination of all militias in Lebanon, which is, I mean, not the case for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not going to commit suicide today. And certainly as a tool of Iran, of Iran policy in the area, Hezbollah will try to keep, I mean, to honor its commitment to Iran. So the Hezbollah commitment is not towards Lebanon. It's towards Iran. And Iran has a different policy. Iran directs Hezbollah in areas they want them to be active. Right now, the situation is they have created a wall of attrition between us and Hezbollah. And Hezbollah can claim all over the Arab world that he has first blocked lots of units of the Israeli army instead of being directed together. They are in the northern part. 70,000 people, as you said, have been evacuated. This is a first since 1948. Nothing of the sort happened. And the actual border is inflamed. And the flare-up is going on day after day. Now, there's this idea of border rectifications. We are talking of 13 points that Hezbollah claims that have been taken by Israel illegally. And I don't think that Netanyahu's government is going to lean and accept this situation or this rectifications, because he was so much against what happened in Karish, the maritime border. So I don't think that this is going to be acceptable to Israel. Whatever that what's happening is, if you concentrate on the Lebanese press, you will see that they are talking about diplomacy, lots of diplomacy between Iran and the United States. And finally, by trying to convince Hezbollah to withdraw to the Lehtani River, which is not going to happen. In fact, in my view, at the end of the day, there will be a military confrontation between us and Hezbollah. And the result of it will definitely define if Hezbollah will be deployed beyond the Lehtani River or will remain on the border with Israel. And I hope that the first option will be the one that was drawing from the border to the Lehtani River. And we're going to bring another voice into this, because we are talking about ultimately the international community here. So we are joined now by Professor Eitan Gilboa, the head of the Center for International Communication at Bar Ilan University. Professor Gilboa, you heard the discussion that we were just having here about this international deal with the United States, Israel and Lebanon. How much power does the United States have? How much influence does it have when we're looking at the Lebanese arena to really get them to come to an agreement? Because they still have Hezbollah in their backyard, which is stronger than their government. Yes, this is true. But given the American success in achieving an agreement between Israel and Lebanon on the oil offshore, Israeli Lebanese, really, it seems that Amos Hoshtein, who was the American representative to the talks, has connections and has ability to influence the government of Lebanon to avoid the kind of destruction we have seen so far in Gaza. And so the government of Lebanon will have to deal with Hezbollah. There is a 50-50 chance of being able to implement United Nations Resolution 1701, which at the time, back in 2006, Hezbollah was represented in that government which approved of that decision. So it's a question of implementation rather than anything else. The choice would be either you do it in diplomacy and agreement or you would have to face Israeli force. Now, Etan, as long as we're on the topic of the United States, we were talking for weeks now about American pressure on Israel, pressure to end the war. And this has largely been understood as it's an election year and the Democratic voter base is not for this war. That said, there's been a new poll in the US press that shows Biden's approval rating on the war has actually gone up from 50 to 57%, largely because of his response to this war. Does that give Israel more operational freedom? And what does it say about the Democratic party? So, yes, there are two groups in the Democratic party which have opposed Biden's support for Israel during the war. One is the so-called progressives. The other group is the Muslims who said they would not vote for Biden. It doesn't make any sense because not voting for Biden would be a Republican who would be much tougher on Muslims in the United States. I think Biden has a problem probably more of his age and economic policies rather than his support for Israel on the war. However, when the Secretary of State, Tony Lincoln was here just about a week ago, he asked Israeli World Cabinet how long it would take to end the war. The answer was a few months. He said, you don't have a few months, you have a few weeks. And I think that this is related to a fear, American fear of Israel's losing international legitimacy for doing the war, for conducting the war, as well as domestic considerations because the presidential primaries are going to start soon. And Biden would have liked to see the war ending by the beginning of the primary season. Now, stay with us for a moment because we're going to bring another aspect of this in. We mentioned the progressive wing as the heaviest critics of Israel in the United States right now. Nowhere is that more apparent than on American universities. Public shame has now forced the University of Pennsylvania to review and to revise its policies on harassment after University President Liz McGill faced backlash refusing to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment of Jewish students on campus. This at a congressional hearing where McGill tried to frame escalating calls for genocide at her university as a free speech issue. In recent weeks, viral videos show pro-Hamas students marching around the University of Pennsylvania chanting, there is only one solution and calling for Jewish genocide. Following this congressional hearing, the president of Harvard University also released a statement saying that people have misunderstood her widely panned remarks that the university will act on calls for genocide if the students act on those calls. A statement that raised eyebrows at the hearing and beyond. Now, University President Claudine Gaye calls that saying that calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community or any religious or ethnic group are vile and have no place at Harvard and those that threaten Jewish students will be held to account. Jewish students say they feel unsafe on campus and Congress noted a level of hypocrisy in university codes of conduct that protect some races but not others. In that moment, I was focused on our university's long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been. The irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple. For decades under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn's policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today's world where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated. Penn must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies and Provost Jackson and I will immediately convene a process to do so. These universities and their radicalism have become very much the heart of the modern progressive movement. Eitan, can this movement, because remember these students, they vote and they do largely vote Democrat. Can they be safely ignored by the rest of the party and shunted aside or do they have to be reckoned with by the party itself? Well, they have to be reckoned by the party itself, but you just presented a clarification statement by the president of the University of Pennsylvania. Why she didn't say the same words at the hearing? Why the president of Harvard University was forced to issue a clarification of what she meant? The hearings were astonishing, embarrassment to university presidents. They are not supposed to speak like that. They were asked specifically if calling for genocide of Jewish people contradicts the rules and codes of universities and they have refused to answer these questions. I am a graduate of Harvard. I went to the same department, Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard went to. We had the same teachers. We have probably the same ideas. I have never heard anything like the kind of moral bankruptcy these elite universities have been demonstrating in the hearings as well as on the ground. And I think also the Democratic party will have to deal effectively with the so-called progressives. Whoever identifies or supports Hamas could not be progressive, could not be liberal because the values of liberalism are completely in contradiction with those of Hamas. And it's about time that universities not only talk, but also take actions against anti-Semitic professors, anti-Semitic organizations on campus like Students for Justice in Palestine or Jewish Voice for Peace, you know, nice titles, but they are completely anti-Semitic. I have been ahead of schools and departments. If I had an anti-Semitic professor, he would be fired in two minutes. And it's about time that universities take that kind of action. Aitana, as long as we're talking about U.S. Congress, I want to move to the Senate now and to the Republicans because they just shot down, this is largely because of their more right fringe group and Israeli aid bill that was linked to Ukraine. Similar question, does the Republican party have to reckon with its own rabble risers and firebrands? Yeah, I think this is also highly problematic. What is happening here, the Republicans would like to separate aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine. There are a number of congressmen and women who are against the free checks, so to speak, given to Ukraine. And so the president, Biden is insisting on a package deal. He wants aid to Israel to go hand in hand with aid to Ukraine. The Republicans do not want to give them, to approve of that. The Biden administration expected Netanyahu himself to work with Republicans and soften the position. So far it has not worked. And this is problematic because time is running out. Congress is about to go on the Christmas vacation. And I think that the Republicans will have to get the act together because this is not the first time presidents are presenting to Congress packages of aid, aid going to a number of countries. In the past, it has been always Israel with Egypt and other Arab countries. So I think that at this time, the Republicans will have to change their position rather than the president. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Etan, for your analysis of, well, everything that seems to be going wrong or going insane in America. Right. And I'm also going to thank you, Jack, for being in studio for the whole discussion and the military breakdown. For everyone else, though, we are just about out of time, but we will be back in only a half hour at our next broadcast, 10 o'clock local time. So until then, thank you very much for watching and stay tuned. We're going to be back with so much more and not that much time. News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin, air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. And in the south, the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Hanyunas in the southern Gaza strip and are operating now in its center. The military said the 98th division broke through the defenses of Hamas's Hanyunas Brigade encircled the city and began to maneuver deeper inside. The IDF has announced the death of two more soldiers killed during fighting in Gaza that brings the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive to 85. Staff Sergeant Amit Banzal and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emmanuel Faleke. The prime minister's office has reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of Gaza. The cabinet said this amount will be the minimum fuel possible. Israel's foreign minister has accused the nation's secretary general Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres's letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and Guterres's invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter to urge Security Council intervention. This article 99 allows the secretary general to bring all of the council's attention to any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security but it's not been used since 1989. Rear Admiral Daniel Gary has remarked on the latest ground developments. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground. He is underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible but in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment. The Shin Bet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. And we now go live to the south where our correspondent Pierre Kloschenler is standing by just outside the border town of Styro. Pierre, walk us through the latest developments. We're hearing that IDF troops are moving further and deeper into Hanunis now. Right, I mean the IDF has broken the lines of defense of the Jibalia refugee camp where the central battalion of Jibalia is fighting harsh battles against the IDF in close range. There are many casualties amongst the Hamas terrorists. The IDF in Jibalia to cover an outpost with a network of tunnels underneath it, a training ground, weapon storages and the ground offensive in Jibalia is assisted with air support, navy support and artillery support. At the same time, the harshest battles probably in Shejaya on the southeast outskirts of Gaza city also with air support, navy and artillery support. The Israeli media reports that 200 terrorists have been killed in Jibalia in Shejaya, 50 during 50 close range clashes. A clash can be for instance a terrorist coming out of a shaft of a tunnel firing an RPG rocket at close range on Israeli soldiers. That's the kind of clashes that you get in Shejaya. In Hanunis also lines of defense broken city and circled fighting at the heart of the city with aerial artillery and navy support. Also dozens of infrastructural sites discovered, also destroyed and harsh battles as well in close range. That's about the situation now. The Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas is also reporting that there are strikes on east of the city of Rafar in the southern sector of the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt as well as in the central refugee camps such as in Nusrat. There are also aerial strikes there. Well thank you very much Pierre for that report from the south showing us the latest on what's going on in the war in Gaza. We turn now to the former deputy head of assessment with the IDF, Jack Neria, Colonel Jack Neria. Thank you very much for being here with us. One of the things that struck me since the end of the temporary ceasefire was the speed by which Israel has advanced in Gaza. We remember the first stages of the war where it took weeks of air bombardment before the troops moved in and then weeks of grinding on the ground in the north of Gaza city to make these advances. Now in the space of less than a week just days it seems that Hanunis is almost ready to fall. What accounts for the speed? Well first of all there's the issue of timing. We are limited in time because as the Americans say we have maximum till January. We don't know if it's the beginning of January and of January so we have to rush. This is one thing that we didn't have at the beginning. And then now that Hanunis is invested and we are inside the Hanunis, the grinding machine will begin to work and we will just advance steadily until we finish the bastion and the fortifications of Hamas there are over the ground, under the ground. And I think that it's a matter now of time and the time is of essence. And right now it's on our side. What is left to do in the Hanunis area is to take over the border with Egypt what we call the Philadelphia axis. And this is the axis that commands the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip and from which hundreds of tunnels were dug and brought into Gaza from Sinai, equipment, weapons, ammunition and even merchandise. And there are some tunnels that are the kind of huge tunnels that you can go inside with the car and sometimes with trucks. So this is what we're talking about. Now concerning the advance of Israeli troops, we are surprising every time, every time we're taking by surprise our enemy, because at the beginning he thought that we wouldn't dare go into Gaza. So we went into Gaza. Then he said we wouldn't dare take the Gaza city, we took Gaza city. And then he said no, Gaza city and the north part are in the north. So the Hanunis is very far in the south again. And we send there the 98th division, which is specific divisions that has been trained for rural warfare. And this is the state of affairs right now. As I say, totally, I mean, the Israeli army is in Gaza, is fighting the last hours with the Jabalia and the Anshar-Jeyid refugee camps. I mean, they are called refugee camps, but in fact there are no more refugee camps since 1948. They're fortified neighborhoods. Yeah, they're neighborhoods. So they have a nickname called the refugee camp. Anyway, the remnants of Hamas battalions are going to be eliminated. Thus, I mean, we will be shifting all what is left from the north towards the south and in order to accelerate the clashes with Hamas. And we know that the battalions that protect Hanunis are less capable than those who are fighting Israel in the northern part of Gaza. So when do they get desperate? When does the enemy start really losing? Well, I have always in mind the idea that, I mean, since we are fighting jihadists, and jihadists have only one issue is to become martyrs. So I mean, the possibility of surrendering is very slim. It's very slim. And we have to get accustomed to the idea that we might be faced to a situation like the Allied in Iraq faced in Mosul. So this is, I mean, fighting to the end. And we're going to continue this discussion in a brief moment. But first, I want to turn our attention to the northern front as well. Our correspondent, Zach Anders, is standing by on the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through the latest developments on the northern front. Yeah, the six o'clock hour saw another red alert here in Margulot, the community just above in the hills of Kiryat Sharmona. This was another day of seeing the IDF strike, these retaliatory strikes at positions that are targeting the points of origin from where the Hezbollah fighters are launching some of these mortars, these ATGMs, the anti-tank guided missiles overnight. We heard the outgoing artillery consistently throughout the late early morning hours targeting these positions. Hezbollah took credit for seven, seven attacks yesterday. That's a significant number. Have we seen any statements in Lebanese media or statements from Hezbollah about where they see the war in Gaza and whether or not they are going to commit the bulk of their forces anytime soon? Yeah, and you can answer that in two parts with Nasrallah statements and then the general mood or atmosphere within the general public in Lebanon. Nasrallah statements, of course, is a continuation of that high-level rhetoric saying that we will continue to fight here on the northern border until the Gaza is liberated, in his own words. But within the public of Lebanon, you have to remember how diverse this country is, how diverse a city like Beirut is with many religious factions, the Christian factions don't necessarily want to be involved from what I'm hearing from a source, a close source, that covers Lebanese politics. They don't want to be involved in the fighting or the potential that this drags them into the wider conflict. So there is not necessarily an appetite for this level of fighting on the southern border. Yesterday's comments from Defense Minister Gellant about what the security situation will need to be here in the future was something that we'll have to wait and see how Hezbollah reacts because his comments are some of the strongest we've seen since the start of the war that Hezbollah will need to retreat beyond the Lattani River and honor the 1701 agreement, this internationally recognized agreement that there will be no Hezbollah fighters below this river creating a buffer zone between the river and the border itself. So that has yet to be seen how Hezbollah reacts to this statement. And again, their fighting has been limited, you could say, to these exchanges with rockets and mortars that are happening at a distance. There hasn't been full-fledged, full-scale ground incursions with units, divisions fighting one another on the ground. Zach, thank you very much for that report from the North. We're going to go a little bit deeper into that now because there are some new Israeli reports to say Israel, the United States, and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. A deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli officials have told local media that one stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently north of the Lattani River in compliance with the UN Resolution 1701 that Lebanon and US UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. That was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese military. Israel does say though that if diplomacy fails, Hezbollah will be forced to retreat on the battlefield. Remember there are 70,000 Israelis that have been displaced from the northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to October 7th. We're going to return to the studio with Colonel Jack Naria on this one. We see this potential deal being discussed. One, is this realistic because Hezbollah has no interest in this deal and they're still going to be forced to retreat? Is that going to all be on Israel's hands? You're so right that Hezbollah has no interest at all with this deal. And moreover, 1701 that we keep on talking about stipulates the elimination of all militias in Lebanon, which is not the case for Hezbollah. Hezbollah is not going to commit suicide today and certainly as a tool of Iran policy in the area, Hezbollah will try to honor its commitment to Iran. So the Hezbollah commitment is not towards Lebanon, it's towards Iran. And Iran has a different policy. Iran directs Hezbollah in areas they want them to be active. Right now, the situation is they have created a wall of attrition between us and Hezbollah. And Hezbollah can claim all over the Arab world that he has first blocked lots of units of the Israeli army instead of being directed together. They are in the northern part. 70,000 people, as you said, have been evacuated. This is a first since 1948. Nothing of the sort happened. And the actual border is inflamed. And the flare-up is going on day after day. Now, there's this idea of border rectifications. We are talking of 13 points that Hezbollah claims that have been taken by Israel illegally. And I don't think that Netanyahu's government is going to lean and accept this situation or this rectifications, because this is, he was so much against what happened in Karish in the maritime border, so I don't think that this is going to be acceptable to Israel. Whatever, what's happening is, if you concentrate on the Lebanese press, you will see that they are talking about diplomacy, lots of diplomacy between Iran and the United States. And finally, by trying to convince Hezbollah to withdraw to the Littani River, which is not going to happen. In fact, in my view, at the end of the day, there will be a military confrontation between us and Hezbollah. And the result of it will definitely define if Hezbollah will be deployed beyond the Littani River or will remain on the border with Israel. And I hope that the first option will be the one that was drawing from the border to the Littani River. And we're going to bring another voice into this because we are talking about, ultimately, the international community here. So we are joined now by Professor Eitan Gilboa, the head of the Center for International Communication at Bar Ilan University. Professor Gilboa, you heard the discussion that we were just having here about this international deal with the United States, Israel and Lebanon. How much power does the United States have? How much influence does it have when we're looking at the Lebanese arena to really get them to come to an agreement? Because they still have Hezbollah in their backyard, which is stronger than their government. Yes, this is true. But given the American success in achieving an agreement between Israel and Lebanon on the oil offshore, Israeli, Lebanese, really, it seems that Amos Hoshtein, who was the American representative to the talks, has connections and has ability to influence the government of Lebanon to avoid the kind of destruction we have seen so far in Gaza. And so the government of Lebanon will have to deal with Hezbollah. There is a 50-50 chance of being able to implement United Nations Resolution 1701, which at the time, back in 2006, Hezbollah was represented in that government, which approved of that decision. So it's a question of implementation rather than anything else. The choice would be either you do it in diplomacy and agreement, or you will have to face Israeli force. Now, Etan, as long as we're on the topic of the United States, we were talking for weeks now about American pressure on Israel, pressure to end the war. And this has largely been understood as it's an election year and the Democratic voter base is not for this war. That said, there's been a new poll in the US press that shows Biden's approval rating on the war has actually gone up from 50% to 57%, largely because of his response to this war. Does that give Israel more operational freedom? And what does it say about the Democratic Party? So yes, there are two groups in the Democratic Party which have opposed Biden's support for Israel during the war. One is the so-called progressives. Progressives and the other group is the Muslims who said they would not vote for Biden. Doesn't make any sense because not voting for Biden would be a Republican who would be much tougher on Muslims in the United States. I think Biden has a problem probably more of his age and economic policies rather than his support for Israel on the war. However, when the Secretary of State, Tony Lincoln was here just about a week ago, he asked Israeli World Cabinet how long it would take to end the war. The answer was a few months. He said you don't have a few months, you have a few weeks. And I think that this is related to a fear, American fear of Israel's losing international legitimacy for doing the war, for conducting the war, as well as domestic considerations because the presidential primaries are going to start soon. And Biden would have liked to see the war ending by the beginning of the primary season. Now, stay with us for a moment because we're going to bring another aspect of this in. We mentioned the progressive wing as the heaviest critics of Israel in the United States right now. Nowhere is that more apparent than on American universities. Public shame has now forced the University of Pennsylvania to review and to revise its policies on harassment. After University President Liz McGill faced backlash for refusing to answer if calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment of Jewish students on campus. This at a congressional hearing where McGill tried to frame escalating calls for genocide at her university as a free speech issue. In recent weeks, viral videos show pro-Hamas students marching around the University of Pennsylvania chanting there is only one solution and calling for Jewish genocide. Following this congressional hearing, the President of Harvard University also released a statement saying that people have misunderstood her widely pan remarks that the University will act on calls for genocide if the students act on those calls. A statement that raised eyebrows at the hearing and beyond. Now, University President Claudine Gay calls that saying that calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community or any religious or ethnic group are vile and have no place at Harvard and those that threaten Jewish students will be held to account. Jewish students say they feel unsafe on campus and Congress noted the level of hypocrisy in university codes of conduct that protect some races but not others. In that moment, I was focused on our university's long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on but I should have been. The irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It's evil, plain and simple. For decades under multiple pen presidents and consistent with most universities, pens policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today's world where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated. Penn must initiate a serious and careful look at our policies and Provost Jackson and I will immediately convene a process to do so. These universities and their radicalism have become very much the heart of the modern progressive movement. Eton, can this movement because remember these students, they vote and they do largely vote Democrat. Can they be safely ignored by the rest of the party and shunted aside or do they have to be reckoned with by the party itself? Well, they have to be reckoned by the party itself but you just presented a clarification statement by the president of the University of Pennsylvania why she didn't say the same words at the hearing. Why the president of Harvard University was forced to issue a clarification of what she meant. The hearings were astonishing, embarrassment to university presidents. They are not supposed to speak like that. They were asked specifically if calling for a genocide of Jewish people contradicts the rules and codes of universities and they have refused to answer these questions. It was I am a graduate of Harvard. I went to the same department, Claudine Gay, the present president of Harvard went to. We had the same teachers. We have probably the same ideas. I have never heard anything like the kind of moral bankruptcy these elite universities have been demonstrating in the hearings as well as on the ground. And I think also the Democratic Party will have to deal effectively with the so-called progressives. Whoever identifies or supports Hamas could not be progressive, could not be liberal because the values of liberalism are completely in contradiction with those of Hamas. And it's about time that universities not only talk but also take actions against anti-Semitic professors, anti-Semitic organizations on campus like Students for Justice in Palestine or Jewish Voice for Peace, nice titers, but they are completely anti-Semitic. I have been ahead of schools and departments. If I had an anti-Semitic professor, he would be fired in two minutes. And it's about time that universities take that kind of action. Aitana, as long as we're talking about the US Congress, I want to move to the Senate now and to the Republicans because they just shot down this largely because of their more right fringe group and Israeli aid bill that was linked to Ukraine. Similar question, does the Republican Party have to reckon with its own rabble risers and firebrands? Yeah, I think this is also highly problematic. What is happening here? The Republicans would like to separate aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine. There are a number of Congress men and women who are against the free checks, so to speak, given to Ukraine. And so the president, Biden, is insisting on a package deal. He wants aid to Israel to go hand in hand with aid to Ukraine. The Republicans do not want to give them, to approve of that. The Biden administration expected Netanyahu himself to work with Republicans and soften the position. So far, it has not worked. And this is problematic because time is running out. Congress is about to go on the Christmas vacation. And I think that the Republicans will have to get the act together because this is not the first time presidents are presenting to Congress packages of aid, aid going to a number of countries. In the past, it has been always Israel with Egypt and other Arab countries. So I think that at this time, the Republicans will have to change their position rather than the president. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Aiton, for your analysis of, well, everything that seems to be going wrong or going insane in America. Right. And I'm also going to thank you, Jack, for being in studio for the whole discussion and the military breakdown. For everyone else, though, we are just about out of time. But we will be back in only a half hour at our next broadcast, 10 o'clock local time. So until then, thank you very much for watching and stay tuned. We're going to be back with so much more and not that much time. My 24 news is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. A short while ago, air raid sirens were activated in Israel's north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. And in the south, the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Khan Yunus in the south of Gaza and are operating in the city center. The military said the 98th division broke through the defenses of Hamas Khan Yunus Brigade encircled the city and began to maneuver deep inside it. The IDF has unfortunately been forced to announce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza. That brings a total number that have fallen in the Gaza offensive to 85. This includes Staff Sergeant Amit Banzal and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emmanuel Faleke. The Prime Minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet has approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of Gaza. The cabinet said that the amount transferred will be the minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister has accused the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas' terrorists and called for his resignation saying Guterres is a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres' letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and his invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter to urge the Security Council's intervention. That's Article 99. It allows the Secretary General to bring to the Council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. But this clause has not been invoked since 1989. IDF Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has remarked on the latest ground developments here. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground, he is underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible. But in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment. The Shin Bet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. But let's open on the northern front where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by live on the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through what's going on there. Well yesterday, Mayor's and heads of council met with Defense Minister Galant where he shared the time frame for returning the evacuees, the over 80,000 people that have had to flee the hostilities here in the north. And he made it clear that unless Hezbollah is pushed into a situation where it has to abide by the 1701, UN resolution 1701 that says no fighters, no presence, no Hezbollah presence between the Latani River and the southern border creating about a 30 mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon. This is a UN resolution introduced after the 2006 Lebanon war. It has hardly ever been actually upheld. This is over a decade of violations that were never truly enforced by the United Nations. The charter or rather the resolution stated that only the LAF Lebanon Armed Forces, the Army for the nation of Lebanon would be allowed to operate in this buffer zone. Now Galant making these statements yesterday did not provide that clear time frame for how long it could take before that becomes a reality. It could be weeks, months, perhaps even longer for that to become the situation here, but he did make clear that until the 1701 agreement in principle is truly upheld that the evacuation notice in order will stay in place and that the residents here will continue to be living in uncertainty. Well thank you very much Zach for that report from the north. We are going to go to studio now where we have some analysis panel with us. This is Raf Ali Rashalmi, former senior intelligence officer with the IDF, as well as our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Alterman sitting next to me here. I want to open with you Owen because in the last hour we've seen a very curious report surface in Arabic media of a French and Saudi organized peace plan or ceasefire plan for Gaza going forward that interestingly has been leaked by Hezbollah affiliated media. Yeah, first of all, we don't know if this report is true. The fact that it's coming from Hezbollah media is itself maybe evidence that it's not true, but at any event interesting. Why? Because the report in a sense, in a sense, paints Saudi Arabia in a positive light. So there are questions about why Hezbollah media outlet would want to be painting Saudi Arabia in a positive light. But at any rate, REL, a report about negotiations between the French and Saudi governments about an end to the war in Gaza. A variety of terms, among other things, have the Hamas leadership go into exile, potentially in Algeria as I understand it from this report, right? And that would be a step that would enable Israel to end the war, ending the war would allow humanitarian assistance to go in. And it would involve the hostage deal where the hostages would all be freed in exchange for, because reality demands it, instead of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners being released, according to the terms of this emerging deal, so to speak. Only 5,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released. There would be an Arab peacekeeping force on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Over the course of time, there would be a four-year transitional period with a council of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic jihad together, all involved, planning the future of the Palestinian entity or state as it were. And in the meantime, it seems that Saudis would normalize with Israel. It's unclear to me from the report if that would happen at the front end, right after the war, or at the back end, after some kind of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At any rate, REL, I think it is safe to say that from Israel's perspective, this plan, if it exists, is disconnected from reality. For starters, envisions the idea of 5,000 Palestinian prisoners being released under Israeli law. That has to pass the full Israeli government, 30-plus ministers. I think it would be dead on arrival. I simply think it would not pass the government under almost any circumstances. Certainly the circumstances in this package, I think given the options, ministers will prefer to bring the government down and go to elections rather than approve it. Number two, the idea of a transitional council that includes Hamas and Islamic jihad and planning the future. Non-starter. Absolute non-starter. Will not pass the Israeli government. Ministers would rather bring the government down and go to elections and have a transitional period where it could not be passed even in the middle of a war rather than pass that. Even if Netanyahu were in some universe to agree to it. There are elements here that are absolute non-starters. Cannot happen. Is it a basis for negotiation? No. I think it's simply too far from the Israeli position. Israel's best alternative to a negotiated agreement is far better than this deal. Given the options A, a negotiation around the parameters of this deal when they're not final, or B, continuing to prosecute the war, even with the risk of Israel taking full responsibility for the Gaza Strip and running all of its refugee camps, I don't say this likely. Israel would rather take option B. Well, we're going to actually discuss that a little bit further, but first we're going to turn to the southern border where our correspondent Pierre Klosian there is standing by just outside the border town of Sero. We just saw a pretty large explosion on a live feed behind you and there's that massive cloud of smoke. Walk us through the developments on the ground right now, Pierre. Right. You can see in the area of Bet Hanun in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip a huge explosion provoked by an Israeli aircraft, obviously, because of the size of the explosion. And what's quite amazing is a month and a half after the start of the ground offensive on October 27th in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, you can still see that there is fighting and destruction of Hamas infrastructure. This is quite close to the border with Israel. I would say it's really nearby the border in the Bet Hanun area, as the offensive is deepening in other places in the northern sector, such as the Jebalah refugee camp where the Israeli army has conquered Bastion, a stronghold of Hamas, with an identified network of tunnels there, training grounds, weapon depots, etc. In the Jebalah refugee camp, strong clashes, close range with Hamas terrorists that, for instance, are getting out of tunnel shafts with RPG rocket launchers targeting Israeli forces on the ground, but the artillery, the navy, and the air force are giving support, close support, in close coordination with the ground forces. And many times the targets are destroyed first by the artillery, the navy, or the air force. In Shejaia, which is on the southeastern outskirts of Gaza city, also very close combats, we hear from Israeli media who have connection with the army that there were over 50 clashes in the past overnight with 200 terrorist kills. It's a big number if it's confirmed by the IDF. And in Hanunas, Hanunas is encircled as well as the ground offensive with special units, commando units entering, penetrating the heart of Hanunas. At this point, we know only of one soldier who was killed in the fighting, Duvdevan commando, and what we know also is that two terrorists were killed as they got out of a tunnel shaft, and were probably destroyed, eliminated by a drone from a distance. Now, there's also, according to Palestinian media reports, affiliated to Hamas, a lot of activity, air force activity in Rafah, as well as in the refugee camp of Nuserat, north of Hanunas, but south of Gaza city, and at the same time the daily injunction to the civilian population which is trapped in the battlefield to move west of Hanunas. Hanunas might be encircled, but it's a breathing blockade in the sense that there is a way out west every day for the non-involved Palestinian civilian population in order to reach the humanitarian zone that has been dedicated by the IDF between Rafah in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip and Hanunas in the central sector on the coast, on the Mediterranean coast. There's also a tactical humanitarian pose of four hours in one of the neighborhoods of Rafah city. Pierre, as you just said yourself, that explosion, the fighting in the north, this testament that Hamas has not been pacified in that part of Gaza yet. We've had you standing there virtually every single day since this war started. You've seen firsthand the change in pacing in the war. What does that pace tell us about the fighting in the north? What does it say about if they're close, how close they are to finally pacifying the north of Gaza and having a victory in that part of the Strip? Look, Hamas holds, we don't know exactly, but between 30 and 50,000 fighters. They had 16 years to develop their lines of defense. Those lines of defense are very, very dense. The fighting is up the ground most of the time, but there is a lot of infrastructure, terrarium infrastructure and the ground tunnel networks. There is a very dense tunnel network in the northern sector as well as near Hanunas. The pace of the fighting here in the northern sector, Bet Lahia, Bet Hanun, has slowed down in the past few days and has moved more toward Gaza City, the Jabalia refugee camp and Shijaiya. There's also still bombing targets in Aldaraj and Tufach neighborhoods of Gaza City as well as in Rimal neighborhood, the Plush neighborhood, the former Plush neighborhood of Gaza City. So it's not over yet. It's going to take time. This is why the army is always saying it's going to take a lot of time because if you want to demilitarize the Gaza Strip and if you want to dismantle Hamas' military infrastructure, it will take a lot, a lot of time. Now, in addition, something which I forgot to tell you, there was just a rocket alert on Sderot after a 15-hour lull of rocket fire on Israeli communities facing the Gaza Strip. There were four explosions. The Sderot municipality says there were no impacts on the city, but we've seen two impacts, one in this direction and another one in this direction, probably in an open field, but it was close by from where we are. So the pace of the rocket fire also is slowing down. These IDF is speaking about something like 11,000 rockets launched on Israeli territory since the onset of the war, which was waged by Hamas during the October 7 massacres, but still they have the capability to launch rocket fire. And Israel still is fighting in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip in places which are under full operational control of the Israeli army. Up here, thank you very much for that report from the front telling us where we all stand. We are going to discuss this further in studio with Rafael Urashalmi. Rafael, I want to go deeper into what we are seeing in Gaza because as my reporter had said, the pacing is changing. The gains on the ground are significant, but there's still a lot of war ahead. Walk us through where things stand in Khan Yunus right now, and what needs to be done before Hamas is truly broken? So in Khan Yunus, we're seeing what happened in the first days of the ground offensive in the North. It's a very, mostly very strong attack from the ground forces, progressing in a spectacular way quite quickly towards the center, towards the heart of Khan Yunus. And this will take a few more days, at which point we will see also a slowing of the pace, because once you have, like, encircled the perimeter, you have to secure it. And that can take days or weeks. We see it in the North. We're still cleaning Jabalia camp. We're still fighting in Sejaia, because you still have pockets of resistance, especially in the North in Sejaia. You have the elite battalions of the Hamas that were there, because at the beginning the Hamas thought we would come from the North. And they were surprised we came from the East, and now we're going back up North. And the cleaning operation takes time. At first you go, like, let's say, with a vacuum cleaner, then you go with a feather duster. So it takes more time. And this is more surgical. This is meter by meter, step by step, with all the traps that are awaiting our soldiers and the snipers. So this is what's happening now here in Hanyunes to have the main reason is military, but also psychological. We want the offensive on Hanyunes to be very spectacular. And we want the people underground to feel the tremors of that attack. We cannot bomb those tunnels, but we can make them tremble from the bomb above. We have to have the political branch of the Hamas feel somehow threatened, because only then will they, for instance, negotiate yet again maybe another phase of the liberation of hostages, Mr. Hanyunes seems to have hinted from Qatar at such a possibility already. So this has to be a psychological impact. It has to be pressure. We believe that this pressure is also in favor of this liberation of hostages. But then you have to slow down the pace. You have to secure the perimeter. You have to make sure you've got everybody militarily speaking. But also remember we're dealing with around 40,000 armed tourists, maybe now a few thousands less. Thank God we have eliminated quite a few. But then you have the whole infrastructure of the Hamas. If our final objective is that the Hamas should not be ruling the Gaza Strip anymore, you have another couple of hundred thousands of civil servants appointed by the Hamas. Some of them important, like we had the director of the whole hospital, Chifa Hospital, who was a Hamas member who was running this hospital as a terrorist base for the Hamas. So all this also has to be clean, all the white collar terrorism, if you will, has also to be clean. That's going to take months. So right now we hope that by the end of January, maybe if we are very optimistic, if we are not being stopped by an international community or there is no truth for exchanges of prisoners and hostages, we might be seeing around the end of January the main big assault taking an end. But then starting a very long few weeks or months long, a cleanup to secure militarily, first of all, but also politically, the Gaza Strip in order to start seeing the end of the tunnel and a rebuilding of the Gaza Strip or new starting on new bases and new grounds for maybe a better future. We're in science fiction, I think at this stage. I want to jump in there because we're talking about the day after stuff. And I think to say months ahead is very optimistic on that, to de-hamasify Gaza. If you look at de-bathification of Iraq, that took a lot longer than a few months. If you look at denotification of Germany, that took decades. How is it realistic? Is there even a plan to de-hamasify the civil side of Gaza too? Well, there are so many versions of the day after that you get lost into all the possibilities there. It seems that all the international involvement is not realistic. We don't see who and how the international community can really do anything serious about Gaza. They can assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in doing something together. We're not going to be alone. The Israelis are able to game change the life of the people, the Palestinian people in Gaza and their life next to us. We are going to need the Palestinians to work with. So we need other Palestinians, of course, than the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and most probably other Palestinians than the actual leadership of the PLO, including Mr. Abu Mazen. So that's you're saying years. Look how long Mr. Abu Mazen has been here. The opportunity is old enough to pass away before he gets another tenure. But we have to change, first of all, the whole layer of the political leadership of the Palestinian people because we cannot work with the guys that are right now in there. And then it has to be the Israelis with the Palestinians. But of course, at that point, if we do manage to get to some kind of negotiation or modus vivendi, then the weight of the international community is then very important. Then they can assist, then they can support, but certainly not dictate because they don't read the map, they don't understand what's going on here. Sometimes I really smile at some statements that I hear from the Europeans, mainly, but also from the American administration. You just don't read the map. They just they're not here. They don't know what the Middle East is about. And that's very worrisome. Yeah, well, we're talking about the international community. There is some discussion now that there's an international plan that could potentially remove Hezbollah from Israel's borders. There's new Israeli reports saying that Israel, the United States and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. A deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli sources told local media that one stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently, north of the Lattani River in compliance with UN resolution 1701, that Lebanon and UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. But that was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese military. Israel says that if diplomacy fails, Hezbollah will be forced to retreat on the battlefield. There are currently 70,000 Israelis who have been displaced from northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to October 7th. I'm going to open now with you, Owen, because is this just words? Who would the United States and Israel even be negotiating with over there in Lebanon, given that the government isn't the power in control? Well, not only isn't the government the power and control Ariel, it's the Lebanon doesn't have its political house in order. And I think there's a threshold question of whether even constitutionally, they could even sign and ratify a deal like that. I'll leave that to experts on the Lebanese political system. But even if you get beyond that look, this would be an attempt by the United States and by Israel to kick the can down the road by Hezbollah to buy for that matter. Nobody would walk into this with an expectation that Hezbollah would actually be honoring this. We saw what happened after the 2006 war. Resolution 1701 was not honored. Hezbollah did not feel like it was in its interest to honor it. And so it didn't. And I don't think anyone has any real expectation that even into really the short to medium term, in the immediate term maybe, but even in the short to medium term, that this would really truly be honored. And Hezbollah would be across the Litani River, let alone them being there quote permanently. Again, this doesn't mean that Israel doesn't have levers against Hezbollah. I mean, there are reasons why there was no out war. There has been no out war with Hezbollah since 2006. Quite a long time, if you think about it, 17 years. And there are reasons for that matter why there's no out war with Hezbollah now beyond the situation, the horrible situation in the North, such as it is. And that of course is the wedge between and the conflict between Hezbollah's commitments and the interests of its base in South Lebanon or in other parts of Lebanon among its sheet Lebanese base and their interests as a community. And Hezbollah's accounts does care about them, unlike Hamas and Gaza, which has no concern for Gaza's civilians. In Hezbollah's case, they seem to actually have at least some concern and maybe more for their base and their civilian base for various reasons. The conflict between those interests and the interests of Iran and Hezbollah, it seems needs to constantly weave and balance between those interests. And the interests of the base in South Lebanon and other parts of Lebanon seems to lean toward not getting involved in all out wars with Israel, which again is Hezbollah's inclination by his own account after the 2006 war. That lever is there, it's there with or without disagreement. If this is a way for the parties to formalize the fact that they're kicking the can down the road and looking the other way so that Israelis can return to their homes in the North, so that the Israeli military can regroup so that Hezbollah also can lick its wounds from the fighting and bite its time so the United States can declare a diplomatic victory. Maybe that's the best option on offer for all of these parties, but no one should have an illusion that it's any kind of even medium term solution to the situation in the Israeli Lebanese border. Rafael, can Israel even afford to kick this can down the road? Look how powerful Hezbollah has become because Israel has been kicking the can down the road since 2006. Yes, it's an important threat, nothing compared with the Hamas that we're talking almost 20 times the quantity of missiles that they have in their own hands. They have just as many fighters, very well trained, very well equipped fighters supported by Iran and not only financially, but with good, good equipment, sophisticated weapons, GPS guided missiles, et cetera, et cetera, plus the fact that they're deploying as well into the south of Syria, making that the threat, the arc circle of the threat wider. So it is a threat. On the other hand, we no need to strike hard. Would we want to give a chance to the diplomatic ballet and now the French are entering into it? This ballet has started a couple of years ago. It started with eliminating maritime border because of the gas interest. There's been a lot of discussing and negotiating going around for the last couple of years between and directly or directly between the Hezbollah and Israel and the Lebanon. The diplomatic pressure is pressure on nothing because it's a vacuum. The political is no political partner to deal with. So I think it's important to have this military pressure, the same military pressure to help the diplomatic negotiation to advance. Let's hope that there is some solution at the end of this. Thank you both Rafael, Owen for breaking down all the different international as well as tactical realities Israel is facing. That said, for everyone else, we are out of time at least for now, but we will see you again at 11 o'clock local time. It's in about a half hour for our next broadcast. Until then, thanks for watching. Good morning and welcome to I-24 News's ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. A short while ago, air raid sirens were activated in Israel's north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror group. And in the south, the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Khan Yunus in the south of Gaza and are operating in the city's center. The military said the 98th division broke through the defenses of Hamas Khan Yunus Brigade, encircled the city, and began to maneuver deep inside it. The IDF has unfortunately been forced to annouce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza that brings a total number that have fallen in the Gaza offensive to 85. This includes Staff Sergeant Amit Banzel and Staff Sergeant Alamnu Emmanuel Faleke. The Prime Minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet has approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of Gaza. The cabinet said that the amount transferred will be the minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister has accused the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas's terrorists and called for his resignation, saying Guterres is a danger to world peace. This comes after Guterres' letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and his invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter to urge the Security Council's intervention, that's Article 99. It allows the Secretary General to bring to the Council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security, but this clause has not been invoked since 1989. IDF Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has remarked on the latest ground developments here. Sinwar's home is the Hanunis area. There are both terrorist infrastructures and headquarters there. Sinwar is not above ground, he is underground, and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get to Sinwar and kill him. This is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible, but in the end it is a joint mission of the security establishment, the Shin Bet and IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leadership and kill them. But let's open on the Northern Front where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by live on the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through what's going on there. Well, yesterday, mayors and heads of council met with Defense Minister Galant, where he shared the time frame for returning the evacuees, the over 80,000 people that have had to flee the hostilities here in the north. And he made it clear that unless Hezbollah is pushed into a situation where it has to abide by the 1701, UN resolution 1701, that says no fighters, no presence, no Hezbollah presence between the Lattani River and the southern border, creating about a 30-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon. This is a UN resolution introduced after the 2006 Lebanon War. It has hardly ever been actually upheld. This is over a decade of violations that were never truly enforced by the United Nations. The charter, or rather the resolution stated that only the LAF, Lebanon Armed Forces, the Army for the nation of Lebanon, would be allowed to operate in this buffer zone. Now, Galant making these statements yesterday did not provide that clear time frame for how long it could take before that becomes a reality. It could be weeks, months, perhaps even longer for that to become the situation here. But he did make clear that until the 1701 agreement in principle is truly upheld, that the evacuation notice and order will stay in place and that the residents here will continue to be in living in uncertainty. Well, thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the north. We are going to go to studio now where we have some analysis panel with us. This is Raf Ali Urshami, former senior intelligence officer with the IDF, as well as our senior diplomatic correspondent Owen Alterman sitting next to me here. I want to open with you, Owen, because in the last hour we've seen a very curious report surface in Arabic media of a French and Saudi organized peace plan or ceasefire plan for Gaza going forward that interestingly has been leaked by Hezbollah affiliated media. Yeah, first of all, we don't know if this report is true. The fact that it's coming from Hezbollah media is itself maybe evidence that it's not true, but at any event interesting. Why? Because the report in a sense, in a sense, paints Saudi Arabia in a positive light. So there are questions about why Hezbollah media outlet would want to be painting Saudi Arabia in a positive light. But at any rate, REL, a report about negotiations between the French and Saudi governments about an end to the war in Gaza. A variety of terms, among other things, have the Hamas leadership go into exile, potentially in Algeria as I understand it from this report, right? And that would be a step that would enable Israel to end the war, ending the war would allow humanitarian assistance to go in. And it would involve a hostage deal where the hostages would all be freed in exchange for, because reality demands it instead of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners being released according to the terms of this emerging deal, so to speak. Only 5,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released. There'd be an Arab peacekeeping force on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Over the course of time, there would be a four-year transitional period with a council of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic jihad together all involved, planning the future of the Palestinian entity or state as it were. And in the meantime, it seems that Saudis would normalize with Israel. It's unclear to me from the report if that would happen at the front end right after the war or at the back end after some kind of resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At any rate, REL, I think it is safe to say that from Israel's perspective, this plan, if it exists, is disconnected from reality. For starters, envisions the idea of 5,000 Palestinian prisoners being released under Israeli law. That has to pass the full Israeli government, 30-plus ministers. I think it would be dead on arrival. I simply think it would not pass the government under almost any circumstances. Certainly the circumstances in this package, I think given the options, ministers will prefer to bring the government down and go to elections rather than approve it. Number two, the idea of a transitional council that includes Hamas and Islamic jihad and planning the future, absolute non-starter. Will not pass the Israeli government. Ministers would rather bring the government down and go to elections and have a transitional period where it could not be passed even in the middle of a war rather than pass that. Even if Netanyahu were in some universe to agree to it. There are elements here that are absolute non-starters, cannot happen. Is it a basis for negotiation? No. I think it's simply too far from the Israeli position. Israel's BATNA, best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is far better than this deal. Given the options A, a negotiation around the parameters of this deal if they're not final, or B, continuing to prosecute the war, even with the risk of Israel taking full responsibility for the Gaza Strip and running all of its refugee camps, I don't say this likely. Israel would rather take option B. Well, we're going to actually discuss that a little bit further. But first, we're going to turn to the southern border where our correspondent, Pierre Kloschen, there is standing by just outside the border town of Sero. We just saw pretty large explosion on a live feed behind you. And there's that massive cloud of smoke. Walk us through the developments on the ground right now, Pierre. Right. You can see in the area of Beth Hanun in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, a huge explosion provoked by an Israeli aircraft, obviously, because of the size of the explosion. And what's quite amazing is a month and a half after the start of the ground offensive on October 27th in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, you can still see that there is fighting and destruction of Hamas infrastructure. This is quite close to the border with Israel. I would say it's really nearby the border in the Beth Hanun area, as the offensive is deepening in other places in the northern sector, such as the Jebalah refugee camp where the Israeli army has conquered Bastion, a stronghold of Hamas with an identified network of tunnels there, training grounds, weapons depots, etc. In the Jebalah refugee camp, strong clashes close range with Hamas terrorists that, for instance, are getting out of tunnel shafts with RPG rocket launchers targeting Israeli forces on the ground. But the artillery, the navy, and the air force are giving support, close support, in close coordination with the ground forces, and many times the targets are destroyed first by the artillery, the navy, or the air force. In Shejahia, which is on the southeastern outskirts of Gaza city, also very close combats, we hear from Israeli media who have connection with the army that there were over 50 clashes in the past overnight with 200 terrorist kills. It's a big number if it's confirmed by the IDF. And in Hanyunas, Hanyunas is encircled as well as the ground offensive with special units, commando units entering, penetrating the heart of Hanyunas. At this point, we know only of one soldier who was killed in the fighting, Duvdevan commando, and what we know also is that two terrorists were killed as they got out of a tunnel shaft and were probably destroyed, eliminated by a drone from a distance. Now, there's also, according to Palestinian media reports, affiliated to Hamas, a lot of activity, air force activity in Rafah, as well as in the refugee camp of Nuserat, north of Hanyunas, but south of Gaza city. And at the same time, the daily injunction to the civilian population, which is trapped in the battlefield to move west of Hanyunas. Hanyunas might be encircled, but it's a breathing blockade in the sense that there is a way out west every day for the non-involved Palestinian civilian population in order to reach the humanitarian zone that has been dedicated by the IDF between Rafah in the extreme south of the Gaza Strip and Hanyunas in the central sector on the coast, on the Mediterranean coast. There's also a tactical humanitarian pose of four-hour in one of the neighborhoods of Rafah city. Pierre, you, as you just said yourself, that explosion, the fighting in the north, this testament that Hamas has not been pacified in that part of Gaza yet. We've had you standing there virtually every single day since this war started. You've seen firsthand the change in pacing in the war. What does that pace tell us about the fighting in the north? What does it say about if they're close, how close they are to finally pacifying the north of Gaza and having a victory in that part of the Strip? Look, Hamas holds, we don't know exactly, but between 30,000 and 50,000 fighters, they had 16 years to develop their lines of defense. Those lines of defense are very, very dense. The fighting is up the ground most of the time, but there is a lot of infrastructure, terror infrastructure and the ground tunnel networks. There is a very dense tunnel network in the northern sector, as well as near Chanyunes. The pace of the fighting here in the northern sector, has slowed down in the past few days and has moved more toward Gaza city, the Jebalia refugee camp and Shijaiya. There's also still bombing targets in Aldaraj and Tufach neighborhoods of Gaza city, as well as in Rimal neighborhood, the Plush neighborhood, the former Plush neighborhood of Gaza city. So it's not over yet. It's going to take time. This is why the army is always saying it's going to take a lot of time, because if you want to demilitarize the Gaza Strip and if you want to dismantle Hamas's military infrastructure, it will take a lot, a lot of time. Now, in addition, something which I forgot to tell you, there was just a rocket alert on Sderot after a 15-hour lull of rocket fire on Israeli communities facing the Gaza Strip. There were four explosions. The Sderot municipality says there were no impacts on the city, but we've seen two impacts, one in this direction and another one in this direction, probably in an open field, but it was close by from where we are. So the pace of the rocket fire also is slowing down. These IDF is speaking about something like 11,000 rockets launched on Israeli territory since the onset of the war, which was waged by Hamas during the October 7 massacres. But still, they have the capability to launch rocket fire, and Israel still is fighting in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, in places which are under full operational control of the Israeli army. Well, Pierre, thank you very much for that report from the front telling us where we all stand. We are going to discuss this further in studio with Rafael Irochalme. Rafael, I want to go deeper into what we are seeing in Gaza, because as my reporter has said, the pacing is changing. The gains on the ground are significant, but there's still a lot of war ahead. Walk us through where things stand in Chanyounis right now, and what needs to be done before Hamas is truly broken? So in Chanyounis, we're seeing what happened in the first days of the ground offensive in the north. It's a very, mostly very strong attack from the ground forces progressing in a spectacular way quite quickly towards the center, towards the heart of Chanyounis. And this will take a few more days, at which point we will see also slowing of the pace, because once you have uncircled the perimeter, you have to secure it. And that can take days or weeks. We see it in the north. We're still cleaning Jebalyakamp. We're still fighting in Sejaia, because you still have pockets of resistance, especially in the north in Sejaia. You have the elite battalions of the Hamas that were there, because at the beginning the Hamas thought we would come from the north. They were surprised. We came from the east, and now we're going back up north. The cleaning operation takes time. At first you go like, let's say, with a vacuum cleaner, then you go with a feather duster. So it takes more time. And this is more surgical. This is meter by meter, step by step, with all the traps that are awaiting our soldiers and the snipers. So this is what's happening now here in Chanyounis to have the main reason is military, but also psychological. We want the offensive on Chanyounis to be very spectacular, and we want the people underground to feel the tremors of that attack. We cannot bomb those tunnels, but we can make them tremble from the bombing above. We have to have the political branch of the Hamas feel somehow threatened, because only then will they, for instance, negotiate yet again maybe another phase of the liberation of hostages. Mr. Hanie seems to have hinted from Qatar at such a possibility already. So this has to be a psychological impact. It has to be pressure. We believe that this pressure is also in favor of this liberation of hostages. But then you have to slow down the pace. You have to secure the perimeter. You have to make sure you've got everybody militarily speaking, but also remember we're dealing with around 40,000 armed terrorists, maybe now a few thousands less. Thank God we eliminated quite a few. But then you have the whole infrastructure of the Hamas. If our final objective is that the Hamas should not be ruling the Gaza Strip anymore, you have another couple of hundred thousands of civil servants appointed by the Hamas, some of them important, like we had the director of the whole hospital, chief of hospital, who was a Hamas member, who was running this hospital as a terrorist base for the Hamas. So all this also has to be clean, all the white collar terrorism, if you will, has also to be clean. That's going to take months. So right now we hope that by the end of January, maybe for a very optimistic, if we're not being stopped by an international community or there is no truth for exchanges of prisoners and hostages, we might be seeing around the end of January the main big assault taking an end, but then starting a very long few weeks or months long a clean up to secure militarily, first of all, but also politically the Gaza Strip in order to start seeing the end of the tunnel and rebuilding of the Gaza Strip or new, starting on new bases and new grounds for maybe a better future. We're in more science fiction I think at this stage. I want to jump in there because we're talking about the day after stuff. And I think to say months ahead is very optimistic on that to de-hamosify Gaza. If you look at de-bathification of Iraq, that took a lot longer than a few months. If you look at denazification of Germany, that took decades. How is it realistic? Is there even a plan to de-hamosify the civil side of Gaza too? Well, there are so many versions of the day after that you get lost into all the possibilities there. It seems that all the international involvement is not realistic. We don't see who and how the international community can really do anything serious about Gaza. They can assist the Israelis and the Palestinians in doing something together. We're not going to be alone. The Israelis able to game change the life of the people, the Palestinian people in Gaza and their life next to us. We're going to need the Palestinians to work with. So we need other Palestinians, of course, than the Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And most probably other Palestinians than the actual leadership of the PLO, including Mr Abu Mazen. So that's you saying years. Look how long Mr Abu Mazen has been here. The opportunity is old enough to pass away before he gets another tenure. But we have to change, first of all, the whole layer of the political leadership of the Palestinian people. Because we cannot work with the guys that are right now in there. And then it has to be the Israelis with the Palestinians. But of course, at that point, if we do manage to get to some kind of negotiation or modus vivendi, then the weight of the international community is then very important. Then they can assist, then they can support, but certainly not dictate. Because they don't read the map, they don't understand what's going on here. Sometimes I really smile at some statements that I hear from the Europeans, mainly, but also from the American administration. You just don't read them up. They just do not hear. They don't know what the Middle East is about. And that's very worrisome. Yeah, well, we're talking about the international community. There is some discussion now that there's an international plan that could potentially remove Hezbollah from Israel's borders. There's new Israeli reports saying that Israel, the United States and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border in an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position, a deal very similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended naval territorial disputes. Unnamed Israeli sources told local media that one stipulation of this deal would require Hezbollah to retreat far from the border permanently, north of the Latani River in compliance with UN resolution 1701, that Lebanon and UN peacekeepers were supposed to enforce. But that was before Hezbollah became stronger than the Lebanese military. Israel says that if diplomacy fails, Hezbollah will be forced to retreat on the battlefield. There are currently 70,000 Israelis who have been displaced from northern border communities due to the threat of Hezbollah invasion and massacre similar to October 7th. I'm going to open now with you, Owen, because is this just words? Who would the United States and Israel even be negotiating with over there in Lebanon, given that the government isn't the power in control? Well, not only isn't the government the power in control, Arielle, Lebanon doesn't have its political house in order. And I think there's a threshold question of whether even constitutionally they could even sign and ratify a deal like that. I'll leave that to experts on the Lebanese political system. But even if you get beyond that look, this would be an attempt by the United States and by Israel to kick the can down the road by Hezbollah for that matter. Nobody would walk into this with an expectation that Hezbollah would actually be honoring this. We saw what happened after the 2006 war. Resolution 1701 was not honored. Hezbollah did not feel like it was in its interest to honor it. And so it didn't. And I don't think anyone has any real expectation that even into really the short to medium term, in the immediate term maybe, but even in the short to medium term, that this would really, truly be honored. And Hezbollah would be across the Litani River, let alone them being there quote permanently. Again, this doesn't mean that Israel doesn't have levers against Hezbollah. I mean, there are reasons why there was no all out war. There has been no all out war with Hezbollah since 2006. Quite a long time, if you think about it, 17 years. And there are reasons for that matter why there's no all out war with Hezbollah now beyond the situation, the horrible situation in the North such as it is. And that of course is the wedge between and the conflict between Hezbollah's commitments and the interests of its base in South Lebanon, or in other parts of Lebanon, among its sheet Lebanese base and their interests as a community. And Hezbollah Bala Council does care about them, unlike Hamas in Gaza, which has no concern for Gaza's and civilians. In Hezbollah case, they seem to actually have at least some concern and maybe more for their base and their civilian base for various reasons. The conflict between those interests and the interests of Iran and Hezbollah, it seems needs to constantly weave and balance between those interests. And the interests of the base in South Lebanon and other parts of Lebanon seems to lean toward not getting involved in all out wars with Israel, which again is Hezbollah's inclination by his own account after the 2006 war. That lever is there, it's there with or without disagreement. If this is a way for the parties to formalize the fact that they're kicking the can down the road and looking the other way so that Israelis can return to their homes in the north, so that the Israeli military can regroup, so that Hezbollah also can lick its wounds from the fighting and bite its time so the United States can declare a diplomatic victory. Maybe that's the best option on offer for all of these parties, but no one should have an illusion that it's any kind of even medium-term solution to the situation in the Israeli Lebanese border. Rafael, can Israel even afford to kick this can down the road? Look how powerful Hezbollah has become because Israel has been kicking the can down the road since 2006. Yes, it's a very important threat, nothing compared with the Hamas that we're talking, almost 20 times the quantity of missiles they have in their own hands. They have just as many fighters, very well trained, very well equipped fighters supported by Iran and not only financially but with good, good equipment, sophisticated weapons, GPS-guided missiles, et cetera, et cetera, plus the fact that they're deploying as well into the south of Syria, making that the threat, the arc circle of the threat wider. So it is a threat. On the other hand, we do need to strike hard. Would we want to give a chance to the diplomatic ballet and how the French are entering into it? This ballet has started a couple of years ago. It started with the eliminating maritime border because of the gas interest. There's been a lot of discussing and negotiating going around for the last couple of years and directly or directly between the Hezbollah and Israel and Lebanon. The diplomatic pressure is pressure on nothing because it's a vacuum. There's no political partner to deal with. So I think it's important to have this military pressure, the same military pressure to help the diplomatic negotiation to advance. Let's hope that there is some solution at the end. Thank you both, Raphael. Owen for breaking down all the different international as well as tactical realities Israel is facing. That said, for everyone else, we are out of time at least for now, but we will see you again at 11 o'clock local time. That's in about a half hour for our next broadcast. Until then, thanks for watching. I-24 News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. This morning, air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror organization. And in the south, the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip and are operating in the city center. The military said the 98th division has broken through the defenses of Hamas Khan Yunus per day in circling the city and beginning to maneuver deeper inside. The IDF has unfortunately been forced to announce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza, bringing the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive against Hamas since late October to 85. Staff Sergeant Amit Banzal and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emmanuel Faleke, the prime minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip in order to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of the Strip. The cabinet said the amount of fuel transferred will be the absolute minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister has accused the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation, calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This is coming after Guterres issued a letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and his invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter, urging the Security Council to intervene. Article 99 allows Secretary General of the UN to bring to the Security Council's attention any matter he believes threatens international peace and security, but that measure has not been used since 1989 despite heavy world conflicts in that time period. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari has remarked on the latest ground developments in Gaza as well. Sinwa's home is in the Khan Yunus area. There is both terrorist infrastructure and headquarters there. Sinwa is not above ground, he's underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get you Sinwa and kill him. That is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible. But in the end it's a joint mission of the security establishment, the Shin Bet and the IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leaders and kill them. And we're going to open with our eye in the north where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by live from the border with Lebanon. Zach walk us through the latest escalations in that fight. And we're seeing through Lebanese media channels that there are 11 attacks now from yesterday that Hezbollah is claiming responsibility for the IDF has not confirmed the number of attacks from yesterday or the amount of damage or injuries caused which is reflective often on the fact that there was no injuries or damage to speak of. The IDF often able to report these figures by the end of day. So for no reports to come out is usually a sign that there was no injuries, no damage. These 11 attacks are taking place with ATGMs, mortar fire, heavy rocket launches. And it does take a considerable amount of effort from the IDF to be able to identify with its intelligence gathering infrastructure here to identify these points of origin, the sources for where Hezbollah fired and then strike back. The IDF says that they were using their artillery and air strikes to destroy these points of fire that Hezbollah was using yesterday. Also reported in Lebanese media channels this morning the number of fighters Hezbollah fighters that have been killed appears to have raised to 90. This again is not independently confirmed by Israeli sources but inside Lebanon they're claiming 90 Hezbollah fighters have now been killed including four, four in the month of December since December 1st. Thank you very much, Zach, for that report from the North. We'll be back with you over the course of the day as the situation there develops. But before that we are going to be joined by Major Elliot Shodoff, political and military analyst with the IDF's Northern Command. Elliot, it's good to have you with us. Good to be back. Elliot, question for you, because we see this escalation on the northern border that's at a constant level. There's the refrain that Israel cannot go back to the paradigm before October 7th and that 70,000 displaced Israelis can't return to the northern border as long as Hezbollah is standing there on the border ready to carry out a massive attack again. So what's the plan? They keep on escalating. There's no real signs of any de-escalation. How is the IDF going to force them back past the 1701 UN resolution line? Okay, first of all, I think it's important to understand that the escalation has been quantitative, not qualitative. In other words, we see numbers of attacks along the border. We don't see a significant qualitative change in the nature of those attacks. In other words, we're not seeing attacks deeper into Israel. We're not seeing massive rocket fire into Israel. Hezbollah is stepping up their activity, I believe in large part because in the south the IDF is closing in on Hamas center in Chanyunas. And they want to show that they're part of the game if nothing else. They can simply stand by and watch Hamas get crushed and do nothing at all and be blamed later that they did nothing along the way. Having said all of that, very similar to what we permitted in Gaza, I would say even more so, we've permitted Hezbollah since 2006 to build up in south Lebanon to continue to increase its strength quantitatively and qualitatively in training and organization and the quality of their troops. And having seen what happened on October 7th, I don't see any way we can go back to that in the north as well. There's no diplomatic solution to that. And I think we need to be clear on that. UN resolutions look very nice on paper. They're absolutely useless on the ground unless they're enforced. The UN is not going to enforce it. So driving Hezbollah away from the border is something that needs to be done physically. I believe that that requires some sort of a ground operation in south Lebanon. But I think that's also largely contingent on how long the Gaza operation takes, how successful it is in terms of its absolute success. And then whether Israel and its allies have the stamina to go into another round against Hezbollah. But without the stamina to do so, isn't that just kicking the can down the road for another few years with each year they simply arm up more? Absolutely. There's no question it would be a strategic error to leave them where they are. A grand strategic error. It's one that we'll need to face, as you say, kicking the can down the road. And it's not even clear how far down the road the can is going. But still, political decisions. And this is really ultimately a political, not a military decision. The army will do it if it's told to do it. And I think we'll do it with great satisfaction. But it's a political decision. And the fact is most political decisions are made on very short term issues. And that's done here, it's done in the United States. It's certainly a quality of democracy. What does public opinion think at the moment? What is public opinion willing to absorb at the moment? What do budgets look like? And in our case, what do our allies have to say as well? Because frankly, if an ally like the United States says we're not going to support you in this, we're withdrawing our forces from the Mediterranean, we're not going to resupply you, we've got a problem. Now we did see a very interesting report in Lebanese Hezbollah affiliated media actually saying that there is some discussions now between Lebanon and France to do some sort of political deal related to a ceasefire in Gaza that could see Hezbollah withdraw behind the Latani River line. Is this hot air? What incentive did they have to allow this in their affiliated media? Are they simply buying time, looking for de-escalation, kicking the can down the road themselves? Yes. Well, kicking the can down the road works for them much better than it works for us. Because even if they withdraw tomorrow to behind the Latani, the day after tomorrow they're going to begin infiltrating back into the south. So if they can get some sort of a deal which I don't see happening, but if they can get some sort of a deal that includes the IDF stopping its operations in Gaza, quiet along the northern border as a consequence of that, they will nominally pull back north of the Latani. They'll pull back as far north as we ask them to because as soon as everything's in place, they'll begin trickling back. And here the trickling is critical because we're not going to go to war over 10 Hezbollah terrorists across the Latani. We're not going to go to war over 20. And then it'll be another 20, and another 10, and another 20, and another 10, and they have all the time in the world. So a year from now, two years from now, we're right back where we are today. We're going to continue this discussion in a moment. But first I am going to bring the southern front into this. Pierre Kloschenler, our correspondent standing by just outside the border town of Sturro on the Gaza border. Pierre, welcome to the latest we're seeing on the Gaza front. Well, I'm going to start from north to south. In the north, in the sector of Bethlehem, further northeast, northwest of where we are, there's a school in which according to Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas, there are thousands of displaced people that are still in the northern sector in that Bethlehem school. And the army, the Israeli army would be besieging it. We don't have confirmation of the army. There's been heavy bombing very close to the border in Beth-Hannon. The air earlier on was breezing with the muffled sound of artillery fire, navy fire, as well as aircraft fire in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, probably destroying infrastructure. We don't exactly know what's going on. In Gaza City itself, Palestinian media are reporting over 100 shelling in within one hour in one of the roads in Gaza City. There's also bombing in places which are under operational control of the IDF, according to Palestinian media, such as the neighborhood of Aldaraj or the neighborhood of Tufar. But heavy fighting is going on in the Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza City and in the town of Shejaia, which is southeast of Gaza City, heavy clashes, close range. A lot of terrorists killed, as far as we understand from the IDF. An outpost, a stronghold of Hamas was taken over in the Jabalia refugee camp. They found tunnel shafts, infrastructure in Shejaia the same. According to Israeli media, just yesterday, there were 50 clashes, close range, between Hamas terrorists and Israeli ground forces. There's been 200 terrorists killed in Shejaia itself, according to non-confirmed Israeli media reports. And in Hanyuness, heavy bombing, the commando division is operating in the heart of Hanyuness with support by the artillery, the navy, and the air force. Also in the Nusrat refugee camp north of Hanyuness, also targeting of presumed terror infrastructures, as well as in Rafah in the most southern city of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, while Hanyuness isn't circled, it's a breezing encirclement in the sense that the Israeli army has notified the non-involved Palestinian civilian population to move west of Hanyuness and reach the Al-Muassi humanitarian zone, which is between Rafah and Hanyuness on the Mediterranean coast. And there is a tactical humanitarian pose in the fighting in the Assalam neighborhood of Rafah from 10 to 2 this afternoon, local time. Thank you very much Pierre for that report from the front. Now to underscore his point about the heavy fighting, I want you to look at this. It's a drone's eye view as two terrorists with an anti-tank weapon pop out of a tunnel, ready for an ambush, thwarted with a well-aimed drone strike. And we return to Major Elliot Shroudov, political and military analyst with the IDF's Northern Command. We're talking about the very heavy fighting in Gaza, Elliot. I want to know how much is left. People keep on talking about how much has been accomplished, and the answer is still vague. So it's maybe just as vague of an answer, but what are we still looking at there? We're still looking at a lot of Hamas. We're beginning to see in Sejaia and Jabalia where they're trapped and they can't move anymore. They're coming out to fight. And of course, we're defeating them. Absolutely. There's no better term for it. We still have plenty to do in Hanyuness and Rafiach. Nusairat was mentioned. There are other places that have Hamas concentrations and infrastructure, all of which will ultimately have to be dealt with. What we've seen up until now, up until the last few days, is Hamas operating in classic guerrilla form, following the dictums as written by Mao Tse-tung and others, never confront the enemy when he overwhelms you, when he's got overwhelming force, always back up, strike, ambush here, minor strike there, and pull your force back and keep it alive. They're losing that opportunity as the IDF's forces close in on them and basically put them into a pressure cooker. So I think we're going to be seeing increased intensity of fighting certainly in Jabalia Sejaia and even more so now in Hanyuness where we're closing in on the center. We have to keep in mind that the above-ground battle is only part of the fight. There's a good deal going on below ground and that's where Sinwar and his command center is. That's where a lot of their fighters still are and until they're either confronted underground or forced above ground, we still have a considerable amount of fighting ahead of us. I want to discuss more on that last point because even the highest estimates show that still less than 20% of Hamas's and Palestinian Islamic jihad's fighting force have been eliminated at this time. The underground infrastructure is still letting them hide, regroup, move their assets around the entirety of the Gaza Strip. And while Israel has destroyed a lot of it in the north, it certainly hasn't disabled yet. Correct. The underground network is still in existence but before you can really deal with it, the above-ground area has to be completely secured. And that's the process that the IDF is doing now. And that includes of course finding and either destroying or controlling the shafts that lead down into the tunnel system. And from our point of view, equally importantly, coming up out of the tunnel system, allowing terrorists to pop up basically wherever they want, launch a close range attack against Israeli forces and then hide again, disappear again into the tunnels. So the first stage and a critical stage is what's going on now and it looks like it's going into its end game. And that is the control of the above-ground areas. And obviously in warfare, control is not 100%, but control in the grand sense of we'll be able to move relatively unenhanbered by attacks from underground. Then we'll have to deal with the below ground and that's a whole technique in and of itself. I want to go further into that because when we're talking about the area being controlled, you yourself been on this show before saying that there's no magic button to disable those tunnels. You can't just flood them out and hope that's going to deal with it. So what will that process look like? Because until that underground fortress is cracked, this war cannot end. Right. So first of all, it means mapping them as best you can. And we're in the process of doing that via some of the shafts that exist using cameras, using dogs, using all sorts of other types of technology, plus information that we're getting from captured terrorists. Putting together intelligence is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing and you try to get the picture as best you can. And that's certainly being done now. Once that picture is clear enough, it means blocking off sections, not allowing them to move from one place to the other. And then frankly, the difficult work of going in and clearing out the tunnels. There are tactical techniques to do it. It's dangerous work. It can be made a little less dangerous if done properly, but warfare is not a game. People get hurt, people get killed. So as I said, it's a process. We're in the early stages of it. And I'm going to move our attention back to the north for a little bit. New Israeli reports say that Israel, the US and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border, an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. Similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended the naval territorial disputes. Now, one of the stipulations is this is moving Hezbollah forces. As you said yourself before, that would be at best a temporary solution. The other hand of this is, well, who is Israel really negotiating with in Lebanon? Does Lebanon, as their government, have any power to move Hezbollah or any inclination to do so? They may have the inclination. They don't have the power. There were two armies in Lebanon today. The second most powerful one was the Lebanese army. Hezbollah is the more powerful of the two. And even there within the Lebanese army, there are units that are predominantly Shiite. And their loyalty to the Lebanese state as opposed to Hezbollah is open to question. So here again, having an agreement that guarantees a land border is a nice thing to have. And I think many people don't realize there is no Lebanese border with Israel, just as there's no Syrian border with Israel, because a border isn't agreed upon line between two countries. And neither Lebanon nor Syria recognize Israel's existence. So there is no international border. There's a UN demarcated line between Israel and Lebanon. So having a recognized border is a nice thing to have. Does it mean anything physically on the ground? Largely, the answer is no. Hezbollah ignores international agreements. It ignores bilateral agreements, just like all terrorist organizations do. And ultimately, the solution as long as Hezbollah exists is to drive them back physically. Would having an international framework, such as the one discussed, mean that Israel would not be fighting Hezbollah alone, though? Would it drag other forces into that fight physically on the ground? It wouldn't drag them in. They would come in as they would like. And our experience going back decades, many decades, is that promises of support and particularly military support are very thin. When push comes to shove, it's a rare case. And I can count on the fingers of one hand and have spare fingers the times that foreign forces have actually come in in support of Israel. And quite frankly, from an Israeli sovereignty point of view, it would be better for us to be able to do it ourselves. It's nice to have a bit of cover from the United States. But most of America's cover for us is diplomatic and economic. It's not so much military. Here, let's keep in mind, with close to a half a million Israeli troops mobilized, now it's a little bit less because of the slight demobilization of the reserves, but close to a half a million mobilized troops, the addition of 10,000 Americans is not going to make that much of a difference in terms of the balance of forces. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Elliott, for helping us explain and understand the military and the tactical situation on the ground on actually two fronts. And we're going to change now to a civil advocacy center that's been established after October 7th. Dozens of content and high-tech experts across Israel joined forces to combat the important field of advocacy and the narrative message that's burning across social media. I-24 News correspondent, has more about the digital battleground. Around two months since October 7th, the battle continues, not only in the Middle East, but also in other fields. One of them is the field of advocacy. Here in this hub in Central Tel Aviv, dozens of volunteers gather to share their talents and abilities and to fight anti-Israeli propaganda, which is on the increase. Our main goal is to make 80-90% of those who are chanting Free Palestine shout in favor of Israel. Most of the people who are shouting Free Palestine are not even Muslims. They are the people who support Ukraine. They also need to support Israel. For 20 years, Israel focused on Jewish communities, while the BDS worked and made the story of Free Palestine a trendy and cool story. The center is divided into several main wings, a content wing which contains writers, producers, directors, and others who create posts, blogs, and even videos. We meet Paulina Patimer, a photographer who joined to document the broken Gaza envelope communities. Israel is such a small country, but I think the world seems like we are 20% of population because of our use and stuff that we are doing, but we're actually so minor and we need to invest so much power and energy and budget and sources in order to spread our news, the real facts and history. So I think if we don't do, we don't have anything else we can do for us. So it's kind of every Israeli or person who feels that he connects to Israel has to do something in order to improve the perspective One of the services offered here is media training for Israeli politicians and officials. What the world needs is they need people to explain it to them in their language and sometimes especially you know with Israel there's a language barrier and not just a language barrier, there's a way of communicating things like for example Naftali Bennett on Sky News, he did a fantastic job, absolutely fantastic, but it was very strange because he started shouting at the presenter and my Israeli family were like yeah he really gave it to them he showed them and my British family was saying oh my god he's just destroyed everything he's done terribly and it's so funny because that's why I'm saying you know you need to be able to communicate in a way that for example the Brits the Americans will understand and take in and that's what I think Israel sadly misses. The center also has a technology wing which develops new applications and tools to spread the word better around the world. We also find people who work in human resources and other positions. Sigalit and Amit are a mother and daughter who decided to join this center together. I had the privilege to work with my daughter. It's an opportunity that who knows when I'll have again. My son is doing reserve military service so the situation here reflects Israeli society and its ability. As we are about to leave we hear a siren and have to evacuate to a safe place but the people of Israeli Spirit Advocacy Center continue to work updating information online and documenting their experiences. And we are going to end with some live visuals of what's going on in Gaza as we recap briefly the latest military operations. The IDF has said troops are surrounding the city of Khan Yunus and have already broken through Hamas's Khan Yunus Brigade. That was the IDF's 90th division doing the bulk of the work there and circling the city and have begun to maneuver deeper inside the city. The next steps obviously to secure the city and from there get at the Hamas underground infrastructure beneath. Now as this is happening we're now hearing new reports from the IDF showing that Hamas has been launching rockets from inside humanitarian zones. We're going to have a report on that in the very near future at the top of our next broadcast but we are out of time. So you got to wait about a half hour before that comes in. That is going to be at a 12 o'clock broadcast local Israel time not that far away. So stay with us for that and until then thanks for watching. 24 News is ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Levin Waldman. This morning air raid sirens activated in the north amidst escalating fire from the Hezbollah terror organization. And in the south the IDF says troops have surrounded the city of Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip are operating in the city center. The military said the 98th division has broken through the defenses of Hamas's Khan Yunus Brigade in circling the city and beginning to maneuver deeper inside. The IDF has unfortunately been forced to announce the deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza. Bring the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive against Hamas since late October to 85. Staff Sergeant Amit Banzal and Staff Sergeant Alemno Emmanuel Faleke. The prime minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip in order to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics in the south of the Strip. The cabinet said the amount of fuel transfer will be the absolute minimum possible. Israel's foreign minister has accused the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation calling Guterres a danger to world peace. This is coming after Guterres issued a letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and his invocation of a rare clause in the UN Charter urging the Security Council to intervene. Article 99 allows Secretary General of the UN to bring to the Security Council's attention any matter he believes threatens international peace and security. But that measure has not been used since 1989 despite heavy world conflicts in that time period. Rear Admiral Daniel Higari has remarked on the latest ground developments in Gaza as well. Sinma's home is in the Khan Yunus area. There is both terrorist infrastructure and headquarters there. Sinma is not above ground, he's underground and I also do not want to specify where, how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get his Sinwa and kill him. That is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible. But in the end it's a joint mission of the security establishment, the Shin Bet and the IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leaders and kill them. And we're going to open with our eye in the north where our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by live from the border with Lebanon. Zach, walk us through the latest escalations in that fight. And we're seeing through Lebanese media channels that there are 11 attacks now from yesterday that Hezbollah is claiming responsibility for the IDF has not confirmed the number of attacks from yesterday or the amount of damage or injuries caused which is reflective often on the fact that there was no injuries or damage to speak of the IDF often able to report these figures by the end of day. So for no reports to come out is usually a sign that there was no injuries, no damage. These 11 attacks are taking place with ATGMs, mortar fire, heavy rocket launches and it does take a considerable amount of effort from the IDF to be able to identify with its intelligence gathering infrastructure here to identify these points of origin, the sources for where Hezbollah fired and then strike back. The IDF says that they were using their artillery and air strikes to destroy these points of fire that Hezbollah was using yesterday. Also reported in Lebanese media channels this morning the number of fighters, Hezbollah fighters that have been killed appears to have raised to 90. This again is not independently confirmed by Israeli sources but inside Lebanon they're claiming 90 Hezbollah fighters have now been killed, including four, four in the month of December since December 1st. Thank you very much Zach for that report from the North. We'll be back with you over the course of the day as the situation there develops. But before that we are going to be joined by Major Elliott Shodoff, political and military analyst with the IDF's Northern Command. Elliott, it's good to have you with us. Good to be back. Elliott, question for you because we see this escalation on the northern border that's at a constant level. There's the refrain that Israel cannot go back to the paradigm before October 7th and 70,000 displaced Israelis can't return to the northern border as long as Hezbollah is standing there on the border ready to carry out a massive attack again. So what's the plan they keep on escalating? There's no real signs of any de-escalation. How is the IDF going to force them back past the 1701 UN resolution line? Okay, first of all, I think it's important to understand that the escalation has been quantitative, not qualitative. In other words, we see numbers of attacks along the border. We don't see a significant qualitative change in the nature of those attacks. In other words, we're not seeing attacks deeper into Israel. We're not seeing massive rocket fire into Israel. Hezbollah is stepping up their activity, I believe in large part because in the south the IDF is closing in on Hamas center in Chanyunas and they want to show that they're part of the game with nothing else. They can simply stand by and watch Hamas get crushed and do nothing at all and be blamed later that they did nothing along the way. Having said all of that, very similar to what we permitted in Gaza, I would say even more so, we've permitted Hezbollah since 2006 to build up in south Lebanon to continue to increase its strength quantitatively and qualitatively in training and organization and the quality of their troops. And having seen what happened on October 7th, I don't see any way we can go back to that in the north as well. There's no diplomatic solution to that. And I think we need to be clear on that. UN resolutions look very nice on paper. They're absolutely useless on the ground unless they're enforced. The UN is not going to enforce it. So driving Hezbollah away from the border is something that needs to be done physically. I believe that that requires some sort of a ground operation in south Lebanon. But I think that's also largely contingent on how long the Gaza operation takes, how successful it is in terms of its absolute success, and then whether Israel and its allies have the stamina to go into another round against Hezbollah. But without the stamina to do so, isn't that just kicking the can down the road for another few years with each year they simply arm up more? Absolutely. There's no question it would be a strategic error to leave them where they are. A grand strategic error. It's one that we'll need to face, as you say, kicking the can down the road. And it's not even clear how far down the road the can is going. But still, political decisions, and this is really ultimately a political, not a military decision. The army will do it if it's told to do it. And I think we'll do it with great satisfaction. But it's a political decision. And the fact is, most political decisions are made on very short term issues. And that's done here. It's done in the United States. It's certainly a quality of democracy. What does public opinion think at the moment? What is public opinion willing to absorb at the moment? What do budgets look like? And in our case, what do our allies have to say as well? Because frankly, if an ally like the United States says we're not going to support you in this, we're withdrawing our forces from the Mediterranean, we're not going to resupply you, we've got a problem. Now, we did see a very interesting report in Lebanese Hezbollah affiliated media, actually, saying that there are some discussions now between Lebanon and France to do some sort of political deal related to a ceasefire in Gaza that could see Hezbollah withdraw behind the Lattani River line. Is this hot air? What incentive did they have to allow this in their affiliate and media? Are they simply buying time, looking for de-escalation, kicking the can down the road themselves? Yes. Well, kicking the can down the road works for them much better than it works for us. Because even if they withdraw tomorrow to behind the Lattani, the day after tomorrow they're gonna begin infiltrating back into the south. So if they can get some sort of a deal, which I don't see happening, but if they can get some sort of a deal that includes the IDF stopping its operations in Gaza, quiet along the northern border as a consequence of that, they will nominally pull back north of the Lattani. They'll pull back as far north as we ask them to because as soon as everything's in place, they'll begin trickling back. And here the trickling is critical because we're not going to go to war over 10 Hezbollah terrorists across the Lattani. We're not going to go to war over 20. And then it'll be another 20 and another 10 and another 20 and another 10 and they have all the time in the world. So a year from now, two years from now, we're right back where we are today. We're going to continue this discussion in a moment. But first I am going to bring the southern front into this. Pierre Kloschenler, our correspondent standing by just outside the border town of Stiro on the Gaza border. Pierre, walk us through the latest we're seeing on the Gaza front. Well, I'm going to start from north to south. In the north, in the sector of Bet Lahia, further northeast, northwest of where we are, there's a school in which according to Palestinian media affiliated to Hamas, there are thousands of displaced people that are still in the northern sector in that Bet Lahia school. And the army, the Israeli army would be besieging it. We don't have confirmation of the army. There's been heavy bombing very close to the border in Bet Hanun. The air earlier on was breezing with the muffled sound of artillery fire, navy fire, as well as aircraft fire in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, probably destroying infrastructure. We don't exactly know what's going on. In Gaza City itself, Palestinian media are reporting over 100 shelling in within one hour in one of the roads in Gaza City. There's also bombing in places which are under operational control of the IDF, according to Palestinian media, such as the neighborhood of Al-Daraj or the neighborhood of Tufar. But heavy fighting is going on in the Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza City and in the town of Shejaia, which is southeast of Gaza City, heavy clashes, close range. A lot of terrorists killed, as far as we understand from the IDF. An outpost, a stronghold of Hamas was taken over in the Jabalia refugee camp. They found tunnel shafts, infrastructure in Shejaia the same. According to Israeli media, just yesterday, there were 50 clashes, close range, between Hamas terrorists and Israeli ground forces. There's been 200 terrorists killed in Shejaia itself, according to non-confirmed Israeli media reports. And in Hanyun, heavy bombing, the commando division is operating in the heart of Hanyun, with support by the artillery, the navy, and the air force. Also in the Nusrat refugee camp north of Hanyun, also targeting of presumed terror infrastructures, as well as in Rafah in the most southern city of the Gaza Strip. At the same time, while Hanyuness is encircled, it's a breathing encirclement in the sense that the Israeli army has notified the non-involved Palestinian civilian population to move west of Hanyuness and reach the Al-Muassi humanitarian zone, which is between Rafah and Hanyuness on the Mediterranean coast. And there is a tactical humanitarian pose in the fighting in the Assalam neighborhood of Rafah from 10 to 2 this afternoon, local time. Thank you very much, Pierre, for that report from the front. Now to underscore his point about the heavy fighting, I want you to look at this. It's a drone's eye view as two terrorists with an anti-tank weapon pop out of a tunnel ready for an ambush, thwarted with a well-aimed drone strike. And we return to Major Elia Chodov, political and military analyst with the IDS Northern Command. We're talking about the very heavy fighting in Gaza, Elia. I want to know how much is left. People keep on talking about how much has been accomplished, and the answer is still somewhat vague. So it's maybe just as vague of an answer, but what are we still looking at there? We're still looking at a lot of Hamas. We're beginning to see in Sejaia and Jabalia, where they're trapped and they can't move anymore. They're coming out to fight. And of course, we're defeating them absolutely. There's no better term for it. We still have plenty to do in Chanyunas in Rafiach. Nusayirat was mentioned. There are other places that have Hamas concentrations and infrastructure, all of which will ultimately have to be dealt with. What we've seen up until now, up until the last few days, is Hamas operating in classic guerrilla form, following the dictums as written by Mao Tse-tung and others. Never confront the enemy when he overwhelms you, when he's got overwhelming force. Always back up, strike, ambush here, minor strike there, and pull your force back and keep it alive. They're losing that opportunity as the IDF's forces close in on them and basically put them into a pressure cooker. So I think we're going to be seeing increased intensity of fighting certainly in Jabalia, Sejaia, and even more so now in Chanyunas, where we're closing in on the center. We have to keep in mind that the above ground battle is only part of the fight. There's a good deal going on below ground, and that's where Sinwar and his command center is. That's where a lot of their fighters still are. And until they're either confronted underground or forced above ground, we still have a considerable amount of fighting ahead of us. I want to discuss more on that last point because even the highest estimates show that still less than 20% of Hamas's and Palestinian Islamic jihad's fighting force have been eliminated at this time. The underground infrastructure is still letting them hide, regroup, move their assets around the entirety of the Gaza Strip. And while Israel has destroyed a lot of it in the north, it certainly hasn't disabled yet. Correct. The underground network is still in existence, but before you can really deal with it, the above ground area has to be completely secured. And that's the process that the IDF is doing now. And that includes, of course, finding and either destroying or controlling the shafts that lead down into the tunnel system. And from our point of view, importantly, coming up out of the tunnel system, allowing terrorists to pop up basically wherever they want, launch a close range attack against Israeli forces and then hide again, disappear again into the tunnels. So the first stage and a critical stage is what's going on now and it looks like it's going into its end game. And that is the control of the above ground areas. And obviously in warfare control is not 100%, but control in the grand sense of we'll be able to move relatively unenhembered by attacks from underground. Then we'll have to deal with the below ground and that's a whole technique in and of itself. I want to go further into that because when we're talking about the area being controlled, you yourself have been on this show before saying that there's no magic button to disable those tunnels. You can't just flood them out and hope that's going to deal with it. So what will that process look like? Because until that underground fortress is cracked, this war cannot end. Right. So first of all, it means mapping them as best you can. And we're in the process of doing that via some of the shafts that exist using cameras, using dogs, using all sorts of other types of technology, plus information that we're getting from captured terrorists. Putting together intelligence is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing and you try to get the picture as best you can. And that's certainly being done now. Once that picture is clear enough, it means blocking off sections, not allowing them to move from one place to the other. And then frankly, the difficult work of going in and clearing out the tunnels. There are tactical techniques to do it. It's dangerous work. It can be made a little less dangerous if done properly, but warfare is not a game. People get hurt, people get killed. So as I said, it's a process. We're in the early stages of it. And I'm going to move our attention back to the north for a little bit. New Israeli reports say that Israel, the US and Lebanon are negotiating a permanent land border, an attempt to undermine Hezbollah's position. Similar to the 2022 maritime border deal with Lebanon that ended the naval territorial disputes. Now, one of the stipulations is this is moving Hezbollah forces. As you said yourself before, that would be at best a temporary solution. The other hand of this is, well, who is Israel really negotiating with in Lebanon? Does Lebanon, as their government, have any power to move Hezbollah or any inclination to do so? They may have the inclination. They don't have the power. There were two armies in Lebanon today. The second most powerful one was the Lebanese army. Hezbollah is the more powerful of the two. And even there within the Lebanese army, there are units that are predominantly Shiite, and their loyalty to the Lebanese state as opposed to Hezbollah is open to question. So here again, having an agreement that guarantees a land border is a nice thing to have. And I think many people don't realize there is no Lebanese border with Israel, just as there's no Syrian border with Israel, because a border is an agreed upon line between two countries, and neither Lebanon nor Syria recognize Israel's existence. So there is no international border. There's a UN demarcated line between Israel and Lebanon. So having a recognized border is a nice thing to have. Does it mean anything physically on the ground? Largely, the answer is no. Hezbollah ignores international agreements. It ignores bilateral agreements, just like all terrorist organizations do. And ultimately, the solution as long as Hezbollah exists is to drive them back physically. Would having an international framework such as the one discussed mean that Israel would not be fighting Hezbollah alone, though? Would it drag other forces into that fight physically on the ground? It wouldn't drag them in. They would come in as they would like. And our experience going back decades, many decades, is that promises of support and particularly military support are very thin. When push comes to shove, it's a rare case. And I can count on the fingers of one hand and have spare fingers the times that foreign forces have actually come in in support of Israel. And quite frankly, from an Israeli sovereignty point of view, it would be better for us to be able to do it ourselves. It's nice to have a bit of cover from the United States. But most of America's cover for us is diplomatic and economic. It's not so much military. Here, let's keep in mind with close to a half a million Israeli troops mobilized, now it's a little bit less because of the slight demobilization of the reserves. But close to a half a million mobilized troops, the addition of 10,000 Americans is not going to make that much of a difference in terms of the balance of forces. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Elliott, for helping us explain and understand the military and the tactical situation on the ground on actually two fronts. And we're going to change now to a civil advocacy center that's been established after October 7th. Dozens of content and high-tech experts across Israel joined forces to combat the important field of advocacy and the narrative message that's burning across social media. I-24 News correspondent Ari Shapira has more about the digital battleground. Around two months since October 7th, the battle continues, not only in the Middle East, but also in other fields. One of them is the field of advocacy. Here in this hub in central Tel Aviv, dozens of volunteers gather to share their talents and abilities and to fight anti-Israeli propaganda, which is on the increase. Our main goal is to make 80-90% of those who are chanting Free Palestine shout in favor of Israel. Most of the people who are shouting Free Palestine are not even Muslims. They are the people who support Ukraine. They also need to support Israel. For 20 years, Israel focused on Jewish communities, while the BDS worked and made the story of Free Palestine a trendy and cool story. The center is divided into several main wings, a content wing which contains writers, producers, directors, and others who create posts, blogs, and even videos. We meet Paulina Petimer, a photographer who joined to document the broken Gaza envelope communities. Israel is a small country, but I think the world thinks we are 20% of the population because of our news and stuff that we are doing, but we are actually so minor and we need to invest so much power and energy and budget and sources in order to spread our news, the real facts and history. So I think if we don't do, we don't have anything else who can do for us. So it's kind of every Israeli or person who feels that he connects to Israel has to do something in order to improve the perspective in the future. One of the services offered here is media training for Israeli politicians and officials. What the world needs is they need people to explain it to them in their language and sometimes especially you know with Israel there's a language barrier and not just a language barrier there's a way of communicating things like for example Naftali Bennett on Sky News he did a fantastic job absolutely fantastic but it was very strange because he started shouting at the presenter and my Israeli family were like yeah he really gave it to them he showed them and my British family was saying oh my god he's just destroyed everything he's done terribly and it's so funny because that's what I'm saying you know you need to be able to communicate in a way that for example the Brits the Americans will understand and take in and that's what I think Israel sadly misses. The center also has a technology wing which develops new applications and tools to spread the word better around the world. We also find people who work in human resources and other positions. Sigalit and Zameet are a mother and daughter who decided to join this center together. I had the privilege to work with my daughter. It's an opportunity that who knows when I'll have again. My son is doing reserve military service so the situation here reflects Israeli society and its ability. As we are about to leave we hear a siren and have to evacuate to a safe place but the people of Israeli Spirit Advocacy Center continue to work updating information online and documenting their experiences. And we are going to end with some live visuals of what's going on in Gaza as we recap briefly the latest military operations. The IDF has said troops are surrounding the city of Khan Yunus and have already broken through Hamas's Khan Yunus Brigade. That was the IDF's 90th division doing the bulk of the work there and circling the city and have begun to maneuver deeper inside the city. The next steps obviously to secure the city and from there get at the Hamas underground infrastructure beneath. Now as this is happening we're now hearing new reports from the IDF showing that Hamas has been launching rockets from inside humanitarian zones. We're going to have a report on that in the very near future at the top of our next broadcast but we are out of time. She got to wait about a half hour before that comes in. That is going to be at a 12 o'clock broadcast local Israel time not that far away so stay with us for that and until then thanks for watching coverage of Israel at war. Let's take a look at this first indisputable evidence that shows Hamas firing rockets from inside the designated humanitarian areas. These are places the IDF has agreed not to strike in order to preserve civilian life. Rockets being launched from locations near the tents for evacuated citizens as well as next to UN facilities. 12 rockets total fire from these points directly at Beershiba's civilian population. This is coming as IDF troops have surrounded the city of Khan Yunus in the south of the Gaza Strip and they are operating in that city center. The military said the 98th division broke through the defenses of Hamas's Khan Yunus Brigade encircled the city and began to move deeper inside. The IDF has announced though the unfortunate deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in Gaza which brings the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive against Hamas to 85. Staff Sergeant Alamnu Emmanuel Faleke as well as Staff Sergeant Amit Banzel. The prime minister's office reported on Wednesday that the cabinet also approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemic diseases in southern Gaza. The cabinet said the amount will be the minimum possible to preserve civilian life. Israel's foreign minister accused the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres of supporting Hamas terrorists and called for his resignation. This after Guterres issued a letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against Hamas and invoking a rare clause of the UN article 99 allows the secretary general to bring the security council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security. This has not been used since 1989 despite far bigger conflicts in the world in the intermediate time. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagaria is also remarked on the latest ground developments. Let's listen. Sinwa's home is in the Khan Yunus area. There is both terrorist infrastructure and headquarters there. Sinwa is not above ground he's underground and I also do not want to specify where how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view. This is not the place to talk about such things in the media. Our job is to get you Sinwa and kill him. That is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible. But in the end it's a joint mission of the security establishment the Shin Bet and the IDF to track him down along with other Hamas leaders and kill them. And we're going to open with our eye in the south. Pierre Kloschenler our news correspondent standing by just outside the city of Stero on the Gaza border. Pierre walk us through what's going on there. Well we're going to start from the south now as you mentioned the IDF showed some pictures of rocket launching near a UN facility and the humanitarian zone which was dedicated for displaced Palestinians and they're over 80 percent in the southern Gaza Strip right now with one million people that moved from the northern sector which is behind me to the southern sector. Now the Al-Muassi humanitarian zone is a place where every day the IDF is calling the residents of Hanyunas to leave the battlefield and move west of Hanyunas because although there is a military encirclement of the city there it's breathing encirclement in the sense that for humanitarian purposes west is open for non-involved Palestinian civilians now they're moving to Al-Muassi and then yesterday between 12 local time noon local time and 3 p.m local time there were three rocket launchers onto Israeli territory. One of them were the 12 rocket salvo to Bersheva which caused some damage but no casualties yesterday and then another rocket launch was a misfire rocket which fell according to the IDF on Palestinian populated areas. We don't know what happened after the rocket crushed on Palestinian populated areas but that's the IDF version. Then at three again on Israeli territory another salvo and that's just on the border on the edge of that humanitarian zone. In addition in Hanyunas the pounding of presumed terror targets is going on in advance of the ground forces of the special commando units that are entering the heart of Hanyunas. There are heavy fighting and in the central sector of the Gaza Strip you also have bombing in Rafah in Nusrat refugee camp but in Rafah there is one zone which is enjoying benefitting from a humanitarian pose in the fighting it's the Al-Salam neighborhood of Rafah. Well thank you very much Pierre for that vision from the front and the south and we're going to move to the studio to discuss just what this means because there are now signs of Hamas losing political control in Gaza. Civilians are speaking at and on broadcast television no less. They're cursing Hamas for the calamity that has befallen them as 80 percent of Gazans have been displaced by war. These are statements that have gone viral. Let's take a listen. And we are joined in studio by Yankov Lapin military and should teach affairs analysts at the Jewish News Syndicate. Those are some extremely powerful statements we just saw come out of these civilians in Gaza cursing their respective government if you can call it that for possibly the first time they've seen in the war openly defying them on television no less is Hamas finally losing political control. I would say so and we saw a gradual loss of this control it began with the evacuation of over a million people from northern Gaza and Gaza City when Hamas their regime was telling him to stay put and they obviously you know that was a huge vote of no confidence voting with their feet and then we saw growing numbers of expressions of not only discontent but actual alarm over the conditions that Hamas the disaster that Hamas was bringing down on the heads of the Gazan people you know when you lose everything and you know you lose your fear to speak and I think that that's what's happening with these people they know very well who is responsible for their predicament. It was completely avoidable completely unnecessary and and now we're seeing you know the chickens come home to roost for the Hamas regime I think the political regime is absolutely crumbling and the terror army is going to be next in the coming weeks and months. I guess the question is how widespread is this we saw a few weeks ago polls of Hamas support and it was still very high the question is now with Hamas seemingly not broken yet but on the way to breaking is it still that way and is there a difference in supporting Hamas and supporting Hamas's ideals under a different name. It's very difficult to predict these things you know we've had so many cases in the Middle East of you know even Arab intelligence services failing to understand the next day what would happen amongst you know currents in the in the Arab public but I think what we can't say generally speaking is that the Gaza Strip is experiencing an unprecedented shock the Gazan people are experiencing an unprecedented disaster brought upon them by Hamas's mass murder attack on on October 7th which launched this war and it's going to take time for the Gazan people to process this as they find themselves intense as they see that they can't come back to their homes as the war continues to rage I think that the credibility of the Hamas idea and the expression of that idea is going to plummet within the Gazan people how far and for how long we don't yet know and unfortunately just as we're speaking we got another update another IDF soldier has fallen Maura Gershone that makes the 86th IDF casualty in the war in Gaza we are going to turn our attention to the war in the north though our correspondent Zach Anders is standing by on the border with Lebanon to walk us through the latest escalations latest developments we're seeing in the war against Hezbollah you know a short time ago we were hearing outgoing artillery and in the weeks that I've spent up here at least in this position near Kiryat Shemona it was some of the heaviest and most consistent outgoing thumbs we see from the artillery as it was clear they they were resolved in striking a target on the Lebanon side of course this artillery has to reach up over the crest of the hill and lands on the other side so we don't see the impacts we have to wait until the social media reports but this corresponds with several attacks that we've seen in the last 24 hours with Hezbollah targeting these IDF positions outposts all throughout the north here and then the IDF will fire in return and strike these points of origin there's a footage circulating on social media this morning from inside Lebanon that appears to show a large strike inside a community in southern Lebanon that appears to have struck some potentially ammunition depot because of the size of the secondary explosion that occurs after this building is struck it does appear that this correlates with what the IDF is reporting this morning saying that they've been striking not just the positions or points of origin of this fire but also some of the Hezbollah infrastructure that has been supporting their efforts in this campaign here in the south well thank you very much Zach for that update from the northern front I'm going to drag our attention back down to the south we got this new video coming in literally right as we speak this seems to gozens crowding outside of UNRAT infrastructure making this is not the only time we've seen massive crowds attempting to get supplies from UN agencies in the region but this is definitely one of the thickest crowds we just saw in that video I'm going to turn back to the studio where Yaakov Leppin is still with us I want to turn our attention to the north even as we're talking about this situation and we're going to go more into this one later because this seems to just underscore what we were saying about who's actually in control in Gaza and the answer to that seems to be nobody at the moment turning back towards the north we're talking about the war with Hezbollah as well and the how long it can go on for there's another time limit on this war which we're not talking about as much as something that you brought up to me just a few minutes ago before the show that is of course Iran's nuclear program a new report showing that they've stockpiled close to a thousand kilograms of fissile material at this point and that's going to be a massive game changer it gives Hezbollah a nuclear umbrella how long do we have yeah and you know I'm just looking at a you know an alarming report that came out of the INSS Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and they are basically talking about the fact that under the radar the IAEA released a report at the end of November talking about significant progress Iranian progress in enriching uranium at the 60 percent level and at the 20 percent level and Iranian plans to enlarge the four Dao nuclear site and the tons so what we're seeing is that the Iranians are continuing and that the American efforts to rein them in with a sort of unofficial mini agreement has collapsed and we see no signs of anything that's slowing them down so they're continuing in their progress and this is all happening under the radar so you know I think we need to keep this in mind we need to not forget the Iranian nuclear program which would you know if it progresses towards the breakout stage would absolutely necessitate military action and Iran seems to be inching you know very patiently but consistently towards that red line possibly using you know these events as a distraction certainly something we have to keep in mind and I'm sure that it's front and center and the attention of the intelligence communities both here in Israel and the United States and the region I mean we say inching towards the breakout point but this seems more like racing towards that breakout point people have been saying for months that there are only a few months away from a breakout point so where does that put them now and when does the United States actually get involved if they get involved well look when it comes to breaking out you know what we're talking about right now still the uranium enrichment right and you still have to build a bomb once you have enough uranium and they do have enough uranium to build several bombs but then you actually have to build it and that means you know activating a kind of weapons group that does detonation mechanisms and miniaturizes the explosive puts it on a missile warhead this whole thing is supposed to take about a year year and a half at least from the point that you started now assuming that they haven't started and we haven't seen any evidence in the public sphere that they have that they have started it they're not going to have a nuclear weapon tomorrow but the fact that they have this much enriched uranium is alarming certainly it's you know it's a it's a ringing bell and they can't really be allowed to progress any further because that's when they start inching towards the breakout point the whole Iranian strategy I think is inching it's inching and then before you know it it accumulates and they've covered so much distance that they're essentially you know at a point of no return and that's what has to be prevented right now Iran is a nuclear threshold state and it's inching towards something much more severe this brings us back to the issue with Lebanon because Israel well these are the leadership saying that this war can't end with Hezbollah directly on the border but then we see these other statements and these other actions that seem to be an indication that Israel wants to kick the can down the road as far as taking the fight to Hezbollah goes there's a hard limit now on how far that can can be kicked isn't there absolutely look you know I think that the fact that Israel is prioritizing the Gazan Hamas challenge arena war is makes perfect strategic sense because you'd rather focus and prioritize the military intelligence resources that are necessary to dismantle Hamas and to do that first before turning attention to the north and so long as Israel can do that it will do that but Israel has also made it very clear we heard comments from Minister of Defense Gallant yesterday that the north is next and that the status quo that occurred until the 6th of October until the day before Hamas's attack will not be allowed to continue Hamas cannot keep its red one forces on the border cannot keep death squads on the border Hamas's entire attack on the 7th of October was basically a copy and paste of what Hezbollah had planned for the Galilee none of that can continue and so Israel is going to work to push Hezbollah back how that happens we don't know will there be a diplomatic result I say prize result from diplomatic efforts it seems unlikely but it's worth a shot nothing to lose and if not then there's going to be some sort of military maneuver and then we'll have to see how Hezbollah responds to that but the north is next however which way you look at it the United States has been insisting from the very beginning they do not want to see this escalate into a regional war it seems to me it's already too late for that well they're certainly trying to prevent it and they have to be given you know the opportunity to try and prevent it I think if the Americans see that diplomatic efforts are tried and that Israel has given it a chance and it fails then there's not much they can say because they can't tell Israel look you have to accept Hezbollah on the northern border and tell your tens of thousands of residents to come back that's not going to happen the Americans understand that very well but if they are given the chance to try together with the French and the Saudis and all these diplomatic efforts that we're now seeing underway to prevent a war in the north and they see that it fails you know what what will they be able to say after that then it's clear that only a buffer zone a military maneuver will be the thing that stabilizes the northern arena so you know certainly Israel is giving it a chance and we'll have to wait and see you know keep an open mind it seems unlikely but at least they're trying wait and see well Israel's arch nemesis assembles the bomb is just sort of terrifying prospect for everyone here we're going to come back to this in a brief moment first though we are going to look back at some tales of heroism from october 7th the border police units fighting in more than 35 different locations eliminated an estimated 500 Hamas terrorists on that day this report brings some details and some videos from the fierce battles they fought let's watch this body cam footage of a border policeman was taken at the Yad Mordecai intersection a half an hour after a series of missile alert sirens blasted across Israel on october 7th two months ago recently the border police conducted a preliminary investigation of all battles fought by their units the investigation revealed 37 fierce battles took place in different locations officers confronting Hamas terrorists and in particular the terror groups Nakba unit this map drawn as a part of the investigation follows the fighting trail showing combat zones spreading across all surrounding communities including sterot, ofakeem and netivot in these locations the border police fighters eliminated more than 500 Hamas terrorists most of them from the Nakba unit who infiltrated the southern communities the border police captured dozens of terrorists and handed them over to the Shin Bet to the IDF's 504 unit and to the police interrogation unit interrogations that yielded quality intelligence aiding IDF maneuvers inside the Gaza Strip additionally the investigation revealed that the border police fighters rescued thousands of local residents and revelers from the nova music festival this video is from the body camera of a border police raider a tactical brigade which rescued the Galani brigade soldiers trapped inside this apc in kibbutz near this is only a summary of the initial investigation conducted by the border police Israeli police are still conducting a comprehensive and in-depth investigation the conclusions of which will likely be submitted to a commission of inquiry that is expected to be established after the war Nakba that was impressive to watch that to say the least I mean the border police are more heavily armed than regular police but they're not so heavily armed that they're expected to be the first minor defense against an invading army of course I would say you know first of all just the border police which is a sort of halfway house between the civilian blue police and the military both the border police which we call the green police and the blue police performed outstandingly on the 7th of October took on far more heavily armed terrorists saved many many lives and functioned under fire in a heroic manner and they deserve you know lots of credit I think for for their ability to operate in such a basic surprise such a huge strategic surprise and they saved many lives going forward I think you know this really stresses how vital the police are in this country and the border police and the national guard that's going to be set up under the police as we speak how vital these forces will be for dealing with future infiltration and mass murder attempts by terrorists and you know the fact that the army is going to change the way it deploys on the border as Galan said you know instead of battalions will have brigades and there's going to be much more larger order of battle so too does the police require a much heavier state investment it needs to grow in size the national guard will be critical the border police will have to grow and the police is going to play a major role going forward in rebuilding the country's national resilience and the ability to deal with terrorism both that you know large scale and small scale the police is a key part of that of that formula and the events of the 7th of October only you know stress that through their heroism and you're also talking about new tactics and new forms of equipment they're going to need to be able to deploy it more rapidly than we've seen in the past right well you know I'm sure that they are drawing lessons now and figuring out how to redesign some of their first response counterterrorism units we've already seen you know in the past two years during the terrorism escalation the motorcycle units obviously got to the area's fastest you know when the roads are shut down and there's traffic and mayhem and chaos sending you know well armed personnel on motorcycles they'll get there first so I'm sure that that's part of the lesson learning that they'll be doing and you know figuring out how to reach these zones as quickly as possible how to work with local civilian response teams which will also be armed and ready and just you know building a network of very rapid responders in order to not allow terrorists to take over areas even you know smaller scale attacks you know 10 20 a man terror cell can cause mayhem in a city block in a in a in a village in the future so Israel needs to build its responses in a sort of networked integrated manner where from multiple directions police border police civilian response teams arrive very very quickly like an immune system and just neutralize the invader as soon as possible not allow the atrocity to spread and we've seen it's not just the military or the police either it seems that the entirety of Israeli society is restructuring seeing this is a wake-up call you mentioned the civilian security squads there's also been an application for some 280,000 civilian firearms which would more than triple the amount that are already in circulation I mean this is an entire society being rebuilt as a security state from the ground up right and you know look I think it's very understandable after the events of the 7th of October and the mass violence and murder that the society has experienced the desire not to be caught unarmed in the future in the face of such a threat is understandable and of course you know basic checks have to continue to be made before firearms are distributed but people who've served in the military who are well equipped to deal with firearms they absolutely should be allowed in my opinion to arm themselves to protect themselves and their families because of the place that we live in it's a very dangerous region that was proved time and time again but Israel is going to have to learn so it's a new way forward not new society that has to be built after that sort of failure yako thank you very much for explaining everything and breaking down so many different facets of this war in the situation for us for everyone else though we are just about out of time but there will be another broadcast coming up in just about a half hour where you're going to get so many more stories and in-depth analysis on so much more of the war that you won't catch anywhere else and until then you can also follow us online at i24news.tv slash en for so much more thank you all for watching news 24 drill story to the world 24 news ongoing coverage of israel at war i'm ariel levin waldman let's take a look at this first indisputable evidence that shows hamas firing rockets from inside the designated humanitarian areas these are places the idf has agreed not to strike in order to preserve civilian life rockets being launched from locations near the tents for evacuated citizens as well as next to un facilities 12 rockets total fired from these points directly at bir shiba's civilian population this is coming as idf troops have surrounded the city of khan unis in the south of the gaza strip and they are operating in that city center the military said the 98th division broke through the defenses of hamas's khan unis brigade encircled the city and began to move deeper inside the idf has announced though the unfortunate deaths of two more soldiers killed during the fighting in gaza which brings the toll of slain soldiers during the ground offensive against hamas to 85 staff sergeant alumnus immanuel phileke as well as staff sergeant amit panzel the prime minister's office reported on wednesday that the cabinet also approved allowing the transfer of additional fuel to the gaza strip to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemic diseases in southern gaza the cabinet said the amount will be the minimum possible to preserve civilian life israel's foreign minister accused the united nation's secretary general antonio getterich of supporting hamas terrorists and called for his resignation this after a terrorist issued a letter demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war against hamas and invoking a rare clause of the un article 99 allows the secretary general to bring the security council's attention any matter that he believes threatens international peace and security this has not been used since 1989 despite far bigger conflicts in the world in the intermediate time rear admiral dena hagaria is also remarked on the latest ground developments let's listen sinma's home is in the khan unis area there is both terrorist infrastructure and headquarters there sinma is not above ground he's underground and i also do not want to specify where how and what we are bringing from an intelligence point of view this is not the place to talk about such things in the media our job is to get you sinwa and kill him that is our job and we need to do it as quickly as possible but in the end it's a joint mission of the security establishment the shin bet and the idf to track him down along with other hamas leaders and kill them and we're going to open with our eye in the south pierre cloche and there are news correspondents standing by just outside the city of sterot on the gaza border pierre walk us through what's going on there well we're going to start from the south now as you mentioned the idf showed some pictures of rocket launching near a un facility and the humanitarian zone which was dedicated for displaced palestinians and they're over 80 percent in the southern gaza strip right now with one million people that moved from the northern sector which is behind me to the southern sector now the al-muassi humanitarian zone is a place where every day the the idf is calling the residents of hanyu nes to leave the the battlefield and move west of hanyu nes because although there is a military encirclement of the city uh there it's a breathing encirclement in the sense that for humanitarian purposes west is open for non-involved palestinian civilians now they're moving to al-muassi and then yesterday between 12 local time noon local time and 3 p.m local time there were 3 rocket launchers on to israeli territory one of them were the 12 rocket salvo to berceva which caused some damage but no casualties yesterday and then another rocket launch was a misfire rocket which fell according to the idf on palestinian populated areas we don't know what happened after the rocket crashed on palestinian populated areas but that's the idf version then at three again on israeli territory another salvo and that's just on the border on the edge of that humanitarian zone in addition in hanyu nes the pounding of presumed terror targets is going on in advance of the ground forces of the special commando units that are entering the heart of hanyu nes there are heavy fighting and uh and in the central sector of the gaza strip you also have a bombing in raffa in nusera refugee camp but in raffa there is one zone which is enjoying benefitting from a humanitarian pose in the fighting it's the al-salam neighborhood of raffa well thank you very much pier for that vision from the front and the south and we're gonna move to the studio to discuss just what this means because there are now signs of hamas losing political control in gaza civilians are speaking at and on broadcast television no less they're cursing hamas for the calamity that has befallen them as 80 percent of gaza's have been displaced by war these are statements that have gone viral let's take a listen and we are joined in studio by yaakov lapin military and should teach affairs analysts at the jewish news syndicate those are some extremely powerful statements we just saw come out of these civilians in gaza cursing their respective government if you can call it that for possibly the first time we've seen in the war openly defying them on television no less is hamas finally losing political control i would say so we saw a gradual loss of this control it began with the evacuation of over a million people from northern gaza and gaza city when hamas their regime was telling him to stay put and they obviously you know that was a huge vote of no confidence voting with their feet and then we saw growing numbers of expressions of not only discontent but actual alarm over the conditions that hamas the disaster that hamas was bringing down on the heads of the gaza and people you know when you lose everything and you know you lose your fear to speak and i think that that's what's happening with these people they know very well who is responsible for their predicament it was completely avoidable completely unnecessary and and now we're seeing you know the chickens come home to roost for the hamas regime i think the political regime is absolutely crumbling and the terror army is going to be next in the coming weeks and months i guess the question is how widespread is this we saw a few weeks ago polls of hamas support and it was still very high the question is now with hamas seemingly not broken yet but on the way to breaking is it still that way and is there a difference in supporting hamas and supporting hamas's ideals under a different name it's very difficult to predict these things you know we've had so many cases in the middle east of you know even arab intelligence services failing to understand the next day what would happen amongst you know currents in the in the air public but i think what we can say generally speaking is that the gaza strip is experiencing an unprecedented shock the gaza people are experiencing an unprecedented disaster brought upon them by khamas's mass murder attack on on october 7th which launched this war and it's going to take time for the gaza people to process this as they find themselves intense as they see that they can't come back to their homes as the war continues to rage i think that the credibility of the hamas idea and the expression of that idea is going to plummet within the gaza people how far and for how long we don't yet know and unfortunately just as we're speaking we got another update another idf soldier has fallen maura gershone that makes the 86 idf casualty in the war in gaza we are going to turn our attention to the war in the north though our correspondent zack anders is standing by on the border with lebanon to walk us through the latest escalations latest developments we're seeing in the war against hezbollah you know a short time ago we were hearing outgoing artillery and in the weeks that i've spent up here at least in this position near kiri at shamona it was some of the heaviest and most consistent outgoing thumbs we see from the artillery as it was clear they they were resolved in striking a target on the lebanon side of course this artillery has to reach up over the crest of the hill and lands on the other side so we don't see the impacts we have to wait until the social media reports but this corresponds with several attacks that we've seen in the last 24 hours with hezbollah targeting these idf positions outposts all throughout the north here and then the idf will fire in return and strike these points of origin there's a footage circulating on social media this morning from inside lebanon that appears to show a large strike inside a community in southern lebanon that appears to have struck some potentially ammunition's depot because of the size of the secondary explosion that occurs after this building is struck it does appear that this correlates with what the idf is reporting this morning saying that they've been striking not just the positions or points of origin of this fire but also some of the hezbollah infrastructure that has been supporting their efforts in this campaign here in the south well thank you very much zack for that update from the northern front i'm going to drag our attention back down to the south we got this new video coming in literally right as we speak this seems to gozans crowding outside of infrastructure making there is this is not the only time we've seen massive crowds attempting to get supplies from new and agencies in the region but this is definitely one of the thickest crowds we just saw in that video i'm going to turn back to the studio where yakov leban is still with us i want to turn our attention to the north even as we're talking about this situation and we're gonna go more into this one later because this seems to just underscore what we were saying about who's actually in control in gaza and the answer to that seems to be nobody at the moment turning back towards the north we're talking about the war with hezbollah as well and the how long it can go on for there's another time limit on this war which we're not talking about as much as something that you brought up to me just a few minutes ago before the show that is of course iran's nuclear program a new report showing that they've stockpiled close to a thousand kilograms of fissile material at this point and that's going to be a massive game changer it gives hezbollah a nuclear umbrella how long do we have yeah um and you know i'm just looking at a you know an alarming report that came out of the i n s s institute for national security studies in tel Aviv and they are basically talking about the fact that under the radar the i a e a released a report at the end of november talking about significant progress iranian progress in enriching uranium at the 60 percent level and at the 20 percent level and iranian plans to enlarge the fordow nuclear site and the tons so what we're seeing is that the iranians are continuing and that the american efforts to rain them in with a sort of unofficial mini agreement has collapsed and we see no signs of anything that's slowing them down so they're continuing in their progress and this is all happening under the radar so you know i think we need to keep this in mind we need to not forget the iranian nuclear program which would you know if it progresses towards the breakout stage would absolutely necessitate military action and iran seems to be inching you know very patiently but consistently towards that red line possibly using you know these events as as you know as a distraction certainly something we have to keep in mind and i'm sure that it's front and center and the attention of the intelligence communities both here in israel and the united states and the region i mean we say inching towards the breakout point but this seems more like racing towards that breakout point people have been saying for months that there are only a few months away from a breakout point so where does that put them now and when does the united states actually get involved if they get involved well look when it comes to breaking out you know what we're talking about right now is still the iranium enrichment right and you still have to build a bomb once you have enough iranium and they do have enough iranium to build several bombs but then you actually have to build it and that means you know activating a kind of weapons group that does detonation mechanisms and miniaturizes the explosive puts it on a missile warhead this whole thing is supposed to take about a year year and a half at least from the point that you started now assuming that they haven't started and we haven't seen any evidence in the public sphere that they have that they have started it they're not going to have a nuclear weapon tomorrow but the fact that they have this much enriched iranium is alarming certainly it's you know it's a it's a ringing bell and they can't really be allowed to progress any further because that's when they start inching towards the breakout point the whole iranian strategy i think is inching it's inching and then before you know it it accumulates and they've covered so much distance that they're essentially you know at a point of no return and that's what has to be prevented right now iran is a nuclear threshold state and it's inching towards something much more severe this brings us back to the issue with lebanon because israel well these are the leadership saying that this war can't end with hezbollah directly on the border but then we see these other statements and these other actions that seem to be an indication that israel wants to kick the can down the road as far as taking the fight to hezbollah goes there's a hard limit now on how far that can can be kicked isn't there absolutely uh look you know i think that the fact that israel is prioritizing the gazon hamas challenge arena war is makes perfect strategic sense because you'd rather focus and prioritize the military intelligence resources that are necessary to dismantle hamas and to do that first before turning attention to the north and so long as israel can do that it will do that but israel has also made it very clear we heard comments from minister defense minister of defense gallant yesterday uh that the north is next and that the status quo that occurred until the 6th of october until uh the day before hamas's attack will not be allowed to continue hamas cannot keep its rudwan forces on the border cannot keep death squads on the border hamas's entire attack on the 7th of october was basically a copy and paste of what hezbollah had planned for the galley none of that can continue and so israel is going to work to push hezbollah back how that happens we don't know will there be a diplomatic uh result i say prize result from diplomatic efforts it seems unlikely but it's worth a shot nothing to lose and if not then there's going to be some sort of military maneuver and then we'll have to see how hezbollah responds to that but the north is next however which way you look at it the united states has been insisting for the very beginning they do not want to see this escalate into a regional war it seems to me it's already too late for that well they're certainly trying to prevent it and they have to be given you know the opportunity to try and prevent it i think if the americans see that diplomatic efforts are tried and that israel has given it a chance and it fails then there's not much they can say because they can't tell israel look you have to accept hezbollah on the northern border and tell your tens of thousands of residents to come back that's not going to happen the americans understand that very well but if they are given the chance to try together with the french and the saudis and all these diplomatic efforts that we're now seeing underway to prevent a war in the north um and they see that it fails you know what will they be able to say after that then it's clear that only a buffer zone a military maneuver will be the thing that stabilizes the northern arena um so you know certainly israel is giving you the chance and we'll have to wait and see you know keep an open mind it seems unlikely but at least they're trying wait and see while israel's arch nemesis assembles the bomb is sort of terrifying prospect for everyone here we're going to come back to this in a brief moment first though we are going to look back at some tales of heroism from october 7th the border police units fighting in more than 35 different locations eliminated an estimated 500 hamas terrorists on that day this report brings some details and some videos from the fierce battles they fought let's watch this bodycam footage of a border policeman was taken at the yad mordecai intersection a half an hour after a series of missile alert sirens blasted across israel on october 7th two months ago recently the border police conducted a preliminary investigation of all battles fought by their units the investigation revealed 37 fierce battles took place in different locations officers confronting hamas terrorists and in particular the terror groups nakba unit this map drawn as a part of the investigation follows the fighting trail showing combat zones spreading across all surrounding communities including sterot of akim and netivot in these locations the border police fighters eliminated more than 500 hamas terrorists most of them from the nakba unit who infiltrated the southern communities the border police captured dozens of terrorists and handed them over to the shin bet to the idf's 504 unit and to the police interrogation unit interrogations that yielded quality intelligence aiding idf maneuvers inside the gaza strip additionally the investigation revealed that the border police fighters rescued thousands of local residents and revelers from the nova music festival this video is from the body camera of a border police raider a tactical brigade which rescued the galani brigade soldiers trapped inside this apc in kibbutz near ohm this is only a summary of the initial investigation conducted by the border police israeli police are still conducting a comprehensive and in-depth investigation the conclusions of which will likely be submitted to a commission of inquiry that is expected to be established after the war yako that was impressive to watch that to say the least i mean the border police are more heavily armed than regular police but they're not so heavily armed that they're expected to be the first minor defense against an invading army of course i would say you know first of all just the border police which is a sort of halfway house between the civilian blue police and the military both the border police which we call the green police and the blue police performed outstandingly on the 7th of october took on far more heavily armed terrorists saved many many lives and function under fire in a heroic manner and and they deserve you know lots of credit i think for for their ability to to operate in such a basic surprise such a huge strategic surprise and then they saved many lives going forward i think you know this really stresses how vital the police are in this country and the border police and the national guard that's going to be set up under the police as we speak how vital these forces will be for dealing with future infiltration and mass murder attempts by terrorists and you know the fact that the army is going to change the way it deploys on the border as gallant said you know instead of battalions will have brigades and there's going to be much more larger order of battle so too does the police require a much heavier state investment it needs to grow in size the national guard will be critical the border police will have to grow and the police is going to play a major role going forward in rebuilding the country's national resilience and the ability to deal with terrorism both at you know large scale and small scale the police is a key part of that of that formula and the events of the 7th of october only you know stress that through their heroism and you're also talking about new tactics and new forms of equipment they're going to need to be able to deploy it more rapidly than we've seen in the past right well you know i'm sure that they are drawing lessons now and figuring out how to redesign some of their first response counter-terrorism units we've already seen you know in the past two years during the terrorism escalation the motorcycle units obviously got to the area's fastest you know when the roads are shut down and there's traffic and mayhem and chaos sending you know well armed personnel on motorcycles they'll get there first so i'm sure that that's part of the lesson learning that they'll be doing and you know figuring out how to reach these zones as quickly as possible how to work with local civilian response teams which will also be armed and ready and just you know building a network of very rapid responders in order to not allow terrorists to take over areas even you know smaller scale attacks you know 10 20 a man terror cell can cause mayhem in a city block in a in a in a village in the future so israel needs to build its responses in a sort of networked integrated manner where for multiple directions police border police civilian response teams arrive very very quickly like an immune system and just neutralize the invader as soon as possible not allow the atrocity to spread and we've seen it's not just the military or the police either it seems that the entirety of israeli society is restructuring seeing this is a wake-up call you mentioned the civilian security squads there's also been an application for some 280 000 civilian firearms providers which would more than triple the amount that are already in circulation i mean this is an entire society being rebuilt as a security state from the ground up right and you know look i think it's very understandable after the events of the 7th of october and the mass violence and murder that the society has experienced the desire not to be caught unarmed in the future in the face of such a threat is understandable and of course you know basic checks have to continue to be made before firearms are distributed but people who've served in the military who are well equipped to deal with firearms they absolutely should be allowed in my opinion to arm themselves to protect themselves and their families because of the place that we live in it's a very dangerous region that was proved time and time again but israel is going to have to learn so it's a new way forward in a new society that has to be built after that sort of failure yako thank you very much for explaining everything and breaking down so many different facets of this war in the situation for us for everyone else though we are just about out of time but there will be another broadcast coming up in just about a half hour where you're going to have so many more stories and in-depth analysis on so