Israel at War: What happened on day 18?

Israeli artillery forces struck the source of rocket fire from Syria on the Golan Heights on Tuesday evening, the IDF confirmed.

Sirens sounded in the towns of Neot Golan, Bnei Yehuda, and Givat Yoav, to the East of Lake Kinneret.

The IDF said two rockets were launched at Israel from Syria and fell in open fields.

IDF strikes terror cells in Lebanon

The IDF targeted a terrorist cell that fired anti-tank missiles at Israel from within Lebanese territory, it said on Tuesday.

The Israeli military responded with artillery forces to anti-tank fire directed at the northern border towns of Shutla and Menara. The IDF destroyed the weaponry used to launch the missiles, it added. 

UNRWA warned that it would halt its operations in the besieged Gaza enclave on Wednesday night because of the lack of fuel, the relief group posted on the messaging platform X.

"UNRWA will run out of fuel TOMORROW night - forcing us to halt operations and delivery of humanitarian aid to people in need," it said.

Israeli artillery forces reportedly struck targets inside Syria in response to rocket fire on the Golan Heights on Tuesday evening.

Sirens sounded in the towns of Neot Golan, Bnei Yehuda, and Givat Yoav, to the East of Lake Kinneret.

This is a developing story.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in the presence of visiting French President Emmanuel Macron, called for an immediate cessation of the "aggression" on Gaza and to provide protection for the Palestinian people.

The United Nations said 20 trucks that had been due to deliver aid to the besieged Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing from Egypt on Tuesday had not entered the enclave.

"We hope the materials can enter Gaza tomorrow," UN aid spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.

Senior UN aid official Lynn Hastings earlier told the UN Security Council that 20 trucks were due to cross on Tuesday. Since Saturday, 54 trucks have crossed into Gaza carrying food, medicine, and water, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as "a drop of aid in an ocean of need."

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen accused UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres of justifying Hamas’ October 7 attack and canceled his meeting with him.

“I will not meet with the UN Secretary General. After October 7th there is no room for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased from the world!,” Cohen stated.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan called for him to resign.

Guterres “who shows understanding for the campaign of mass murder of children, women, and the elderly, is not fit to lead the UN,” Erdan said.

“There is no justification or point in talking to those who show compassion for the most terrible atrocities committed against the citizens of Israel and the Jewish people. There are simply no words,” he added. 

The IDF recovered on Tuesday a phone call in which a Hamas terrorist called his parents to boast of the amount of Jews he killed during the massacre of civilians in southern Israel on October 7.

The phone call, initiated by the terrorist, was taken from the phone of a murdered Israeli woman which was recovered by Israeli security forces, some two weeks after the massacre.

"Hi dad, I am speaking to you from Mefalsim," the Hamas terrorist is heard saying. "Open your WhatsApp and look at all the killed [Israelis]. Look at how many I killed with my own hands, your son killed Jews!

Terrorist live-streamed horrors of massacre to Gazan parents

"Dad, I am speaking to you from a Jew's phone, I killed her and her husband, I killed ten with my own hands," the terrorist excitedly told his Gazan parents.

The father can be heard crying with joy as the terrorist expressed his intent to do a video call so his dad could see the extent of the massacre committed by his son, a member of Hamas's Nukhba forces.

"May God protect you, my son," his father said as the mother told the terrorist, "I wish I was there with you," as her son is heard shouting directions at fellow terrorists to "kill, kill, kill! kill them!"

"I was the first to enter under the guidance and with the help of Allah," he added. The full transcript of the recorded phone conversation is available below:

Qatari mediators are urging Hamas to quicken the pace of hostage releases to include women and children held in Gaza and to do so without expecting Israeli concessions, according to three diplomats and a source in the region familiar with the talks, as Israel readies a ground assault on the enclave.

The Gulf state, in coordination with the US, is leading mediation talks with Hamas and Israeli officials over the release of more than 200 hostages captured in the Palestinian group's cross-border onslaught on Oct 7.

Hamas on Monday freed two Israeli civilian women captives from the besieged enclave following the release of two hostages with dual US-Israeli nationality on Friday.

Qatar is now discussing a larger release of civilians with Hamas and Israel, a fifth source told Reuters on Tuesday after being briefed on the negotiations. The source said the talks were progressing.

When night falls, Sarina Blumenfeld gets flashbacks from what she endured during the Holocaust and struggles to process the carnage that took place when Hamas Islamists entered Israel from Gaza and killed 1,400 people.

Blumenfeld, 89, is one of tens of thousands of elderly survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who live in Israel and are once again facing up to the reality of war, with more than 220 Israelis taken hostage in Gaza.

"This all reminds me of what we went through during the Holocaust and how much we suffered," Blumenfeld told Reuters from her home in the coastal city of Ashdod, which is 40 km (25 miles) from Gaza and frequently a target of Hamas rocket fire.

The persecution of Jews in 20th-century Europe is seared into the collective memory of Israel and since Hamas' October 7 assault, leaders both at home and abroad have been quick to evoke memories of the Holocaust, when the Nazis and their collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe.

At least four Hamas terrorists were killed in waters off the shore of the southern Gaza border town of Zikim after attempting to infiltrate into Israel, Israeli media reported on Tuesday evening.

Heavy gunfire was reported between Israeli security forces and the infiltrating terrorists. An Israeli Air Force helicopter was also reportedly on the scene of the attempted infiltration.

This is a developing story.