Between ongoing military conflicts, a year of elections worldwide, and domestic political events that have shaken up the status quo, 2024 has been an eventful year.
As journalists, we at The Jerusalem Post see many of these stories develop in real time, watching as something develops from what may be a minor initial report to a major story. And as a Middle East daily, we also often get a front-row seat at the major war updates and geopolitical shifts that occur in our own backyard.
Now that the year is ending, we have the benefit of hindsight. With that in mind, here are The Jerusalem Post's top 10 most important news stories of 2024.
10) Ukrainian Kursk offensive - August 6, 2024
Russia has advanced this year after the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive to achieve any major gains, and has taken 420 sq.km. of territory from Ukrainian forces since June 14, Sergei Shoigu, head of Russia's security council, has said.
Ukraine struck back on Tuesday - and the battles continued through the night into Wednesday as Ukrainian forces pushed to the northwest of the border town of Sudzha, 530 km. southwest of Moscow, Russia's defense ministry said.
9) 21 IDF soldiers killed simultaneously - January 22, 2024 + Israel rescues 4 hostages in Operation Zamora - June 8, 2024 + death of six hostages - August 31, 2024
In the worst one-day attack since the beginning of the Gaza war, 21 IDF soldiers were killed on Monday and several others were injured when Hamas forces fired rocket-propelled grenades on buildings the soldiers were inside.
The buildings were laden with stored explosives, and the grenades set them off causing their total collapse.
Four hostages were rescued simultaneously from two separate nearby locations in Nuseirat in central Gaza, in a high-risk joint operation by the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Yamam and police in broad daylight, the IDF announced in a series of statements on Saturday.
Regarding the third such successful operation to rescue hostages since the war started on October 7, the IDF said that the rescued hostages were Noa Argamani (25), Almog Meir (21), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Ziv (40), all of whom were kidnapped by Hamas to the Gaza Strip from the Supernova festival.
The bodies of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino were found in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said on Sunday morning.
The IDF retrieved the bodies of the hostages from a tunnel under the city of Rafah in Gaza.
They were likely slaughtered by Hamas shortly before the IDF got to them in Rafah.
8) Iran attacks Israel - April 13-14 + October 1, 2024
Sirens blared across Israel on Saturday night as hundreds of drones and missiles launched from Iran reached Israel. Drones and missiles were also reportedly launched from Yemen and other countries around the region.
A seven-year-old girl from a Bedouin village near Arad was seriously wounded by the Iranian attack, according to Magen David Adom. Dr. Dan Schwartzfox, the deputy director of Soroka Medical Center, told Army Radio on Sunday morning that the girl was in intensive care and that her life was still at risk. Minor damage was caused to infrastructure at an IDF base in southern Israel during the attack as well, according to IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari.
Some 180 ballistic missiles were launched onto Israel on Tuesday night by Iran, The Jerusalem Post understands, leading to 1,800 rocket sirens sounding across the country.
In a statement given to Israeli media following the attack, the IDF vowed that it would strike forcefully across the Middle East on Tuesday night.
7) Israel strikes Houthis in Yemen - July 20, 2024
IDF F-15, F-35, and other fighter jets carried out around 10 airstrikes against Houthi military targets in the area of the Hodeidah Port in Yemen, according to a mix of IDF and foreign media reports Saturday evening.
Israeli airstrikes targeted oil refining facilities in Yemen's Hodeidah as well as Yemeni air force assets to disrupt the transport of Iranian weapons to Yemen and reportedly killed and wounded dozens of people.
6) Netanyahu trial resumes and the PM takes the stand - December 10, 2024
His trial is a “chance to refute these ridiculous charges” against him, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem District Court as he became the first sitting prime minister in Israeli history to testify in a public corruption trial on Tuesday.
"I waited eight years for this,” he said, "to say the truth as I remember." He called the charges "an ocean of absurdity."
5) Assassination of Ismail Haniyeh - July 31, 2024 + assassination of Yahya Sinwar - October 16, 2024
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in the Iranian capital of Tehran early Wednesday morning, the Palestinian terror group said, noting the killing could drastically change the outlook of Israel's war on Hamas.
Hamas deputy chief in Gaza Khalil al-Hayya, citing witnesses who had been with Haniyeh in Iran, later said that the missile that killed Haniyeh struck him "directly," Reuters reported.
As a result of the missile strike, windows, doors, and walls in his room were destroyed, Hayya told a press conference in Tehran.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was killed by the IDF in Tel Sultan in Rafah on Wednesday in an unplanned operation, sources close to the matter confirmed to The Jerusalem Post Thursday evening, several hours after rumors arose that he had been killed earlier Thursday.
Shortly after, around 7:45 p.m., confirmations came out from the IDF, Shin Bet, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, and others, that Sinwar was in fact dead.
Evidence that Sinwar is dead included matching both his dental records and fingerprint records which Israel had from the period when he was in Israeli prisons until 2011.
4) Lebanon pager explosions - September 17-18, 2024 + assassination of Hassan Nasrallah - September 27, 2024 + IDF invasion of Lebanon - September 30, 2024
In the most significant hit Lebanese terrorist and Iranian proxy group Hezbollah has taken in recent years, in an event that rocked Lebanon, over 3,600 people were wounded throughout the country on Tuesday – a large majority of them Hezbollah members – at around 3:30 p.m., when the pagers that they used to communicate exploded. Additional Hezbollah operatives in Syria and Iraq fell victim to the attack as well.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said that around 4,000 were wounded and 200 people were critically wounded, and the ministry was closing in on a dozen who had already died.
The Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was reportedly wounded in the explosion, according to Iranian state-owned Mehr News Agency, as were a variety of senior Hezbollah officials and relatives of the terrorist group’s parliamentary MPs.
F-15I aircraft from the 69th fighter squadron at 6:20 p.m. on Friday night dropped close to 100 bombs on Hezbollah’s underground headquarters in the heart of Beirut, killing the terror group’s chief of 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah, and potentially reordering the region.
Nasrallah was killed, alongside other Hezbollah commanders including Ali Karaki, Hezbollah’s new military chief designate and current commander of the southern front, whom the IDF has just missed killing last week.
The attack involved a decade of intelligence collected both by the IDF and the Mossad as well as a variety of last-minute deceptions to ensure that Nasrallah would not flee the area.
The IDF’s invasion into southern Lebanon which started Monday night just before 10:00 p.m. has met almost no resistance from Hezbollah, with not a single IDF soldier killed so far.
The invasion is expected to end within weeks, despite IDF spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari indicating it may last longer.
In some ways, the invasion is viewed as a broadening of a large number of very short nightly special forces missions into southern Lebanon, which have been going on for an extended period.
3) Arrest warrants issued for Netanyahu, Gallant by ICC - November 21, 2024
In a blockbuster ruling that shook the military, diplomatic, and legal worlds, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday.
The ICC cited reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant committed the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
While Israel and the US condemned the ruling – which is the first time the court has issued arrests for officials from a democratic state – as biased, or going beyond the ICC’s mandate, the EU, France, Ireland, and several other countries said they would honor the arrest warrants.
2) Trump beats Harris - November 6, 2024
Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris delivered her concession speech on Wednesday following Republican candidate Donald Trump's win in the US presidential elections.
Harris acknowledged her loss in the election, saying, "While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign." The speech took place at Howard University, a historically black college.
"I am so proud of the race we ran," she continued, emphasizing that the results must be accepted.
1) Downfall of Assad regime - December 8, 2024
The Syrian army command has notified officers that President Bashar al-Assad's rule has ended following a lightning rebel offensive, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters.
At the same time, the head of Syria's main opposition group abroad Hadi al-Bahra Syrian said on Sunday that Damascus is now "free of Bashar al-Assad."
Assad flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination on Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters, as rebels said they had entered the capital with no sign of army deployments.