Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 121?

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Qatar's Prime Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, stressed the severe consequences of discontinuing funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Qatari PM emphasized that halting financial support to the agency could lead to "disastrous repercussions," underscoring its pivotal role in ensuring regional stability and providing humanitarian relief.

The discussion, held in New York, brought to the forefront the critical situation in the Middle East, particularly in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Prime Minister highlighted the indispensable contribution of UNRWA in supporting millions of Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. With the potential threat to UNRWA's funding, Sheikh Mohammed underscored the urgency of the matter, indicating that the stability of the region and the welfare of millions of people rely on the continuity of the agency's operations.

Hamas delayed its anticipated response to an initial Gaza hostage proposal drafted in Paris, as the war cabinet met on Sunday night and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the matter now rests with the terror group’s leaders.

“It's up to Hamas to come forward and respond to what is a serious proposal,” Sullivan told NBC’s Meet the Press.

He discussed the proposal already approved by Israel’s war cabinet and which had been passed to Hamas last week by Qatar and Egypt which are mediating the deal to secure the release of more than 130 hostages held in Gaza for close to five months. Some six of them are Americans.

“We will continue to press the Qataris and the Egyptians to try to generate a positive response to that so that all of those hostages, including … American hostages, get home to their families,” Sullivan said.

He spoke as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his fifth trip to the region since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7 and as US special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel in an attempt to tapper violence with Hezbollah along the country’s northern border.

The exact details of the deal have yet to be worked out or publicized but it is broadly expected to include a sustained lull in the fighting, the release of the hostages, the release of Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails, and the entry of additional humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The Hamas leadership, according to reports, is split between those in Gaza who want to move forward with the framework principles of the deal, even though they speak only of a protracted pause to the war and not a ceasefire. The Hamas leadership in Doha wants the deal to include a permanent ceasefire. Media reports on Saturday night indicated that Hamas could reject the deal on this point alone.

Israeli politicians including within Netanyahu’s Likud party, have already spoken out against details of the deal, many of which are not finalized, including the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released as well as the pace of the releases, which according to some reports could be only one hostages a day.

Minister-without-portfolio and National Unity chair Benny Gantz met with the families of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza on Sunday.

During the meeting, Gantz highlighted the ongoing efforts being made to secure the release of the hostages. The minister-without-portfolio recognized the importance of speed in successfully achieving this goal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the international community to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) following Israeli allegations that 12 of its staff members participated in the Hamas-led October 7 massacre attack.

“We exposed to the world that UNRWA is collaborating with Hamas, that some of its people even participated in the atrocities and abductions of October 7,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

“This only strengthens what we have known for a long time – UNRWA is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem.

“The time has come to begin the process of replacing UNRWA with other bodies that are not tainted by support for terrorism,” he stated.

Further pressure to stop UNRWA

Foreign Minister Israel Katz posed on X that the organization “perpetuates the false narrative of Palestinian ‘refugees’ needing to return to Israel. We are actively working to disengage UNRWA from Gaza. They are a part of the problem and not a part of the solution.”

UNRWA truck crosses into Egypt from Gaza at Rafah border crossing, November 27, 2023 (credit: REUTERS/AMR ABDALLAH DALSH)

Netanyahu and Katz pressed the issue after the Foreign Ministry provided UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini with the allegations last month, which led to the dismissal of nine staff members. A second internal Israeli report showed that 190 of the agency’s staff were Hamas members. The information behind the allegations has not been made public.

Upwards of 16 countries have since suspended funding to the agency, which services 5.9 million Palestinians in Gaza, the Wet Bank, east Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

Former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told KAN she believes the window of opportunity to shut down UNRWA is now.

Calcalist reported on Sunday that Bank Leumi shut down UNRWA’s bank account due to the terror accusations.

Four months after Hamas, in control of a small independent Palestinian entity called Gaza, launched its savage attack on Israel that sparked the current war, the world is abuzz with renewed talk about a Palestinian state.

Never mind that Gaza has, for all intents and purposes, been an independent Palestinian entity since Israel withdrew in 2005 and removed every army installation and soldier, every settlement and Jew.

Never mind that, narrowly elected in 2006, Hamas, expelled the Palestinian Authority in 2007 in a murderous coup and used the territory not to build a Palestinian Singapore on the Mediterranean, but rather an Iranian-backed launching pad for attacks on Israel, with an unprecedented maze of underground tunnels from which to attack the Jewish state.

Never mind that Hamas used that territory which it controlled to carry out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

The world is once again convinced that the panacea to the problems in the Mideast is a Palestinian state.

To many Israelis, however, the discussion is surreal.

Minister-without-portfolio and National Unity chair Benny Gantz met with special envoy of US President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

Hochstein has played an active role in brokering arrangements between Israel and Lebanon, such as the late 2022 agreement delineating the maritime border between the two countries. Additionally, in November of last year, Hochstein landed in Israel in an attempt to curb the re-emerging violence between Hezbollah and Israel.

During the meeting, Gantz expressed his appreciation to Hochstein for the efforts the US has taken to help address the challenges of the region.  These issues included the hostages held by Hamas, Iranian terrorism, and regional stability.

Gantz also emphasized to Hochstein that Lebanon bears full responsibility for the terrorism coming from within its territory. Further, Gantz stated that unless Lebanon and the international community acted to remove the threat within Lebanon, Israel would broaden its military activities in the north in order to do so.

The minister-without-portfolio noted that these potential military activities would take place irrespective of the war in Gaza.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also met with Hochstein on Sunday.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant meets with US special envoy Amos Hochstein. February 4, 2024. (credit: ARIEL HARMONI/DEFENSE MINISTRY)

"We are prepared to use any option"

"Our commitment to our citizens is greater than any other commitment,” Gallant told the American envoy. “We are ready to resolve the crisis [in the North] through diplomatic means but are prepared for any other option."

During the meeting, Gallant and Hochstein discussed the need for a change in the security situation on Israel’s northern border and the need for the displaced residents of the north to return to then their homes, the Defense Minister’s office reported.

Gallant similarly thanks Hochstein for the role the US has played in working to achieve a diplomatic solution and change the situation on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

Hamas is set to reject on Sunday evening the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal proposed in Paris last week, Saudi outlet Al-Arabiya reported.

According to the report, the terror organization is set to demand an increase in the number of Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons.

Later, KAN, citing a Hamas source speaking to Al-Quds newspaper, reported that for the time being, it is Hamas’s position that the beginning of a deal has not been reached. The source went on to add that Hamas maintained its insistence that the IDF withdraw from Gaza and provide Hamas with certain guarantees to end the war.

Reportedly, Hamas's official response to the hostage deal will not come on Sunday evening.

Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at cities and towns all over northern Israel on Sunday, leading to the sounding of 33 sirens, the most in the recent period when the terror group had been reducing its attacks.

At midday, the IDF said that aircraft had struck Hezbollah positions, targeting infrastructure such as a position for launching rockets and observation posts in the areas of Blida and Meis el-Jabal in southern Lebanon.

Rockets from Lebanon had already been identified crossing the Israeli border, triggering rocket alarms in northern Israeli communities, including Kiryat Shmona, Menara, Margoliot, and Metulla.

However, as the day went on, many more communities were also fired at by Hezbollah. At press time, there were no injuries on the Israeli side, where most of the 80,000 northern residents evacuated the villages close to Lebanon back in October.

IDF still has the upper hand

Despite Hezbollah’s salvo of rockets on Sunday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to Tel Nof air force base that the IDF was increasingly gaining the upper hand in pushing the terror group’s land forces back to the Litani River.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visits IDF soldiers in Khan Yunis, Gaza on February 1, 2024 (credit: ARIEL HERMONI/DEFENSE MINISTRY)

In fact, Gallant said that the IDF’s increasing success against Hezbollah was making it less likely that a full-scale war would be needed to return security to the northern border.

Already to date, the Jerusalem Post has reported that the IDF has pushed back 75% of Hezbollah’s Radwan forces to the Litani River and destroyed 85-95% of the terror group’s lookout posts in southern Lebanon.

Still, Hezbollah started the war with around 150,000 rockets and mortars, more than 95% of which it still has, and it has not shown any sign of being willing to permanently keep its forces north of the Litani River.

In Gaza, the IDF announced on Sunday that it has taken control of the Hamas Khan Yunis brigade headquarters in southern Gaza, which was also used by Muhammad Sinwar, brother and top lieutenant to Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar.

Previously, on December 17, the IDF had announced it had penetrated Hamas's City Hall and another office of its brigade chief, Rafa’a Salame.

IDF sources said that the headquarters which was taken over was the largest they had seen in Khan Yunis.

Also, IDF sources said that they expected to achieve operational control in Khan Yunis within one week, the smallest amount of time the IDF has given for this benchmark.

Last week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel had already taken apart all of Hamas’s four battalions in Khan Yunis.

But at the same IDF sources had told the Jerusalem Post that he must have meant that the process of taking apart the battalions was so far along – even if not complete – that it was close to inevitable and would occur very soon.

Even after operational control is achieved, as the IDF achieved in northern Gaza over a month ago, IDF sources acknowledged that there will still be fighting and significant “mopping up” operations of smaller remaining terror cells.

The general idea is that more of the fighting will be against single-digit and small groups of Hamas terrorists who are cut off from any greater Hamas collective command structure versus the fighting until now, where Hamas often had hundreds of fighters resisting the IDF in a coordinated fashion.

Israel's government said on Sunday it would bring in 65,000 foreign workers from India, Sri Lanka and Uzbekistan to resume construction stalled since October 7 when Palestinian workers were sent home in the wake of the attack on Israel by Hamas.

Some 72,000 Palestinian workers were employed on construction sites in Israel prior to the attack, which prompted the government to lay them off and exclude them from Israel for security reasons.

Some 20,000 foreign workers remain but almost half the country's building sites have been closed down due to the labor shortage.

A housing ministry spokesperson said new groups of foreign workers were expected to arrive in coming weeks as the government seeks to avoid a blockage in supply that would risk reigniting real estate prices as interest rates start to fall.

Minister-without-portfolio and National Unity chair Benny Gantz met with special envoy of US President Joe Biden, Amos Hochstein, in Tel Aviv on Sunday.

During the meeting, Gantz expressed his appreciation to Hochstein for the efforts the US has taken to help address the challenges of the region.  These issues included the hostages held by Hamas, Iranian terrorism, and regional stability.

Gantz also emphasized to Hochstein that Lebanon bears full responsibility for the terrorism coming from within its territory. Further, Gantz stated that unless Lebanon and the international community acted to remove the threat within Lebanon, Israel would broaden its military activities in the north in order to do so.

The minister-without-portfolio noted that these potential military activities would take place irrespective of the war in Gaza.