Israel-Hamas War: What happened on Day 125?

Israel will allow the exile of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar from the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of all remaining 136 hostages, NBC reported on Thursday, citing six Israeli officials and senior advisers.

According to the report, Israeli officials have floated the idea of allowing Sinwar to "leave like [Yasser] Arafat left Lebanon."

Arafat fled the Lebanese capital of Beirut in 1982 after an agreement between the US and the European government guaranteed his safe passage to Tunisia by boat. Now, an Israeli source told NBC, Sinwar could be set to make a similar exit from the Gaza Strip.

"We will allow it to happen as long as all of the hostages are released," NBC cited a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying.

Israel leaning toward exile of terror leaders from Gaza

Earlier this week, it was reported in Israeli media that Jerusalem and Washington have recently been discussing a plan for the exile of senior Hamas members as part of a wider ceasefire and hostage deal under discussion.

A soldier visits the site of the Nova festival, with displayed photos of the people who were killed and kidnapped during the October 7 attack by Hamas from Gaza, Reim, southern Israel, February 6, 2024 (credit: REUTERS/DYLAN MARTINEZ)

Officials in Netanyahu's inner circle stated in recent closed-door discussions that this is a very favorable option for Israel, as "the implication of the exile is the end of Hamas leadership."

There were reports in the past of a new proposal by mediators that included the exile of Hamas leaders from the Gaza Strip to a third country. According to the report, in exchange for this, Hamas would release all the Israeli captives it holds, but it would be done in stages until the withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza.

Julia Sebutinde, the Ugandan judge who was the only member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to vote against all of that court's provisional measures in South Africa's case against Israel alleging genocide in Gaza, has been elected by her peers to serve as the ICJ's vice-president. She will serve alongside Lebanese Judge Nawaf Salam, who was elected president of the court. They will hold their positions for three years.

Sebutinde, until January a relatively obscure figure on the international scene, rose to prominence when she rejected all nine of the court's 'provisional measures' to respond to the genocide against Palestinians alleged by South Africa. The court did not rule on the merits of the case— that determination is reserved for a later stage in the proceedings— but ruled that South Africa's allegation was at least plausible on its face. 

An IDF intelligence officer with the mid-level rank of major from the Palestinian analysis branch has resigned, becoming the first Israeli intelligence officer to resign over the failure to anticipate and warn of Hamas's October 7 invasion of southern Israel.

The development, reported first by KAN news, and confirmed by The Jerusalem Post, is a major event in and of itself, but also could set the stage for additional much larger resignations.

To date, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, and IDF Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva, have also taken responsibility for the failure in terms which strongly hinted at their readiness to resign.

Jordan’s King Abdullah is expected to meet with US President Joe Biden in Washington in the coming week as part of his push for a Gaza ceasefire, according to the Royal Hashemite Court.

The visit is part of a wider trip that will include a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and a stop in Germany, where he will participate in the Munich Security Conference.

While in Washington King Abdullah will also meet with members of Congress and official in the Biden administration.

The focus of his talks will be a Gaza ceasefire, the increase of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the jumpstarting a process for a two-state resolution to the conflict.

A terrorist was killed on Thursday morning after opening fire at IDF soldiers stationed near at the entrance to the village of Deir Sharaf near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank.

"IDF soldiers from the 7037th (Res.) Battalion operating at a military post near Nablus neutralized a terrorist who fired at the force," the military said in a statement.

No casualties to IDF soldiers were reported.

Saudi normalization with Israel is dependent on an end to the Gaza war and Israel’s willingness to embark on the path to a two-state resolution to the conflict, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night.

“When I saw the Crown Prince [Mohammed Bin Salman] in Saudi Arabia just a couple of days ago, he repeated to me his desire and determination to pursue normalization,” Blinken said as he referred to his visit to the Kingdom on Monday night as part of his weeklong trip to the region.

Bin Salman repeated that normalization required two things, Blinken said, “One, there needs to be calm in Gaza; two, there needs to be a clear and credible pathway to a Palestinian state.”

Blinken said “It’s clear to me, from talking to many of the countries in the region, that they’re prepared to do things with and for Israel that they were never prepared to do in the past, including steps that would further address any security concerns it might have. And similarly, the United States is prepared to do that, too.” 

He didn’t refer to the unusual statement the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry put out after the visit dismissing US claims that it was enough for Israel to commit to the process.

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE Mohammed bin Salman. (credit: SPUTNIK/REUTERS)

Saudi Arabia: normalization can only happen with Palestinian statehood

Normalization can only happen with recognition of Palestinian statehood on the pre-1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as the capital, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have spoken of their opposition to Palestinian statehood even as they have sought diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia as part of their normalization push for the region.

Before the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, Israel had presumed that normalization was possible without Palestinian statehood, but with other significant concessions to the Palestinians.

US President Joe Biden had hoped to finalize a security pact with Riyadh that also included normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Blinken recalled those efforts while in Tel Aviv. “We were, before October 7th, pursuing the possibility of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  

“In fact, I was scheduled to come to Israel and Saudi Arabia – I believe it was on October 10th – to pursue that, and in particular, to focus on what we already knew back then was a necessary Palestinian component to any normalization agreement,” he stated.

“We remain determined as well to pursue a diplomatic path to a just and lasting peace, and security for all in the region, and notably for Israel,” he said.

The US envisions, he said, “an Israel that’s fully integrated into the region, with normal relations with key countries, including Saudi Arabia, with firm guarantees for its security, alongside a concrete, time-bound, irreversible path to a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel, with the necessary security assurances.”

In his discussion with Saudi, Qatari, Egyptian, Israeli, and Palestinian officials during his trip, Blinken said, he discussed the “substance and sequence of steps that all would need to take to make this path real.”

Blinken recalled that during his meeting Wednesday with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas he spoke of steps the PA had to take to reform its governance. 

According to the Palestine News Agency WAFA. Abbas in that meeting urged the US to unilaterally recognize Palestinian statehood and to support its acceptance as a full-fledged member of the United Nations, a move that requires UN Security Council approval. The US is one of five permanent council members with veto power.

In Jerusalem on Wednesday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has long held that the normalization deal as his goal, dismissed the relevance of the Saudi statement, as he explained that October 7 has changed Israel’s reality.

An IDF victory over Hamas was not just an existential necessity but also a necessary component for all Israeli relations in the region including with Saudi Arabia, he said.

Israel’s enemies and foes are watching intently to see who wins and who loses, Israel or Hamas, Netanyahu explained.

“This test is taking place in Gaza. In the end, the true test is who wins.”

Israel can only make a deal with Saudi Arabia if it destroys Hamas, Netanyahu said.

“There won’t be a deal if we aren’t victorious against Hamas and if we are victorious you will see the circle of peace expand” to other regional countries, “of this I have no doubt,” Netanyahu stated. 

He added that public statements are not what matters in a negotiation but rather the closed-door conversations. 

Numerous anti-tank missiles were fired from Lebanon into the areas of Kiryat Shmona, Biranit, and Mt. Hermon in northern Israel on Thursday, with at least one soldier being seriously wounded.

The soldier was injured when an anti-tank missile hit an IDF base close to Kiryat Shmona. Two other soldiers were lightly wounded in the incident. 

Master Sergeant Dar Cohen was at home on Friday, October 6. It was Shabbat and like most Israelis was expecting a normal Simchat Torah holiday over the weekend. However, in the morning on October 7 his phone began ringing. It was like an “alarm clock” he recalls because the buzzing from the vibrations of the calls came so often and close together. When he picked up the phone it was his commanding officer in his tank unit. The man on the other end of the line told him to get his bags ready and turn on the news.

Cohen is an IDF reservist in the 401st armored brigade, which played a key role since October 7 in defeating Hamas. Its tanks led the way into northern Gaza. The brigade is one of several Israeli tank units that uses the Israeli 60-ton Merkava IV tanks. He’s also used to getting calls when there are tensions or a potential of war. Usually those calls are a kind of, hurry up and wait, because Israel hasn’t launched a ground operation in Gaza since 2014. In many flare-ups such as 2018 or 2021, Israel would send a few tanks to the border, just in face, and then they would be put back on their tank transporter trucks and sent home.

October 7 was different. Dar Cohen’s tank unit would be one of the first to respond to the Hamas invasion, driving all night to meet the enemy head-on, and his unit would be the first into Gaza, striking northern Gaza on October 27 to defeat the enemy. Cohen and I met on October 8 when he and his tank crew, along with several other tanks from his unit, were deploying north of Gaza. The day was a chaos, with dead bodies of terrorists still strewn everyone north of Gaza. It took me almost four months to find Cohen again and speak to him about his experience that day and in the months after.

Cohen says that on the morning of October 7 his family helped him pack a bag for reserve duty and soon a fellow reservist picked him up to head south. It conjured up images of the Yom Kippur war when Israelis were also sent running to join their units during a holiday. Cohen recalls that he had just been watching a television program on fifty years since the Yom Kippur war, and now here he was living something similar. “We were talking how that war [in 1973] was a catastrophe and how naive we were that within 12 hours we would be going to our Second Yom Kippur War right in our generation.”

Cohen has been in the armored corps since 2010. In his mandatory service he was trained to be a tank gunner. He is now a reservist, part of Company A in the 46th battalion of the 401st brigade. He is thirty-one years old. On the morning of October 7 he travelled to a base where there are tanks located in central Israel in case of emergency. What that means is that the tanks are equipped and ready to go and he has practiced with these tanks for years, so he knows them. When they arrived it was around one in the afternoon. The news was describing the disaster on the border of Gaza. Cohen had already seen one of the videos online of the Bibas family being kidnapped. For him that was enough and he deleted his Telegram.

IDF reserve Infantry and Merkava Tank soldiers train in a military exercise in the Golan Heights on October 23, 2023. (credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)

Tanks take time, so there was thought of sending men in as infantry

With the country in chaos, the army didn’t know if the men in the tanks might be better used as infantry. It takes time to deploy tanks, usually they have to wait to be loaded on a giant flat-bed truck to be moved. It’s not usual to drive them 100 kilometers to a front line, because they will harm the roads and harm their own treads in the drive. When it became clear sending the tank crews to fight as infantry was a waste of their expertise, Cohen and his men saddled up in their tanks and decided to do the unprecedented: Drive across Israel to get into the fight.

The commander of the brigade told the company commander of Cohen’s units “I’ll see you in the morning on the Gaza strip border,” he recalls. “So we got up on the tanks and we drove more than 12 hours on the highway, sometimes under the highway, on fields [to get to Gaza].” The tanks got help from a private vehicle that helped them navigate the roads, a father and son helping pave the way for the behemoth tanks.

They still didn’t know how bad the situation was on the border. We now know that terrorists broke into many communities and continued to massacre and kidnap people throughout the day. Tanks were badly needed in these battles, to even the playing field against the thousands of terrorists. “When reality hit was when we stopped at the Highway 6 down south and we stopped at a Dor Alon gas station.” The handful of tanks parked to get coffee. “Now about 4am, all of a sudden we see refugees from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The Kibbutz was completely destroyed I understood. I saw this woman going down off the bus accompanied by soldiers and with that 1,000 mile stare. I approached her and asked if she wanted water and she was mumbling that everyone had been massacred.” Many of the men had now been awake for twenty hours. But there was more driving to do.

Cohen had been a student in Sderot. As the tanks approached the city they knew terrorists had attacked Sderot with white Toyata trucks. “I could see Sderot and the Kibbutzim and the trail marks of bombardments where they had blown up homes and cars. Your heart rate goes up,” he recalls. As the sun began to rise around 6:30am, the small group of tanks now divided its force, sending several to fight in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and several to drive from near Sderot toward Yad Mordechai so they could take up a key position to block terrorists that had infiltrated near Netiv Ha’Asara and Zikim. “We were the first organized tanks to arrive to this area as reserves. It’s easy to bring infantry, but we were the first tanks to arrive with full power,” Cohen says.

The presence of a tank is something that brings an instant sense of power and security.“By this time we were bombarded by mortars and there are still bodies of terrorists around us. Apocalyptic scenes. I try to put myself in the shoes of someone else, but when you see the residents, children and families fleeing, and the other way they see a company of tanks with flags of Israel on the way to fight terrorists and they were begging us to help their families…for them to see us on the street, it’s something powerful. You can hear the vibration of the tanks long before they arrive. I hope we were able to give reassurance in this tough times,” Cohen recalls.

After deploying on a hill north of Yad Mordechai which overlooks northern Gaza, the tanks waited. For twenty days Israel waited as forces were gathered, fields grew heavy with armored vehicles, and 300,000 men were called up. They trained and prepared.

Finally on the evening of October 27 the time came to enter Gaza. Cohen and the tanks of the 401st would be first into the strip. They did a kiddush and “our commander stated that we shall never forget what happened here in Israel on October 7th and that we cannot let history repeat itself. As Armoured Corps soldiers serving in 401 we knew we were the first ones to enter the Gaza Strip, leading the way for the whole IDF in its ground offensive, along with the pride that comes with this understanding comes great responsibility as well. We all knew what was on our shoulders and knew that everyone in Israel is looking at us,” Cohen says. “The moment we got the green light marked the beginning of the end of Hamas, and that to us, was a moment we knew was a turning point in history, and that we are a part of it.”

The IDF is fighting in western Khan Yunis in addition to the northern and central parts of the Gaza Strip, and has successfully arrested and eliminated terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre, according to the IDF.

Combat soldiers from the Commando Unit are continuing to engage in intense fighting within western Khan Yunis. Since Wednesday, the unit arrested dozens of suspects of terrorism, including two who were involved in the October 7 attacks.

Maglan unit fighters killed three terrorists, two at close range and one on a school roof via gunfire.

IDF soldiers raided terrorist infrastructure and located an RPG launcher, diving equipment, and ammunition in the process, according to the IDF spokesperson. 

Within the same area of the Gaza Strip, IDF Paratroopers and soldiers from the Givati Brigade identified and eliminated more than 20 terrorists while striking terrorist targets.

IDF troops patrolling inside the Gaza Strip (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON UNIT)

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated Thursday morning his intention to sign three orders, which state that the tax benefits UNRWA receives due to its status as a UN agency will be canceled.

"The State of Israel will not give tax benefits to terrorist aides," Smotrich wrote on X on Thursday. 

מדינת ישראל לא תתן הטבות מס לסייעני טרור.https://t.co/WMyPAoVQF0

— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) February 8, 2024

The minister came to the decision in light of recent exposures regarding the involvement of UNRWA staff in the Hamas attacks of October 7 and subsequent aid to terrorists in Gaza. Several hostages held by Hamas have stated that they were kept in the apartments of UNRWA staff. 

UNRWA enjoys several benefits due to its status as a UN agency. Among them, the organization receives exemption from customs and taxes on imported products for the agency's operation, complete exemption from VAT on product imports, and negligible purchase taxes on fuel purchases for organizational purposes, including exemption from blue tax.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionist Party, is seen at a faction meeting at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on December 11, 2023. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

The decision is expected to be finalized in the coming days.