Israel-Hamas War: What happened on Day 143?

Israel is prepared to release 400 Palestinian prisoners, including some convicted on severe charges, in return for the release of 40 Israeli women and elderly men being held in Gaza if a hostage deal is reached, Al-Jazeera reported on Monday night.

According to the report, Israel also would allow a gradual return of civilians to northern Gaza, except young men, and would allow a larger flow of humanitarian aid and the entry of temporary shelters and heavy machinery. Israel also offered to reposition Israeli forces outside of populated areas and stop aerial reconnaissance for eight hours a day.

Qatar hosted delegations from Israel and Hamas on Monday, as the two sides looked to inch forward toward a deal for the release of the remaining 134 hostages in Gaza.

The presence of both sides for so-called proximity talks – meeting mediators separately while in the same city – suggested negotiations were further along than at any time since a big push at the start of February when Israel rejected a Hamas counter-offer for a four-and-a-half-month truce.

Mediators taking part in the hostage deal talks have said that, as of now, Hamas is disinclined to agree to the US-proposed deal, Israeli media reported on Monday.

In public, both sides continued to take positions far apart on the ultimate aim of a truce while blaming each other for holding up the talks.

Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause in fighting to secure the release of the hostages. Hamas says it will not free them without an agreement that leads to a permanent end to the war.

An aerial view of Doha, Qatar's capital (credit: REUTERS)

After meeting Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the reclusive head of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said his group had embraced mediators’ efforts to find an end to the war, and accused Israel of stalling while Gazans die.

“We will not allow the enemy to use negotiations as a cover for this crime,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready for a deal, and it was now up to Hamas to drop demands he described as “outlandish” and “from another planet.”

“Obviously, we want this deal if we can have it. It depends on Hamas. It’s really now their decision,” he told US network Fox News in an interview. “They have to come down to reality.”

The office of Qatar’s emir said Al Thani and the Hamas chief had discussed Qatar’s efforts to broker an “immediate and permanent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.”

Earlier, a source told Reuters that an Israeli working delegation, made up of staff from the military and the Mossad, had flown to Qatar, tasked with creating an operational center to support negotiations there. Its mission includes vetting proposed Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists jailed in Israel that Hamas wants released as part of a hostage release deal, the source said.

Gallant meets with hostage relatives

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with relatives of the hostages on Monday, according to his office, and underscored Israeli efforts to ensure the return of the captives.

“We are working around the clock to achieve a framework that will allow the return of hostages. As part of the talks, we are working to maintain pressure on Hamas,” Gallant said.

He stressed that Palestinians would not be able to return to their homes in the northern part of Gaza until the hostages were back in Israel.

“The defense establishment’s position will be clear: the full return of civilians to the northern area of the Gaza strip will only take place following the return of all the hostages,” Gallant said.

“As I have said repeatedly since day one, we have no moral right to stop the fighting as long as we have even a single hostage in Gaza. This position has not and will not change,” he stressed.

He appeared to indicate that not all the hostages were included in the deal.

“Even if we achieve a framework that requires a temporary ceasefire, we will then return to fighting in order to destroy the Hamas terrorist organization and to return all the hostages,” Gallant stated.

Israel has also used its pending military operation in Rafah as a pressure lever. The war cabinet heard the IDF’s plan to both destroy the Hamas battalions in Rafah and to protect civilians in that city near the Egyptian border. The plan, however, has yet to be approved.

Netanyahu has said that a hostage deal would delay the operation.

Israel is under pressure from its main ally, the United States, to agree on a truce soon, and to head off a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the last city at the Gaza Strip’s southern edge where over half the enclave’s 2.3 million people are sheltering, which Washington fears could become a bloodbath.

Netanyahu insisted that the assault on Rafah was still planned, and Israel had a plan to evacuate civilians from harm’s way. Asked if Israel would attack the city even if Washington asked it not to, Netanyahu said: “Well, we’ll go in. We make our own decisions, obviously, but we’ll go in based on the idea of having also the evacuation of the civilians [in mind].”

Israel continues to maintain in public that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, while Hamas says it will not free hostages without an agreement on an end to the war.

“We’re totally committed to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth,” Israel’s Economy and Industry Minister, Nir Barkat, told Reuters at a conference in the United Arab Emirates, where his presence signaled Israel’s continued acceptance by Arab states that has angered Palestinian militants.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, speaking to Reuters on Monday, said any ceasefire agreement would require “securing an end to the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation, the returning of those displaced, the entry of aid, shelter equipment, and rebuilding.”

The momentum behind talks appears to have grown since Friday, when Israeli officials discussed terms of a hostage release deal in Paris with delegations from the United States, Egypt, and Qatar, though not with Hamas.

The White House said they had come to “an understanding” about the contours of a hostage deal, though negotiations were still underway. The Israeli delegation briefed Netanyahu’s war cabinet late on Saturday.

Egyptian security sources said proximity talks involving delegations from Israel and Hamas would be held this week, first in Qatar and later in Cairo.

Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and captured 253 hostages in its October 7 attack, Israel launched an all-out ground assault on Gaza, with nearly 30,000 people confirmed dead according to the Hamas Gaza health authorities.

Israel has said that some 11,000 of the fatalities are combatants.

'The Jerusalem Post' Staff contributed to this report.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned Israel on Monday against operating in Rafah, saying it was the last refuge of Palestinians who had fled their homes, Israeli media reported, citing a conversation the Chancellor conducted in the offices of  the German Press Agency, the DPA.

Scholz further added that not enough humanitarian aid was entering Gaza. 

He stressed the importance of a two-state solution, saying, according to the report, that a unilateral recognition in a Palestinian state was irrelevant as of now. 

Hezbollah on Monday fired dozens of rockets toward the Golan in a significant departure from its general focus on the northern Galilee.

The Lebanese terrorist group said it was aiming for an IDF Golan base in retaliation for Israeli strikes near the city of Baalbek, which were themselves unusually deep strikes into Lebanon’s territory.

Baalbek is around 100 kilometers away from the Israeli border and is in Lebanon’s northeast, whereas most IDF attacks to date have been focused only on southern Lebanon, or on Beirut, which is still much further south than Baalbek.

No injuries reported

There were no reports of injuries from what Hezbollah said was a 60-rocket barrage.

The IDF did not say how many rockets were fired, but the Home Front Command only recorded 20 rocket sirens, appearing to ignore much of the Golan rocket fire as not dangerous during this round.

An Israeli air defense system intercept rockets fired from Lebanon as it seen from the Israeli side of the border, on November 7, 2023. (credit: AYAL MARGOLIN/FLASH90)

Occasionally, Iranian-affiliated militias from Syria have fired small numbers of rockets on the Golan, but nothing near Monday’s volume from Hezbollah; the Golan has mostly remained quiet recently.

Continuing the rounds of retaliation, the IDF later said it had killed senior Hezbollah official Hassan Hussein Salami in an airstrike on southern Lebanon.

Salami, whose rank is the equivalent to that of a brigade commander, was hit on the way to the southern Lebanon village of Majadel. This was one of the rare cases where the IDF intentionally took credit for the assassination.

According to the IDF, Salami commanded one of Hezbollah’s regional units, including managing attacks on IDF troops and Israeli communities in northern Israel, especially Kiryat Shmona.

Further, they said Salami was involved in directing the Hezbollah attack on an IDF base – Brigade 769.

The IDF appeared to take public credit due to Salami’s role in attacks on IDF bases, something the IDF has tolerated less than Hezbollah attacks on empty evacuated villages.

In contrast, the IDF usually does not take credit for assassinations in Lebanon, nor does it for most specific operations in Syria – though it admits to having attacked Iranian-affiliated targets in Syria thousands of times in recent years.

According to Reuters, at least two simultaneous strikes hit around Lebanon’s city of Baalbek, two security sources said.

An Israeli man was injured by a barrage of rockets fired at Moshav Shtula in the Galilee by Hezbollah on Monday.

Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah said it had shot down an Israeli Hermes 450 drone over Lebanese territory with a surface-to-air missile, the second time it has announced a downing of this type of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The Hermes 450 is a multi-payload drone made by Elbit Systems, an Israel-based weapons manufacturer.

The Israeli military stated earlier on Monday that two missile launches had targeted an Israeli Air Force UAV operating over Lebanon. The first, it said, was intercepted by Israel’s David’s Sling aerial defense system, but the drone “fell inside Lebanese territory” after the second missile attack.

“The David’s Sling aerial defense system intercepted a surface-to-air missile that was fired toward an Israeli Air Force UAV operating in Lebanon,” the IDF said in a statement. “Following the launch of the interceptor, sirens were sounded in the area of Alon Tavor in northern Israel.

No injuries were reported.

A short while after, an additional missile launch toward the UAV was identified and the UAV fell inside Lebanese territory.

The timing of the IDF’s decision to attack deeper into Lebanese territory seemed to come as a response to Hezbollah’s shooting down of the IDF drone.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said that the evacuated northern residents will not return to their cities and homes before the hostages held by Hamas were returned.

In a meeting with hostage’ families, he reassured them that Israel was doing everything both militarily and diplomatically to bring back the around 100 living hostages, and the 30-plus bodies of hostages who were killed.

Although his formulation that northern residents would need to wait to return home until the hostages are released was in some ways not surprising. This was also a more explicit admission than usual that it will likely be months before the threat from Hezbollah is neutralized, even if a temporary ceasefire with Hamas is reached.

Hezbollah has said that it will cease attacking Israel the moment a ceasefire is reached with Hamas that would prevent Israel from launching new military activities within Gaza.

However, Gallant has consistently reiterated that the IDF will continue to attack Hezbollah until all of its forces were pushed back from the border with Israel all the way to an approximate point north of the Litani River.

Since even the current possible hostage deal describes an initial period of 45 days followed by another length of time spanning into months until a full hostage exchange is completed, this could easily take the continued evacuation of northern residents into the summer months.

Possibly not incidentally, on Sunday the government extended special rights for northern evacuees until July 7.

In the South, IDF Division 162, along with the Nahal Brigade and engineering forces, unearthed an underground tunnel network that connects the north and south of the Gaza Strip, the military announced on Monday.

The underground routes run for some 10 km. and pass under a hospital and a university.

After gaining operational control of the network, soldiers examined and destroyed large portions of it.

This was not the first such north-south extended Gaza tunnel, but its discovery and destruction is another sign of the gradual progress of the IDF in taking apart Hamas’s tunnel infrastructure.

Fully destroying that infrastructure is expected to take years.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Mediators taking part in the hostage deal talks have said that, as of now, Hamas is disinclined to agree to the US-proposed deal, Israeli media reported on Monday. 

Hamas has yet to respond officially to the proposed deal. 

This is a developing story. 

Residents in some 242 local authorities across Israel will head to polls today to choose their municipal leaders and councils, in an election that was scheduled for October 31 but postponed twice due to Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and conflict with Hezbollah on the northern border.

This is the third time in Israel’s history that municipal elections were delayed. In 1973, municipal elections that were scheduled for October 30 were postponed to December 31 due to the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War; and municipal elections scheduled for November 1982 were postponed to October 1983 due to the First Lebanon War.

Some 11 local authorities, five from the Gaza border area and six along the northern border, will only vote in November as their residents are spread out in hotels and temporary living arrangements across the country.

The unusually large number of IDF soldiers and reservists, including soldiers who are currently in the Gaza Strip, already began voting on February 20 to allow for their ballots to be collected and tallied on time. The final results will be published closer to the weekend.

The vote is open to residents who turned 17 before November 7, 2023. Voting locations can be found on the election’s online portal.

Tel Aviv Municipality lights up with the Israeli flag in commemoration of the 45 lost in the Mount Meron tragedy, May, 1, 2021. (credit: UNITED HATZALAH‏)

What will voters be able to expect heading into elections?

Voters will encounter two sets of ballots. Yellow ballots are for individual candidates for mayor or regional authority head, and white ballots are for parties that will make up the city or region’s council.

Mayors must win at least 40% of the vote to win. If no candidate reaches 40%, the top two finishers will face each other head-to-head in a second vote on March 10.

Israel should be ousted from international organizations, Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the United Nations Human Rights Council as he accused the Jewish state of acts of “genocide” against his people.

Steps must be taken in “challenging and isolating the Israeli brutal regime through boycott, the prohibition of engagement with products and companies associated with settlements, and the suspension of Israel’s membership to international organizations,” he said.

It was a statement that alluded to efforts by the PA to oust Israel from the United Nations.

Maliki spoke at the start of the 55th UNHRC session which is held in Geneva through to April 5. He was one of over 100 high-level diplomats slated to address the UNHRC this week.

Further accusations against Israel

He called for a permanent ceasefire to the Israel-Hamas war, charging that Israel’s military actions in Gaza “offend our humanity.”

PA Foreign Minister al Maliki and Egyptian counterparts in Cairo, July 2017 (credit: MOHAMED ABD EL GHANY/REUTERS)

Maliki accused Israel of “genocide” against Palestinians due to its war in Gaza, charging that it enjoyed immunity for its “crimes against humanity” because the United States had continued to use its veto power to protect Israel from United Nations Security Council sanctions.

The war in Gaza must be ended immediately, he stated. There must be unimpeded humanitarian aid to that enclave and there can be no forced displacement of Palestinians, he stressed.

The Foreign Minister broadened his charges to include Israeli actions against Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as he called on Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines and its “occupation” of its territory.

These actions “cause both existential and strategic threats to the Palestinian cause,” Maliki said. “I urge the international community to respond strategically and decisively by taking positive, irreversible steps, including by recognizing the state of Palestine and granting it full membership to the United Nations,” Maliki said.

He did not mention his government’s resignation in Ramallah on Monday, as he stated that the PA was “ready to continue taking up its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip, [and] the West Bank including east Jerusalem, and is eager to collaborate with the international community to revive life in Gaza.”

Maliki charged that “the Israeli apartheid regime serves as the root cause of all crimes hindering the Palestinian people from exercising their fundamental rights and freedom.”

The speakers were given free rein in the opening session to speak about any compelling human rights issue. Many chose to condemn the IDF’s military campaign to oust Hamas from the enclave which it has forcibly controlled since 2007.

A number of the speakers, including Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, also accused Israel of genocide and apartheid. He also charged that the United States was complicit in these atrocities.

The UNHRC opened its sessions as the international community has increasingly called for a permanent ceasefire out of concern for the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas has asserted that close to 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza war-related violence. Israel has said that some 11,000 of those are combatants.

Some of the speakers mentioned the Hamas-led invasion of Israel in which over 1,200 people were killed and 253 were seized as hostages, of which 134 are still being held in the enclave.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spoke about domestic violence and the attacks against women in the Israel-Hamas war and the Russian-Ukrainian one.

On October 7, “Hamas specifically targeted Israeli women and girls using sexual violence as a weapon.”

She also called on Hamas to release all the hostages.

Baerbock cautioned, however, that while “Israel has the right to defend itself, “it must do so within the framework of international humanitarian law and human rights laws.”

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is simply catastrophic; mothers like us, like me, running from the fighting dragging crying kids behind them in panic, in despair; children [that are often seen] wandering the ruins of their homes, barefoot, hungry, alone,” Baerbock said.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Monday deplored the UN Security Council’s deadlock over the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying divisions among its members had “perhaps fatally” undermined its authority.

Guterres said the UN Security Council often found itself “unable to act on the most significant peace and security issues of our time.”

“The council’s lack of unity on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and on Israel’s military operations in Gaza following the horrific terror attacks by Hamas on 7 October, has severely – perhaps fatally – undermined its authority,” he said.

“The council needs serious reform to its composition and working methods,” he said without elaborating.

Asked later if the Security Council could eventually be considered brain dead, Guterres told reporters: “If the Security Council one day shows that it is incapable of doing anything, then it will be very close to this medical condition.”

Separately, the International Court of Justice at The Hague in the Netherlands wrapped up six days of hearings on the legality of Israel’s “occupation” of territory it captured from Jordan and Egypt during the 1967 Six Day War.

On Monday Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz told judges the occupation was the root cause of conflict in the region.

Yildiz said “The unfolding situation after October 7 proves once again that, without addressing the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there can be no peace in the region,” he said, describing the occupation of Palestinian territories as “the real obstacle to peace” and urging the judges to declare it illegal.

The Arab League’s secretary general Ahmed Aboul Gheit described the “occupation as an affront to international justice” in a statement read out in court by a representative.

A handful of states, including the small island of Fiji, argued the ICJ should refuse to give any advisory opinion on Monday.

The United States urged the court last week to limit any advisory opinion on the matter of occupation and not order the unconditional withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian territories.

The ICJ hearings closed on Monday and a date for a decision will be announced in due course, the court said. The 15-judge panel is expected to take roughly six months to issue their non-binding opinion on the occupation.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Israel on Monday filed a report with the International Court of Justice about measures taken to comply with an interim ruling that called on it to prevent Gaza war actions that might amount to genocide, an Israeli official said.

The official did not provide details on the content of the report, which was filed hours before the deadline for its submission.

The ICJ case against Israel

Last month the UN's top court ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians after South Africa accused Israel of state-led genocide. Israel and its Western allies described the allegation as baseless.

In its ruling, the court said Israel specifically had to prevent and punish any public incitements to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and to preserve evidence related to any allegations of genocide there. It also said the country must take measures to improve the humanitarian situation for Palestinian civilians in the enclave.

PRO-PALESTINIAN protesters pose for a photo in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, last Friday. ‘The ICJ has handed Israel, however unintentional it may be, a golden public relations ticket that it so desperately needs,’ the writer argues. (credit: PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/REUTERS)

A final ruling in the case in The Hague could take years.

The latest Gaza war was triggered by an Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities that left 1,200 killed and 253 taken hostage.

In the four months since, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says Israel has killed nearly 30,000 people in blockaded Gaza, displaced most of its 2.3 million people, caused widespread hunger and disease, and laid waste to much of the territory.

Minister-without-portfolio and National Unity chairman MK Benny Gantz presented in a press conference on Monday a plan to involve all Israelis in either national or military service, and end the blanket exemption to ultra-Orthodox (haredi) and Arab-Israeli citizens.

The plan, called the Israeli Service Plan, which Gantz presented alongside fellow Minister-without-portfolio Gadi Eisenkot and Inbar Harosh-Giti, former head of the Defense Ministry Service Directorate and number 18 on the party’s Knesset list, is nearly identical to a plan the three prosed in May. This time, however, the two said they would put forward the plan in the form of a bill proposal, at the same time that the government put forward two bills to lengthen mandatory service for recruits, and to nearly double the number of days reservists will have to serve every year.

The bills were published for public review earlier this month. Gantz’s and Eisenkot’s strategy is to demand that the government bills be defined as temporary, while the Israeli Service Plan will become the law in the long run.

A new system for IDF service

Gantz’s, Eisenkot’s, and Harosh-Giti’s idea was to create a new system whereby all citizens whom the IDF chooses not to draft will come under the responsibility of the Defense Ministry’s Service Directorate. The military would get the first pick out of Israel’s Jewish and male Druze citizens. Israeli-Arab citizens would not go through the IDF’s selection process, but instead would head directly to the Service Directorate, which would then assign them to services such as first aid and rescue, or volunteering in welfare or inner-community organizations.

“We cannot look into the eyes of the reservists and only vote on lengthening their service; this is not an issue for the court, but for leaders,” Gantz said at the press conference.

Gadi Eisenkot attends a discussion at the Knesset, in Jerusalem, on November 22, 2022 (credit: OLIVIER FITOUSSI/FLASH90)

He stressed that in the wake of the Hamas invasion on October 7, members of all sectors of Israeli society, including Arab-Israelis and haredim, raced forward to save lives. This could be indicative of a system where everyone could serve without having to give up their identity and way of life, Gantz said.

Eisenkot added, “We can choose between a historic amendment and a historic missed opportunity.” He said that their plan was the basis for discussion and would be subject to changes if other parties in the Knesset had ideas of how to improve it.

In an answer to a question by The Jerusalem Post, Eisenkot said that the war cabinet had not debated the issue, and that part of the reason he and Gantz were holding the press conference was to bring the plan into the public eye to begin a process to enshrine it as law.

The press conference came amid a public debate about the justification for the decades-long blanket exemption from IDF service for haredi men, which broke out after the government’s bills to extend mandatory and reserve duties did not address the fact that haredi men were given a blanket exemption from service, and did not propose a plan to begin recruiting soldiers from a broader pool of candidates to lessen the burden on those who already are serving.

The press conference coincided with a hearing in the Supreme Court on the legality of the haredi exemption, as the bill that enabled it already expired at the end of June last year. It also coincided with a separate debate on a bill in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (FADC) to lengthen the age of exemption for reservists by one year.

The bill is meant to preserve the current array of reservists at least until the end of 2024, as age barriers determine that if the exemption does not pass into law by February 29, thousands of men who have reached the age of 40 will be released from service.

According to Israel’s existing law, soldiers must serve in the reserves until the end of the calendar year in which they turn 40. That number is 45 for officers and 49 for specific roles deemed by the defense minister as especially necessary. On December 31, thousands of men were scheduled to become exempt from service. The Knesset on December 28 lengthened service for these reservists until the end of February and now wishes to lengthen it again until the end of 2024.

“The issue of extending service for mandatory and reserve soldiers cannot be separated from the question of haredi enlistment,” Yair Lapid, opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman said during the committee’s debate.

“The first condition for joint living is that everyone has the same rights and the same duties. There is no such thing as unity without equality. There is no such thing as unity if all of the burden – operational and economic – falls on one group in the Israeli public,” Lapid said.

Even though the committee was only debating the one-year extension for reservists and not the government’s larger plan to increase mandatory and reserve duties, Lapid addressed the latter.

“There are 63,000 haredim who are at the age of service. If 10,000 of them enlist, there will be no need to extend mandatory service. If only a quarter of haredi men aged 20-49 serve in the reserves, then reserves can be limited to one month every year. This is not happening for one reason only: political pressure,” Lapid said.

The haredi parties in the coalition, especially the Ashkenazi-haredi party United Torah Judaism (UTJ) are adamantly opposed to IDF service – and are unlikely to support any law that requires this. The Sephardic-haredi party, Shas, has expressed openness for those who do not study in yeshivot to join the IDF – but opposes any attempt to recruit yeshiva students.

At least one member of the coalition, Likud MK Tally Gotliv, said during the FADC debate on Monday that she would not support a bill that would grant sweeping exemption to any group in Israeli society, including the haredim.

Members of the Likud and the coalition’s Religious Zionist Party have expressed similar sentiments, although most said that this cannot be reached without dialogue and the agreement of the haredi community.

Yisrael Beytenu Chairman MK Avigdor Liberman said in a press conference ahead of his party’s weekly meeting on Monday that every Israeli who reaches the age of 18 should either join the military or serve in civil service. Liberman claimed that many haredim wished to join the IDF, but that their political representatives were preventing this.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said that the evacuated northern residents will not return to their cities and homes before the hostages held by Hamas are returned.

In a meeting with hostage families, he wanted to reassure them that Israel was doing everything both militarily and diplomatically to bring back the around 100 living hostages and the 30+ killed hostages' bodies.

Although his formulation that northern residents would need to wait to return home until the hostages are returned was in some ways not surprising, it was also a more explicit admission than usual that it will likely be months before the threat from Hezbollah is neutralized, even if a temporary ceasefire with Hamas is reached.

Dealing with the threat from Hezbollah

Hezbollah has said that it will cease attacking Israel the moment a ceasefire is reached with Hamas which prevents Israel from new military activities within Gaza.

Breakdown of damage caused by Hezbollah rockets in Israel's North, February 1, 2024 (credit: The Jerusalem Post)

However, Gallant has consistently said, including on Sunday, that the IDF will continue to attack Hezbollah until all of its forces are pushed away from the border with Israel around to a point north of the Litani River. 

Since even the current possible hostage deal describes an initial period of 45 days followed by a period of months until a full hostage exchange is accomplished, this could easily take the continued evacuation of northern residents out to the summer.

Possibly not incidentally, on Sunday the government extended special rights for northern evacuees until July 7.