Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 151?

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that a deal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages is in the hands of Hamas, and a ceasefire was necessary to get more aid into Gaza.

"We must get more aid into Gaza," Biden told reporters.

In response, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan on Tuesday said that an exchange of Palestinian prisoners and Israeli hostages in Gaza could only happen after a ceasefire, as ceasefire talks in Cairo between Hamas, Egypt, and Qatar continued with no sign of a breakthrough.

Hamdan, speaking at a press conference in Beirut, repeated his group's conditions for a deal: An end to Israel's military offensive, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and the return of displaced Palestinians to homes they have fled in other parts of Gaza.

"In the past two days, the movement presented its position on the proposal the brotherly Qatari and Egyptian mediators put forward. We reaffirmed our conditions for a ceasefire: a full pullout from the Strip and the return of the displaced from areas they left, in particular in the north," he said.

Issues in delivering on humanitarian aid

The humanitarian situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of residents are believed to have remained despite Israeli orders to evacuate.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan speaks at a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon, November 12, 2023. (credit: ESA ALEXANDER/REUTERS)

The United Nations has been unable to deliver food aid to the north since January 23. The United States on Saturday carried out the first of what it said would be a series of humanitarian air drops of food into Gaza.

But Hamdan told reporters: "We say to Washington, what is more important than sending aid is stopping its supply of weapons to Israel."

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that a deal for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages is in the hands of Hamas, and a ceasefire was necessary to get more aid into Gaza.

"We must get more aid into Gaza," Biden told reporters.

This is a developing story.

A terrorist was killed after stabbing a 19-year-old Israeli at the Yitzhar Junction in the West Bank on Tuesday.

Israeli media reported that a soldier was stabbed in the attack however this hasn't been confirmed. The IDF said that the details are currently being investigated.

The IDF later updated that the terrorist who conducted the attack was killed and that security forces were scanning the area for further threats.

Additionally, Israeli media has reported the identity of the terrorist as 16-year-old Muhammed Shahada from Kfar Urif, near Nablus.

The knife used by 16-year-okd Muhammed Shahadah in the stabbing attack at Yitzhar Junction, March 5, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Rabin Medical Center-Belinson Campus later reported that they received a 19-year-old patient from the stabbing attack, who was taken to their facilities in serious condition.

This is a developing story.

In the midst of a variety of rocky disagreements between the US and Israel, the US State Department on Tuesday formally sanctioned an ex-Israeli intelligence officer and current cyber spyware CEO and related entities.

Although in 2021, the US Commerce Department issued a wide black list of Israeli cyber offense firms from doing business in the US, that list did not prevent travel to America and would not result in sanctions against companies and countries globally doing business with those firms outside of the US.

In July 2023, Intellexa was added to that initial blacklist of Israeli spyware entities. 

However, NSO Group was on that list and has maintained ongoing strong business relationships in Europe. 

In contrast, Tuesday's latest sanctions from the US State Department against former Israeli intelligence officer, Tal Dilian, an associate Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou (Hamou), and three of Dilian's entities, are far broader and more severe.

NSO Group logo is shown on a smartphone which is placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken May 4, 2022. (credit: REUTERS/DADO RUVIC/ILLUSTRATION)

According to the State Department, "Tal Jonathan Dilian (Dilian) is the founder of the Intellexa Consortium and is the architect behind its spyware tools. The consortium is a complex international web of decentralized companies controlled either fully or partially by Dilian, including through Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou."   

"Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou is a corporate off-shoring specialist who has provided managerial services to the Intellexa Consortium, including renting office space in Greece on behalf of Intellexa S.A. Hamou holds a leadership role at Intellexa S.A., Intellexa Limited, and Thalestris Limited," said the State Department.

Formally, the latest sanctions are the implementation of a decision issued in early February about a readiness to confront Israeli offense spyware firms who cross certain boundaries in their business, which the US views as beyond the pale in allegedly undermining human rights and democratic values.

Informally, this latest decision comes shortly after Washington also started some Israeli settler activists for alleged violent activities.

It also comes as the countries have been at loggerheads for around a month over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to endorse American ideas about how to manage Gaza post-war as well as the timing for ending the war.

Dilian has been the target of allegations for years

Since around mid-2022, Dilian’s Intellexa and associated entities have been making major headlines in the news, usually with hard-hitting allegations.

Like many of those who have run NSO, Dilian is a graduate of Israeli Military Intelligence.

In an extensive Lawfare blog post on March 24, 2023, Winnona DeSombre Bernsen – who previously spent five years in the cyber threat intelligence industry tracking nation-state and criminal cyber threats (at Google and Recorded Future) – detailed how Dilian stepped into areas of NSO’s business that it had to shed to avoid additional ire from Washington.

Dilian was once a founder of an NSO subsidiary but went his own way almost a decade ago and created Intellexa. Dilian has been accused of not bothering with even the partial measures that NSO may have tried to use to mitigate human rights violations – or at least to mitigate the company’s exposure to its clients' violating rights.

According to many reports and even some official criminal probes in Greece, Dilian has used a mix of hacking technologies and psychological warfare on behalf of many of the countries that NSO eventually cut off because they abused its hacking tools. According to those reports, he has also done business with other autocratic governments, which NSO deemed too volatile even before any governments were in its face.

According to one account, both Dilian and NSO set up booths in the UAE at one of the various recent security conferences there. As representatives of autocratic country after country were told by NSO representatives that they were not even allowed to speak to them, client after client then disappeared into Dilian’s booth for extended conversations.

In an extensive report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from March 14, 2023, Dilian’s talent at making it either hard or impossible to track and penalize Intellexa was clearly highlighted.

The Carnegie Endowment quoting the Lighthouse Reports noted that “three companies called Intellexa were registered, in Greece, Ireland and the British Virgin Islands. All three were owned by an Irish holding company, Thalestris. As Inside Story dug into company registers in Greece and Cyprus, they found that Thalestris also controlled companies named Apollo, Hermes, Mistrona, Dernova, Lorenco, and Feroveno – some of which were seemingly registered to a rubble-strewn vacant lot in downtown Limassol.”

Furthermore, “Thalestris, in turn, was partly dependent on money from another Virgin Islands entity, Chadera Enterprises, which – behind a veil of anonymity – was ultimately controlled by Dilian and two of his associates.”

The Carnegie Endowment report also said at the time that the EU was hopelessly split between countries that are trying to start to move toward greater oversight of cyber offense firms on one side versus countries such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Malta, which are havens for spyware companies and are often trying to attract more such firms.

As a result of such firms changing corporate names and country headquarters, when law enforcement focuses on individual companies and individual countries, enforcement becomes a futile game of whack-a-mole. Either the founders behind the company, or some portion of the company’s employees with a sufficient mix of technical and sales talent, will generally regroup under a new name or in a new place, leaving regulators scratching their heads.

An Israeli strike killed a mother, father, and their son in the southern Lebanese town of Houla on Tuesday, the mayor Shakib Koteish told Reuters.

"It was a three-floor house, now it's all the way collapsed and the rescue workers are still working to see who is left under it," he said.

This is a developing story.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will do "everything" to ensure freedom of worship during Ramadan while also "maintaining security and safety needs," during a Tuesday Knesset committee discussion for preparations of the month of Ramadan.

"Israel's policy has always been and always will be to maintain the freedom of worship for all religions. Of course, we have done this during the Ramadan holiday in the past, and we will do it again now," he said.

"We will do everything to maintain the freedom of worship on the Temple Mount while appropriately maintaining security and safety needs, and we will allow the Muslim public to celebrate the holiday," he said.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister Gadi Eisenkot, and Aryeh Deri were also in attendance.

Earlier on Tuesday, an unmanned aerial vehicle that infiltrated the Golan Heights from Syria was intercepted by an Israeli fighter jet, the IDF confirmed, as rockets continued to be fired onto Israel's northern border towns from Lebanon.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel on Tuesday to maximize "every possible means" to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza, saying the current situation in the densely populated enclave was unacceptable and unsustainable.

Speaking before his meeting with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the State Department, the top US diplomat also said there was right now an opportunity to achieve an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war but that the onus was on the Palestinian terrorist group to engage in those talks.

This is a developing story.

Israel plans to open a new crossing into the Gaza Strip, NBC reported on Tuesday, citing two Israeli military officials. 

The officials stated that according to the plan, which has yet to be finalized, the crossing is set to be opened in the area of Kibbutz Be’eri. 

The report comes amid mounting pressure on Israel to facilitate the entrance of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. 

US pressures Israel to enable the entrance of aid into Gaza 

Earlier this week, US Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the situation in Gaza in a speech in Alabama, calling on Israel to further enable the entrance of aid to Gaza and open land crossings into the Strip.

In addition, John Kirby, White House National Security Communications Advisor, commented on Monday on US efforts to airdrop aid into the Strip. He stated the US would continue its deliveries through such channels along with acting via sea. However, he emphasized the best route for delivering aid was through land convoys.

One such convoy which had entered Gaza through the Keren Shalom and Rafah crossings last week resulted in a stampede and the death of more than 100 Palestinians.

Last month, an ABC report, citing Israeli sources, claimed that Israel was expected to re-open the Karni border crossing with Gaza, which has been closed since 2011, to enable the entrance of humanitarian aid. 

Tovah Lazaroff and Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this article. 

Yahya Sinwar, Hamas chief in Gaza, has been the object of criticism within the Hamas leadership for launching the October 7 attack without prior consultation with other Hamas leaders, according to a Sky News Arabia report on Tuesday. 

According to sources who spoke with the news outlet, those who made the decision to attack were Sinwar, along with his brother Muhammad Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, Hamas military chief, and Marwan Issa, Hamas’s Deputy Military Commander. The four had not consulted the rest of the Hamas leadership and its political bureau, who were ignorant of the decision.

A-Sharq el-Awsat's December report

A report published by a-Sharq el-Awsat in January, based on Palestinian sources close to the al-Qassam Brigades, claimed that the decision to attack was made solely by five Hamas leaders, among whom were Sinwar, Sinwar’s brother, Deif, Rouhi Mushtaha, a Hamas official close associate of Sinwar and  Ayman Nofal, close to Deif and previous leader of the al-Qassam Brigades’ intelligence. 

Interestingly, in the December report, Issa was not included in the close list of confidants. 

Hamas Gaza Chief Yahya Sinwar (L) gestures as he speaks with Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at the Rafah border crossing in the southern Gaza Strip September 19, 2017 (credit: REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA)

In addition, the report stated that the decision to attack and its timing were taken only on October 6, a day prior to October 7.  

To ensure secrecy, many of Hamas's field commanders were not made privy to the specific details of the attack while leaders of the al-Qassam Brigade units received information concerning the attack some three days before. 

According to the a-Sharaq el-Awsat report, only a few hours prior to the attack did details concerning the attack pervade to a larger circle of Hamas leaders, among whom were Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas’s political bureau and Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas leader.

The Sky News Arabia report comes amid a KAN News report in recent weeks stating that Sinwar had lost contact with Hamas's leadership. 

Yonah Jeremy Bob contributed to this article.