Israel-Hamas War Day 265: What is happening in Gaza?

The International Criminal Court has postponed its decision-making regarding arrest warrants for alleged war crimes against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The IDF surprise attacked Shejaia after the area was considered to be clear of Hamas. Will this surprise technique be effective?

"Israel will need to directly confront Tehran and threaten its vital interests and survival."  The Jerusalem Post reached out to three Israeli experts to learn about the prospect of a potential war between Israel and Hezbollah.

A Republican lawmaker has written to the Biden administration demanding it shut down its aid pier off the coast of Gaza, calling the operation ineffective, risky, and a waste of money.

Israel has received $6.5 billion in security aid from the United States since October 7, according to a report by The Washington Post. 

The report added that nearly half of the aid lasted through May 2024, 7 months after the start of the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza. A senior official said that the totals indicate how deep and complex Israel's relationship with the United States is. 

Capt. Alon Sacgiu, 22, from Hadera, a sniper team commander in the Haruv Reconnaissance Unit in the Kfir Brigade, fell during operational activity in the area of Jenin, the IDF announced on Thursday.

During the incident in which Capt. Alon Sacgiu fell, another soldier from the Haruv Reconnaissance Unit of the Kfir Brigade was severely wounded. Another 16 soldiers were wounded to varying degrees of severity in this incident.

Israel has received $6.5 billion in security aid from the United States since October 7, according to a report by The Washington Post. 

Germany and the Netherlands followed Canada in urging their citizens to leave Lebanon, fearing that an all-out war could break out with Israel.

“German citizens are urgently requested to leave Lebanon,” the country’s embassy in Lebanon warned on its website. It noted that air traffic might be halted in such a situation, and if so, it may not be possible to leave.

Third Lebanon War

The United States worked Wednesday to prevent a Third Lebanon War as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited Washington.

“What we’re trying to do is prevent a second front from opening up,” US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met with Gallant on Wednesday to discuss the issue, after speaking Tuesday with US Secretary of State Lloyd Austin. Sullivan affirmed the US’s “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, including in the face of threats from Iranian-backed terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hezbollah,” his office said.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin receives Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at the Pentagon in Washington, US, June 25, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE)

The two men discussed “ongoing US efforts to support de-escalation and a diplomatic resolution to the ongoing hostilities in Lebanon that would ensure the return of both Israeli and Lebanese families to their homes in the border region,” his office added.

Gallant’s office said they also discussed “the important cooperation between Israel and the United States vis-a-vis Iranian aggression and its nuclear ambitions.”

Concern is high that the IDF-Hezbollah war that began after the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, which has focused on cross-border violence, will escalate and lead to a regional war that would actively include Iran.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock visited Israel on Monday and Beirut on Tuesday in an effort to understand and describe the situation. “With every rocket across the Blue Line between [Lebanon and Israel], the danger grows that a miscalculation could trigger a hot war from one moment to the next. All who bear responsibility must exercise extreme restraint,” she wrote on X from Beirut.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said his country stood in solidarity with Lebanon amid growing tensions with Israel and, on Wednesday, called on regional countries to support Beirut.

In a speech to his AK Party’s lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning to spread the Gaza war throughout the region.”It seems that Israel has now turned its eyes on Lebanon after destroying and burning Gaza. We see Western countries giving Israel support behind the scenes,” Erdogan said.

“Netanyahu’s plans to spread the war to the region will lead to a big catastrophe,” he said, adding that Western support for Israel was “pitiful”.

“Turkey stands with the brotherly people and state of Lebanon. I call on other countries in the region to stand in solidarity with Lebanon,” he stated.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz retorted in a post on X that Erdogan “is a war criminal who slaughters innocent Kurds across the Syrian border and tries to deny Israel its right to self-defense against a terror organization attacking from Lebanon under Iran’s orders.”

Earlier this week, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, commenting on the tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, said the Turkish government saw a risk of the conflict spreading.

When asked about Hezbollah’s threat to Cyprus, the EU member state in closest proximity to Lebanon, Fidan called on Cyprus to “stay away” from the conflict.

Turkey’s intelligence reports showed Cyprus had become a base for “certain countries’” military and reconnaissance flights over Gaza, Fidan said in an interview with private Haberturk television.

Cyprus has said it is “in no way involved” in the conflict. It has lobbied its EU partners to offer Lebanon financial assistance and recently set up a maritime corridor to dispatch humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Reuters contributed to this report.

RAFAH, Gaza – In a first since the start of the Gaza war, Hamas may have pre-evacuated many of the Palestinian civilians in Rafah before the IDF fully invaded, IDF Col. and Nahal Brigade Commander Yair Zuckerman told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to Rafah on Wednesday.

Zuckerman said that he believed Hamas itself pressed for an earlier and quicker evacuation to gain more time to set more booby traps for the IDF once it entered the area.

Zuckerman’s analytical point, if true, would mark a stunning turn of events.

In all prior battles with Hamas – whether in northern Gaza, central Gaza, or Khan Yunis – the Gazan terror group pushed to prevent Palestinian civilians from following evacuation orders.

There were even numerous documented cases in which civilians who were able to speak to the IDF or terrorists who were later captured admitted that large groups of civilians had been held as human shields.

Map showing evacuation zones in Gaza, May 11, 2024. (credit: IDF)

In fact, a cornerstone of Hamas’s strategy was to keep as many civilians as possible nearby to deter Israel from attacking or to increase the likelihood of their own people dying in the crossfire in order to later blame Israel on the world stage.

Against all logic

As such, the idea that Hamas would “assist” the IDF by helping evacuate the 1.4 million civilians who were in Rafah goes against everything that has been known about Hamas’s strategy from October 2023 until last month.

It would seem even stranger in Rafah because the US managed to delay the IDF’s invasion of the city for four months, in no small part based on the idea that an invasion would lead to the largest killing of civilians since the start of the war due to the high volume of people there.

Zuckerman defended his analysis, noting that Hamas’s booby-trapping of Rafah was far more extensive than anywhere else in the Gaza Strip. He said he thought it was unlikely that Hamas would have been able to integrate the number of booby traps into civilians’ homes that the IDF encountered once it invaded if the civilians were still living there.

Supporting Zuckerman’s argument, the international community was surprised at the speed with which the vast majority of the civilians evacuated Rafah, as was the IDF.

The US predicted that evacuating 1.4 million people would take four months, while the IDF expected it to take four weeks. Ultimately, it took only two weeks.

Zuckerman’s theory could help explain why the evacuation went faster than the IDF expected.

And if Hamas believed, based on the many other experiences it had with evacuation successes, that an evacuation was inevitable anyway, at least using the extra time to set up a much larger apparatus of booby traps would be some achievement.

The IDF struck a building on Wednesday night in the city of Nabatieh, located in southern Lebanon, according to  Wednesday Israeli media reports citing Arab media.

Initial reports say that a building was damaged in the area. The purpose of the strike has not been disclosed yet.

This is a developing story.