Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 294?

The IDF announced that it destroyed a 1 KM-long tunnel in Gaza shortly after PIJ launched rockets that landed outside of Asheklon.

The two soldiers who were hospitalized with gas inhalation on Tuesday have regained full consciousness and are now in moderate condition, Shamir-Assaf Harofeh Medical Center on Friday afternoon.

In the same incident, St.-Sgt. Noam Douek, 19, was killed by the gas, which was reportedly from a faulty IDF generator, and not in battle.

It was reported that an IDF technician may have failed to properly operate or test the generator. Douek was an armored fighter from Kiryat Motzkin, and was allegedly sleeping in a room near an operating generator, according to Israeli media reports.
 

Corporal Moti Rave was killed in battle while fighting in the Gaza Strip, the IDF announced on Friday.

Corporal Rave, 37, from Shani Yishuv, served in the 84th Battalion in the Givati Brigade. 

Rave fell in the southern Gaza Strip.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally thanked US President Joe Biden for his half-a-century of support for the Jewish state when the two men met Thursday afternoon in the Oval Office in Washington. 

“We’ve known each other for 40 years, and you’ve known every Israeli Prime Minister for 50 years since Golda Meir,” Netanyahu told Biden as they sat next to each other in chairs in the Oval Office surrounded by dozens of reporters.

“From a proud Israeli Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for fifty years of public service and fifty years of support for the state of Israel.                                                    

“I look forward to our discussion with you today and working with you in the months ahead on critical issues,” Netanyahu said.

Biden issued only one short line, recalling his first meeting with former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, with Yitzhak Rabin, before he replaced her.

A note signed by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to US President Joe Biden during their meeting at the White House, July 25, 2024. (credit: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)

Netanyahu entered the White House driveway in a black limonene with an American and Israeli flag on top of it, on a cloudy and muggy day in Washington, interspersed with raindrops.

He was the first foreign leader and, indeed, one of the first visitors Biden has hosted since he announced his withdrawal from the presidential race on Wednesday night.

Netanyahu had known Biden for over four decades, having met him while serving as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

Biden had once famously given him a photograph, writing on the back “Bibi I love you, but I don’t agree with a damn thing you say.”

It has often been used to describe a relationship of affection and political discord, given that it is often speculated that Netanyahu would be a Republican if he were an American politician and Biden is a staunch Democrat.

Not without differences

The policy disagreements between them have marked the last two years, with Biden refusing to invite Netanyahu to the White House for the previous two years. This was first due to his opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial reform plan, then due to his frustration with Netanyahu over his choice of governmental partners and his opposition to some of the steps Israel has been taking regarding the Gaza war.

Only after Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress — an event that happened Wednesday — was he given a White House audience.

But the nature of the meeting changed in light of presidential politics. It became first and foremost a moment for Netanyahu to thank Biden and reflect on the legacy of a President who has always described himself as a Christian Zionist.

Biden flew to Israel in October at the start of the war and has given Israel a strong supportive umbrella by which to conduct the Gaza war, both through diplomatic support on the international stage and with military support.

He also created a security umbrella of five armies — the US, Israel, Jordan, France, and Great Britain — which could operate to combat attacks against the Jewish state from Iran.

Biden has also personally helped lead a negotiation process to secure the release of the remaining 115 hostages in Gaza.

Thursday’s meeting with Netanyahu takes place as the US and Israeli public have begun bidding Biden farewell as he steps off the international stage this coming half-year.

It will also likely be the last Biden will hold with Netanyahu while he is in office. 

It was initially set for Monday, then canceled due to Biden’s bout with COVID, and then set for Thursday, one day after his Congressional speech.

Netanyahu is also expected to meet later in the day with Vice President Kamal Harris, who is campaigning for the presidency on behalf of the Democratic Party. This will be an opportunity for the two to strengthen their ties, an important step should Harris take office. 

Netanyahu will also visit Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in Florida on Friday before returning to Washington, where he will spend the Sabbath. He will then fly back to Israel on Saturday night.

Trump called for a quick end to its war with Hamas and a return of the hostages, adding that Israel has to better manage its "public relations,” in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. 

He also criticized those who protested the Israeli prime minister's speech to the U.S. Congress, calling for a one-year jail sentence for desecrating the U.S. flag.

Reuters contributed to this report.

A deal to release the remaining 115 hostages must be closed soon, particularly given the ‘gaps’ are closer than ever, President Joe Biden is expected to tell Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu when the two meet at the White House on Thursday in Washington.

“The President feels we’ve got to get this hostage deal in place, so we can get a ceasefire in place, at least for phase one,” US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told reporters at the White House while the two leaders met in the oval office.

Directly after that conversation the two leaders will meet relatives of the eight hostages held in Gaza who hold dual Israeli-US citizenship. It is Biden’s second such meeting in the White House with a group representing captives in Gaza.

At issue for the White House is getting started on a three-phase deal that Biden first unveiled on May 31. The first six-week phase of that deal would see the release of some 33 to 18 live or dead hostages in exchange for a lull in the war. 

On day 16, both sides would begin talks on the question of a permanent ceasefire. Netanyahu has approved sending a negotiating team to Doha but has said he wants to wait for them to depart until after his conversations at the White House.

White House National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby takes a question during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, US, July 25, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/ELIZABETH FRANTZ)

His critics and many of the relatives of hostages have accused him of sabotaging the deal by inserting extra demands and delaying the dispatch of a negotiating team.

Kirby said it was particularly important to get started on phase one. “There are gaps that remain, and our team continues to work with our counterparts in the region to see if we can't close those gaps,” Kirby said.

His words referred to Egypt and Qatar, which have been the main mediating countries for the deal. 

Close, but not done yet

The US believes that the gaps between Israelis and Hamas can be closed and that “ we can achieve a deal, but it's going to require, as it always does, some leadership, some compromise, and an effort to get there. “

The President “believes we need to get there, and we need to get there soon,” he said.

Netanyahu angered relatives of the hostages and his opponents during his address Wednesday to a joint session of Congress when he emphasized the importance of victory over Hamas rather than ending the war in exchange for a hostage deal.

He told Congress that he wanted both victory over Hamas and to free the hostages.

Kirby told repeaters that the two leaders would also discuss the IDF-Hezbollah war on Israel’s northern border and “of course, the need, the critical need for stability in the West Bank.”

“They'll also discuss the United States ironclad commitment, of course, to Israel's security, including countering the very serious threats that Iran and its proxy groups continue to demonstrate throughout the region,” Kirby said.

Israel is seeking changes to a plan for a Gaza truce and the release of hostages by Hamas, complicating a final deal to halt nine months of combat that have devastated the enclave, according to a Western official and a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources.

Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the enclave's north when the ceasefire begins, retreating from an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters.

Israeli negotiators "want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support” Hamas terrorists who remain entrenched there, said the Western official.

The Palestinian terrorist group rejected the new Israeli demand, according to Palestinian and Egyptian sources.

Another sticking point, the Egyptian sources said, was over Israel's demand to retain control of Gaza's border with Egypt, which Cairo dismissed as outside a framework for a final deal accepted by the foes.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu-Zuhri. (credit: REUTERS/OSMAN ORSAL)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, the White House, and Egypt's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Israel's demands.

“Netanyahu is still stalling. There is no change in his stance so far," said Hamas senior official Sami Abu Zuhri, who did not comment directly on Israel's demands.

Word of the new sticking points came as US President Joe Biden pressed for a ceasefire in talks in Washington on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on reaching a final deal.

"We are closer now than we've been before," said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, adding that gaps remained.

In a speech to the US Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that Israel was engaged "in intense efforts" to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.

The sources who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity to discuss Israeli demands because of the delicacy of the on-off talks to finalize a truce and the release of hostages seized in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

The attackers killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 captives, according to Israeli tallies. Some 120 hostages are still being held, though Israel believes a third of them are dead.

Gaza health authorities say more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed, and most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced by fighting that has destroyed much of the enclave and created a humanitarian disaster.

The United States, Qatar, and Egypt have been mediating indirect talks between Israel and Hamas centered on a framework based on an Israeli offer and promoted by US President Joe Biden, who has pressed the sides to resolve their remaining differences.

The framework calls for three phases, with the first seeing a six-week ceasefire and the release of women, elderly, and wounded hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Talks on the second phase - which Biden calls "a permanent end to hostilities" - would continue in the first phase. Major reconstruction would begin in the third phase.

Sticking points

US officials have said for weeks that a deal was close but that hurdles remained.

Israeli officials raised their demand for a mechanism to vet civilians returning to Gaza's north at the last negotiating session in Cairo earlier this month, said the Western and Egyptian sources. This "wasn't expected," the Western official said.

Israel is concerned not only about Hamas terrorists slipping back north but “operatives” among civilians who provide covert support to the group that governs Gaza, the official said.

The Israelis, the official and the three other sources said, also balked at withdrawing their forces from a nine-mile (14 km) strip of land along the border with Egypt referred to by Israel as the Philadelphi corridor.

The Israel Defense Forces seized the strip in May, saying that the strategic swath hosts smuggling tunnels through which Hamas has received weapons and other supplies. Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.

The last several days have seen efforts to “work around” that issue, either through an Israeli withdrawal “or there could be some understanding about how that is managed,” said the Western official, who did not elaborate.

A senior Biden administration official, briefing reporters on Wednesday ahead of Netanyahu's meeting with the US president, said they were in the final stages of securing a deal.

“There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side. And I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week," the official said.

Among things needed from Hamas were "the hostages who are going to come out," the official added without elaborating.

Zuhri rejected the assertion, saying, "The US administration is trying to cover up for Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal by saying there are things demanded from the two sides. This isn’t true."

Vice-President Kamala Harris spoke at a press conference following her meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.

Harris spoke about her continued support for the hostages and highlighted that she and President Biden had been working to release them.

Happening Now: Tune in as I deliver remarks to press about my meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. https://t.co/qNY03XVTrX

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 25, 2024

She then spoke about "the dire humanitarian situation" in Gaza and how over two million people were facing food insecurity.

"We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies, we cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent," she said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) shaking hands with Vice-President Kamala Harris (right) during the former's visit to the US, 26.7.2024 (credit: AMOS BEN-GERSHOM/GPO)

Ceasefire deal plan

Harris thanked President Biden for helping to plan and push for a ceasefire deal.

She reiterated the main points of the multi-stage ceasefire deal, which would include a full ceasefire and a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza through stages.

"It is time for this war to end. And end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, and the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends. And the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self-determination."

Harris then called on Netanyahu, saying, "It was time to get this deal done."

"I remain committed to a path forward that can lead to a two-state solution," she said.

She said that a two-state solution was the only way for Israel to remain a Jewish state and allow Palestinians the right to self-determination.

Closing, she said, "It is important for the American people to remember the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often, the conversation is binary. When the reality is anything but."

She then called on the American people to help keep conversations nuanced and balanced and to condemn terrorism, violence, and prejudice.

The Prisoners' Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club announced the death of a senior Hamas official in West Bank on Thursday night.

Mustafa Muhammad Abu-Ara was detained in Rimon prison.

After his medical condition deteriorated, he was transferred to Soroka Hospital, where he died.