Israel at war day 426: What happened in Gaza, Lebanon?

The State Department maintained it's continuing to find that allegations of Israel committing genocide in Gaza are unfounded as Amnesty International released its report on Thursday claiming there's enough evidence that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. 

"People are entitled to draw their own conclusions. We disagree with the conclusions of such a report," State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters during a news briefing on Thursday afternoon. "We have said previously and continue to find that the allegations of genocide are unfounded.

The 'Post's' Michael Starr discusses the harrowing experiences and difficult decisions in Gaza combat during reserve duties. 

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday to discuss the situation in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, Walla reported.

Sa'ar told Blinken that Israel sees an opportunity to advance a deal for the release of hostages and that Israel is serious about its intention to promote such a deal, the Foreign Minister's office told Walla.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked former Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen to eavesdrop on ministers and senior officers who were involved in a major security event, Cohen revealed on Thursday.

The allegations stem from a 2018 incident and are reportedly connected to MK Benny Gantz, who was serving as the IDF Chief of Staff at the time.

Cohen emphasized that he saw the prime minister’s request to spy on Israeli officials not as eavesdropping but rather as “using tools against anyone who is privy to the secret, including wiretapping.”

Infiltration along the Israel-Jordan border has been ruled out after earlier reports on Thursday that there was suspicious activity in the area, the IDF reported shortly after the incident. 

Israeli security forces were dispatched to an area south of the Dead Sea along the border with Jordan to investigate the report.

Cyprus has taken delivery of an Israeli air defense system, local media reported on Thursday, as the east Mediterranean island taps new markets to upgrade its defense capabilities after the loss of key supplier Russia.

TV station Sigma said the first deliveries were made on Tuesday. Cypriot officials declined to comment on the specifics of the report.

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, the former chief Sephardi rabbi and a leading figure in the Shas party, told yeshiva students this week to take the IDF draft notices sent to them, “tear them up, throw them in the toilet, and flush them away.”

Yosef made these remarks during a discussion with students earlier this week, where he urged them “not to fear because the Holy One, Blessed be He, is with you.”

A surprise attack was planned on Israel's northern border in the days following the October 7 Hamas attacks, a senior military official involved in commanding the IDF's operations in southern Lebanon revealed in a Wednesday Maariv interview. 

The official emphasized that a repeat or imitation of the October 7 attack is unlikely to occur along Israel's northern border at this stage of the war. He attributed this to the IDF's efforts in neutralizing terror tunnels, clearing dense brushlands, and dismantling nature reserves that had been converted into terror strongholds.

Amnesty International's Israel section rejected the findings of the global body's Thursday report accusing the State of Israel of committing genocide during the war against Hamas in Gaza.

In a Thursday statement, the independently registered Israeli association Israel said that it was not involved in any way with the report. It argued that the allegation of genocide had not been "sufficiently substantiated."

While Amnesty Israel believes that there is a high death toll of civilians in the Gaza Strip and that the Israeli response roused suspicions of possible widespread international law violations, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, it did not believe that the threshold of proof for the crime of genocide had been met.

Police arrested a 34-year-old illegal resident from the West Bank on Tuesday following a police car chase in Tel Aviv that ended with a self-inflicted crash, Israeli media reported on Thursday.

Police officers from the Ramat Gan-Bnei Brak Stock Exchange unit began searching for a suspect following a report received from an ituran (a system that provides stolen vehicle recovery and tracking services) concerning the theft of a car in Ramat Gan.