IDF soldier killed in Beit Hanoun with others wounded, UNSC convenes session on Houthi attacks

Israel's assassination of Hezbollah's former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was the culmination of extensive spy infiltration and intelligence gathering from the terror group that spanned decades, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The NYT investigation, based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American, and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations, revealed just how extensively Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah as part of two decades of methodical intelligence work in preparation for an all-out war that many expected would eventually come.

The Israeli spies recruited people to plant listening devices in Hezbollah bunkers, tracked meetings between one top commander and his four mistresses, and had near-constant visibility into the movements of the terror group's leaders, per NYT's report.

NYT acknowledged there were major breakthroughs, such as in 2012 when Israel's Unit 8200 stole a trove of information, including the specifics of the leaders' secret hide-outs and the group's arsenal of missiles and rockets. NYT also highlighted significant stumbles, such as in late 2023, when a Hezbollah technician got suspicious about the batteries in the pagers, which were later detonated by Israel, crippling thousands of Hezbollah terrorists.

NYT noted that Unit 8200 scrambled to save their efforts in September when they collected intelligence that Hezbollah terrorists were concerned enough about the pagers that they were sending some of them to Iran for inspection.

Hezam al-Asad, a senior-ranking member of the Houthis, wrote in Hebrew in a post on X/Twitter, saying: "As long as children in Gaza are killed every day, Zionists must not sleep."

The IDF reported that the alarms that sounded in the Gaza border communities at approximately 1:00 a.m. were a false alarm

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi conducted a situational assessment in southern Lebanon on Sunday where he stated that truly defeating Hezbollah meant returning all residents, along with tourism, to the North, Israel's military announced.

Halevi began by saying that militarily, Israel had already defeated Hezbollah, and "our victory is very clear."

He then added that to "truly win" and achieve "long-term victory" meant having many residents living here [northern Israel], vast tourism, reopening restaurants and cafes that used to be here."

Israel conducted a commando raid on an underground Iranian missile production facility near the city of Maysaf in Syria in September, an exclusive KAN News report revealed on Sunday.

The report said that the raid targeted two significant sites, which were the Syrian defense industry's Scientific Studies and Research Center and the underground missile production facility run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Israel had informed the United States about the operation in advance, the report also said.

Notably, Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center has been on Israel's radar for more than a decade, Israeli defense officials told KAN News.

The report added that Israel prepared its operational plans after it detected that Iran had transferred components for a precision missile project into the facility. Israel then decided to address the "growing threat," according to KAN News.

The IDF said on Sunday that – if ordered – it will prolong keeping Jabalya cut-off from Gaza City amid the military’s continuous operations to clear out northern Gaza of regrouping Hamas cells and following the massive bust of Hamas activity in Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya on Friday.

All of this comes amid an ongoing debate about whether Israel is implementing a plan known as “the General’s Plan,” proposed by several senior former IDF officials, to empty all of northern Gaza of Palestinians and cut it off completely – as a pressure move against Hamas.

Both Jabalya and Gaza City are broadly part of northern Gaza. But, Jabalya, along with Beit Hanun and Beit Lahiya, is part of the northernmost half of the enclave, which has been progressively emptied of most Palestinian terrorists and civilians alike since early October.

In early October, the IDF evacuated tens of thousands of Palestinians to Gaza City and further south; large numbers of Hamas terrorists were also killed.