Israel Brief: Sunday, August 16
Hezbollah spends a drone on a ridge it has already lost, and Katz moves to take civilian policing in Judea and Samaria off the army.
Hezbollah's answer to losing the Ali al-Taher ridge was an explosive drone into the engineering team standing on top of it, at half past two on Shabbat morning. Three soldiers went to Rambam, two of them on ventilators. Dozens of Radwan men are sealed in the tunnels underneath, the army is at high readiness for an operation to take the ridge, and Washington has told Beirut it can make that operation smaller but not stop it. Inside Israel the argument is about ground too — who polices Israelis in Judea and Samaria, the army or the police — and Likud's members vote tomorrow with the courts on their minds.
Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Lebanon: A Hezbollah drone wounds three Yahalom soldiers on Ali al-Taher, and Israel kills two commanders in reply. See The War Today.
Hormuz: The sixty days Washington and Tehran set aside expire tomorrow with no negotiation held and no crude moving. See The War Today.
Gaza: Israel resumes strikes after a week's pause, and the Board of Peace tells it not to stop. See The War Today.
Judea and Samaria: Katz orders a plan moving civilian law enforcement over Israeli residents from the army to the police. See Inside Israel.
Likud: Some 140,000 eligible members vote tomorrow, and eighty percent of them name the legal system first. See Inside Israel.
Manpower: Zamir has grown the combat force by tens of percent and is still 12,000 soldiers short. See Inside Israel.
Turkey: Ankara turns the Mecca defense pact into permanent bodies and joint production of drones and electronic warfare. See Israel and the World.
Colombia: Bogota quits the ICJ case, recognizes the Golan, and takes Israel's ambassador back. See Israel and the World.
RSF: Reporters Without Borders deletes two terror-affiliated names from its Gaza journalist count and issues no correction. See Israel and the World.
New York: A man storms Central Synagogue's bimah mid-service and faces fourteen charges, six of them hate crimes. See Israel and the World.
Harvard: A federal judge throws out the Title VI suit and raises the standard for every case behind it. See Israel and the World.
Yemen: Mocha port suspends operations after more than twenty-five missiles, and Riyadh weighs backing a Yemeni ground campaign. See Developments to Watch.
Two documents written in June were supposed to produce an act by now, and neither has. The Lebanon framework ties Israel's pullback to a disarmament nobody has started. The sixty days Washington and Tehran gave themselves run out tomorrow with no negotiation held, and Iran spent them putting fifty of sixty-nine tunnel entrances back into service. What is actually moving is physical — troops standing on the shafts at Ali al-Taher, and a police force Katz wants raised for a job the army cannot hand over until somebody applies Israeli law.
Today: what is sealed under the Ali al-Taher ridge, the sixty days running out on Hormuz, and Katz moving policing off the army.
The Jewish State — Mitzpe's eight-session live course on Israeli history from the Mandate to October 7, taught the way the brief reads. Cohort 1: eight Sundays from Oct 11. mitzpe.org/the-jewish-state