Israel Brief: Sunday, November 23
A ceasefire that is anything but, a northern front daring Hezbollah to blink, and an Israeli system finally admitting the old evasions are dead.
Shalom, friends.
The day opens with the same contradiction we’ve been tracking for weeks: diplomacy talks about “stability” while every front acts like the next round has already begun. In Gaza, the tunnel grid is collapsing, Hamas fighters are crawling out starving, and the Yellow Line is treated as optional terrain. In Lebanon, Israel just erased Hezbollah’s acting chief of staff in Dahieh and kept going—turning Hezbollah’s mythical “red lines” into punchlines. Inside Israel, the draft crisis, the Sde Teiman showdown, and a public done with excuses are converging into something the old system can’t dodge anymore.
⚡️Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Gaza: IDF kills multiple Hamas commanders across Gaza as starving fighters surface from Rafah tunnels and breach the Yellow Line again. See The War Today
Hamas: Leadership warns mediators the ceasefire is “over” and demands U.S. intervention as IDF enforcement tightens. See Developments to Watch
Lebanon: Israel’s strike wave expands from Dahieh to Baalbek and Kafr Hamam; Hezbollah debates retaliation under a shattered command hierarchy. See The War Today
Syria: Reserve forces find RPG parts and rocket remnants along Iran’s corridor; forward Israeli positions stay active. See Developments to Watch
Judea & Samaria: IDF prepares village-wide operations as PA police officers join terror attacks and are eliminated or arrested. See The War Today
Iran/Axis: Tehran raises IRGC readiness, floods senior officers into Yemen, and walks out on IAEA cooperation ahead of another strike cycle. See Israel & the World
Home Front: High Court–government clash escalates over Sde Teiman oversight; phishing wave targets Israeli civilians; political pressure heats around the draft law. See Inside Israel
The full brief and analysis continue below.
Hamas wants the ceasefire to function as insulation while it scrambles for air in Rafah; Hezbollah wants to look defiant while absorbing hits it cannot answer without risking a war it can’t survive; and Iran is moving its pieces faster than any diplomat can draft a communique.
Inside Israel, the accountability walls are buckling: the army is cleaning house, the Court is fighting for control, and the public is demanding a country where service isn’t optional.
Everything below sits on that same foundation: force, leverage, and the choices nobody can postpone any longer.
The War Today
Beirut Talks State Control as Israel Executes Leadership Strikes
Israel has shifted from selective pinpricks to strategic decapitation in Lebanon: a wave of strikes hit Hamas’s Ain al-Hilweh training compound—killing 13 operatives including Jawad Sidawi—and then moved up the chain, eliminating Hezbollah’s acting Chief of Staff Haytham Ali Tabataba’i in the heart of Dahieh. Additional Hezbollah figures were killed in Mayfadoun, Houla and the south as Israel pressed both the Radwan rebuilders and the Hamas cadres trying to graft themselves into Lebanese camps. Into this fire, President Joseph Aoun declared that Lebanon must restore a “state monopoly on weapons,” endorsed foreign oversight, and asked the truce committee to enforce LAF control south of the Litani—precisely where Hezbollah is rebuilding and where Israel still maintains forward positions after refusing to withdraw. UN rapporteurs complain about “unlawful killings” as if Hezbollah’s arsenal were a theoretical problem; the ground truth is that Israel is enforcing 1701 alone because Beirut cannot—or will not.
Assessment: Lebanon’s verbal pivot reveals the fear. The Tabataba’i strike in Dahieh crosses the symbolic line Hezbollah always claimed would trigger escalation. Now Hezbollah must either absorb the blow—inviting more top-tier assassinations—or retaliate and risk a short, devastating Israeli air campaign that its depleted ranks cannot sustain. Beirut’s sudden enthusiasm for “state sovereignty” is a confession that only Israeli force, not Lebanese institutions, can actually remove Iranian proxies. Israel has seized the initiative; Hezbollah knows it, and so does every foreign capital.
Rafah Tunnels Crack; Hamas Fighters Surface Starving
The Rafah tunnel grid is failing in real time. Over the weekend, fifteen Hamas operatives tried to break out of the underground network east of the Yellow Line; six were killed by precision strikes, five surrendered, and interrogations revealed 60–80 fighters trapped in segmented shafts with dwindling food and water. Follow-on operations saw another tranche of gunmen eliminated as Southern Command scanned the area from air and ground. At the same time, Israel carried out a slate of targeted killings across Gaza—hitting the homes of multiple Hamas terror chiefs, eliminating Alaa Haddadeh (head of Hamas supply and production), and neutralizing an armed terrorist who attempted a jeep-borne attack on the humanitarian route. Hamas responded by threatening to end the ceasefire, sending delegations to Cairo, blaming Israel for “advancing westward,” and admitting it found another hostage body but “cannot retrieve it.” U.S. officials quietly confirmed the strikes were coordinated with Washington, signifying a joint shift: any ceasefire violation now triggers immediate and lethal enforcement.
Assessment: Israel has begun treating every emergence as a combat event, not a political complication, further collapsing the fiction (was any left?) that “Phase A” of the ceasefire still exists. Hamas’s threat to end the deal is theater—the group is hemorrhaging its capabilities in Rafah and losing logistical leadership in Gaza City. The IDF is destroying the last pocket of hard-power that makes Hamas relevant west of the Yellow Line. That is why Hamas is panicking in Cairo.
PA Police Join the Terror Economy in Judea–Samaria
The IDF, Yamam and Shin Bet have now eliminated and arrested multiple Palestinian Authority police officers involved in shooting attacks on Israeli troops near Nablus. In Tell, a PA policeman who wounded a reservist was killed in a close-quarters clash; another PA police officer surrendered; and parallel raids in Burqin and Far’a netted additional shooters—all members of the PA security apparatus. These operations track with Israel’s wider campaign against Iranian-fed infrastructure drifting outward from Jenin and Nablus, and reinforce a trend intelligence officers have been warning about: PA uniformed personnel moonlighting as gunmen while PA leadership publicly seeks international legitimacy.
Assessment: The PA’s security structures, jihadi enough at their core, are thoroughly penetrated by militants tied to Hamas, PIJ or Iranian handlers. Treating PA police as a stabilizing force in any Gaza or Judea–Samaria framework is wishful thinking. They have been and continue to be part of the escalation curve. Israel’s nightly raids are the only mechanism preventing this from becoming a fully coordinated Iranian auxiliary front.
U.S. Green Zones Signal Loss of Faith in Disarming Hamas
The U.S. is designing Gaza’s next phase without waiting for Hamas disarmament. Engineering teams are surveying land on the Israeli side of the Yellow Line to build temporary “green zone” communities for displaced Gazans. Schools, clinics and infrastructure are planned with Israeli logistical support, even as Hamas fires from the west and fights underground in Rafah. Indonesia, meanwhile, positions itself as the Muslim-majority face of the future stabilization force, offering up to 20,000 peacekeepers but with no plan for a peace-enforcement mission that would require disarming Hamas. Arab states refuse to contribute troops. Egypt fears spillover. Hamas denounces the plan as “guardianship.” And the PA describes it as a “first step” while privately balking at taking responsibility for Hamas’s weapons. U.S. officials admit privately that the ISF is unlikely to deploy soon—and that the Gaza division between “red” Hamas zones and “green” IDF zones may persist far longer than the diplomacy suggests.
Assessment: Washington’s “green zone” model is an admission that nobody believes Hamas will disarm in the near term. The U.S. is trying to create a reality where civilians escape Hamas-run areas (as if they don’t actually still support Hamas) without requiring Hamas’s defeat—a naive engineer’s solution to a political and military problem. Indonesia’s imagined stabilizing role collapses on contact with reality: any mission that cannot kill Hamas operatives is not a stabilization force.
Inside Israel
Accountability War Detonates Across the IDF and Judiciary
Israel’s internal reckoning broke open as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir summoned a parade of generals—intelligence chiefs, air and navy commanders, and senior staff officers—for personal accountability sessions tied to the military’s failures before and during October 7. The blitz meetings followed the Turgeman Committee’s critique that entire layers of Military Intelligence never seriously confronted Hamas’s “Wall of Jericho” plan, and that some internal probes were defensive gloss, not investigations. Hours later, Zamir dismissed the Gaza Division’s intelligence officer who ignored multiple warnings of a mass infiltration, ending a year-long scandal that saw him quietly reassigned and still wandering intelligence bases. While the IDF cleans house, civilian pressure is rising in the streets: thousands gathered at Tel Aviv’s HaBima Square demanding a state commission with subpoena power, plastering a “Wall of Truth” with the questions the government still resists—who knew, who ignored, who abandoned the Gaza envelope.
Parallel to the military’s cleanup, the political system is in open trench warfare. The High Court froze Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s chosen overseer for the Sde Teiman leak probe—again—triggering counter-petitions, emergency motions, and a barrage of accusations that the judicial establishment is shielding its own. The “Yemen Field Affair” is metastasizing into a full institutional confrontation over who gets to investigate prosecutorial misconduct. Meanwhile, the collapse of Haredi participation in the coalition forced Levin to temporarily absorb the Labor, Religious Services, Jerusalem and Heritage ministries, while Netanyahu took the Interior Ministry portfolio—an awkward concentration of power the coalition insists is “temporary” as it races to finalize a draft law the High Court must evaluate within 45 days.
Assessment: The army is finally assigning real responsibility, the public demands a commission with teeth, and the judiciary is fighting to keep control of every lever that touches October 7. This is a struggle over who defines truth in the worst security disaster in Israeli history—and whether the system that failed on October 7 is capable of diagnosing itself. If the government dodges, or the Court blunts accountability, the country will carry this fracture into the next war.
A Small, Criminal Fringe Becomes a Media Obsession as PA Gunmen Open Fire
Channel 12 blasted headlines about “settler violence” again, and within hours the political class pivoted as if 70 teenagers defined an entire population of 560,000 Israelis living in Judea and Samaria. IDF Chief of Staff Zamir was quoted warning that Jewish rioters could divert troops from major fronts — a line instantly turned into a full-blown media franchise — even as the actual operational picture told a very different story: PA police officers opened fire on IDF reservists, Yamam killed one and captured others, and terror cells tied to Iranian funding continued to migrate south from Nablus and Jenin. Government ministers, reading the political winds and foreign pressure, dutifully held emergency meetings on “hilltop youth,” even though security officials reiterated the math: roughly 70 habitual offenders, around 300 hundred aimless teens affected by wartime dropout rates, and the overwhelming majority of young settlers engaged in legal building, agriculture, and security coordination that actually stabilizes Area C. Meanwhile, actual terror — the kind with rifles, explosives, and PA-issued badges — required nightly raids, precision eliminations, and Shin Bet interrogations. The media’s fixation ensured the only Jews regularly appearing on international screens were anarchic, criminal caricatures, not the reservists guarding junctions or the communities absorbing the brunt of Iran’s next-front strategy.
Assessment: Judea and Samaria has a violence problem — but it is not the one the headlines advertise. The operational threat comes from jihadists: PA-uniformed shooters, Iranian-fed networks, and an enemy culture that openly celebrates martyrdom. The Jewish extremist fringe is microscopic and criminal, and should be handled as such, without smearing more than half a million citizens who hold the line on the ridge. When the state allows foreign diplomats, NGOs, and local broadcasters to dictate the narrative, political decision-makers start chasing optics instead of priorities. The real danger is not that Israel fails to adequately police a few dozen hotheads; it is that strategic bandwidth is burned on theatrics while the actual enemy digs in.
The New Social Contract: Draft Law, Likud Power Wars, and a Nation Arming Itself
The political center of gravity is shifting as Israel enters election season with a draft crisis, a fractured coalition, and a governing party at war with itself. Likud will hold its first internal convention in years on Tuesday—a knife-fight over the Central Committee and Secretariat that will determine who controls budgets, appointments, and the party’s Knesset slate heading into a national vote. Veterans like Israel Katz, Eli Cohen, and Haim Katz face insurgent bids from ministers, generals, and activists who want to reshape Likud’s hierarchy before the public does. The timing is no accident: Haredi parties temporarily vacated their ministries, forcing Netanyahu to hand Yariv Levin a bundle of portfolios, while privately assuring them that progress on a draft law—17,000 Haredim enlisted within three years—is imminent. The bill is now a regime question: a citizen army cannot survive 80,000 permanent exemptions, 600 career officers trying to resign, and the High Court demanding real enforcement within 45 days.
The death penalty debate adds another layer. The Israeli Medical Association instructed doctors not to participate in executions, invoking international ethics codes, while Ben-Gvir counters he has “volunteer doctors” ready. The argument is more about the public’s demand for a deterrence doctrine after a year of massacres, kidnappings, and lopsided hostage swaps than it is about medical ethics. At the same time, the country is literally arming itself: more than 222,000 new gun licenses were issued since October 7, doubling civilian firearms to nearly 400,000. And the social divide is visible even in the state’s “Discount Apartment” lottery—47% of winners are active reservists, a snapshot of who is carrying the physical and economic burden of the war.
Assessment: Israel’s internal politics are reorganizing around a simple question: who serves, who pays, and who decides? Likud’s internal elections will determine its DNA for years, but the real pressure comes from the reservists, bereaved families, and a public fed up with a two-tier system. A country fighting on multiple fronts simultaneously cannot survive with a collapsing manpower model and political parties that treat national service as a bargaining chip. Israel is rewriting its social contract in real time, with guns, ballots, and a deadline from the High Court.
Israel and the World
Sanctions, Show Trials, and a Nervous Axis of Resistance
Tehran is running two tracks at once. On one, it just tore up cooperation agreements with the IAEA, raised IRGC readiness and accelerated deployments of senior IRGC officers into Yemen and the Red Sea rim, while the Houthis in Sanaa sentenced 17–18 locals to death in show trials for “spying” for Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia and Britain — a tidy way to blame internal bomb damage on “Mossad cells” and terrorize anyone talking to the outside world. On the other track, Iran’s president quietly asked Mohammed bin Salman to help reopen nuclear talks with Washington, signaling how badly June’s 12-Day War and the collapsing economy rattled the regime. The US had Treasury slap new sanctions on a web of front companies, tankers, and a Mahan Air subsidiary that hawks oil for the Iranian military and flies Quds Force officers and weapons to Hezbollah and al-Sharaa, adding more ships to the “shadow fleet” blacklist and explicitly tying the pressure campaign to Iran’s nuclear rebuild and proxy wars.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is reading the same map. He’s betting on a harder, Eastern-tilted diplomatic backbone — Germany, the Balkans, Baltics, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea — while warning Washington that Saudi F-35s, a rehabilitated Turkey, and a half-baked ISF in Gaza would all erode Israel’s margin against the same axis Washington claims to be restraining. Inside the beltway and in Kiryat Gat, US officers talk about “stability.” In Tehran and Sanaa, judges hand out death sentences and generals move missiles.
Assessment: Iran is trying to survive the economic chokehold while rebuilding the very capabilities that triggered it, hedging with MBS in case the next Israeli strike cycle goes deeper. US sanctions and Israeli kinetic pressure are finally aimed at the same revenue streams and supply lines, but nobody should confuse that with de-escalation. The axis is circling the board and anything less than sustained enforcement will be read in Tehran as permission to try again.
Western Pluralism Puts Jews on Probation Again
On the information and values front, the rot is inescapable. At the UN, the special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict still dances around Hamas’s October 7 rapes and the assaults in captivity even after freed hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal described, on camera, the repeated sexual abuse he endured in Gaza. Israel’s ambassador Danny Danon had to spell out that denial of these crimes is itself an abuse of the victims. In Warsaw, the new US ambassador to Poland went the other way, calling any suggestion of Polish complicity in the Holocaust a “blood libel” against the Polish nation — a line that erases the Blue Police, szmalcowniks, Jedwabne, Kielce, and the very real slice of Polish society that hunted Jews while a small righteous minority hid them. (Thanks, DC, for whitewashing history to make the pierogi go down easier.)
On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the theory became practice outside Park East Synagogue: masked protesters, backed by groups like Pal-Awda, chanted “Destroy Israel,” “Death to the IDF,” “Globalize the intifada” and “We need to make them scared” at Jews walking into shul for a Nefesh B’Nefesh aliyah evening. A 95-year-old rabbi who watched his Viennese synagogue burn on Kristallnacht now needs NYPD barricades to pray. The outgoing mayor called it desecration, while the mayor-elect managed only to “discourage” the language and scold the synagogue for supposedly hosting “violations of international law.” In op-ed land, some academics claim that synagogues are “political institutions” and therefore legitimate protest targets unless they strip out prayers for Israel, IDF soldiers, and Jewish national life — in other words, Jews get safety only if they amputate peoplehood from their religion. Layer onto that the “Friendsgiving” performance at DC’s Union Station, where activists staged a full medieval blood libel tableau of US and Israeli leaders dining on “Gaza children’s limbs” and drinking their blood, and you have the aesthetic of 14th-century Jew-hatred dressed up as 2025 “art.”
Assessment: These aren’t isolated incidents. International organs that are supposed to defend victims twist themselves to avoid naming Hamas’s sex crimes; diplomats rehabilitate parts of Europe’s record by erasing perpetrators who weren’t German; big-city governments permit intimidation outside synagogues and then explain that Jewish religious life tied to Israel is “political” and thus fair game. For Israel, that means two things: never outsource legitimacy to institutions that are busy relativizing or erasing assaults on Jews, and treat diaspora security and information warfare as theaters of the same conflict you’re fighting in Rafah and over Beirut. A society that can’t protect a synagogue from a mob chanting in support of terror and genocide will not protect Israel’s right to self-defense when the next round with Iran’s axis blows open.
Briefly Noted
Frontline & Security
Jerusalem Post: Masked “pro-Palestine” rioters in Bologna attacked police with clubs, bottles, flagpoles and flares, set fires and built barricades around a Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game, injuring eight officers. When your “solidarity with Gaza” consists of street brawling over Jews playing sports, you’re not a justice movement. At best, you’re a hooligan franchise with better slogans.
Diplomacy & Geopolitics
Algemeiner: Mossad and European services exposed a Hamas gun-running network across Germany and Austria, including a Vienna weapons cache tied to Muhammad Naim — son of media-regular Hamas official Basem Naim — while a Hamas-linked suspect was arrested in London. UK broadcasters have been treating Naim like a harmless “political voice” even as his family helps arm cells targeting European Jews.
Times of Israel: Thousands of Tunisians marched against President Kais Saied’s repression, economic collapse and jailing of opponents, chanting Arab-Spring-era slogans and demanding new elections. It’s a reminder that while the UN lectures Israel about “democracy,” yet another Arab state is sliding back into dictatorship with prisons full of people whose crime is tweeting at the president.
Domestic & Law
Canadian Jewish News: Canada Revenue Agency revoked the charitable status of Herut Canada — a tiny, pro-Israel group that ran volunteer security patrols and Krav Maga classes — citing incomplete ledgers after a complaint campaign by anti-Israel activists, bringing the recent total to at least five revoked Jewish charities. The message is clear: if you’re a Jew, the paperwork had better be immaculate because the other side is flooding the regulator with complaints while Ottawa pretends this is all just neutral “compliance.”
Israel National News: Israel quietly took full control of electricity, water and critical safety systems at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, ending decades in which the Waqf could literally flip a switch and shut down lights, cameras and security for Jewish worshippers. It’s a small technical change with big symbolism: Jewish access to Ma’arat HaMachpelah is now in Jewish hands instead of depending on the goodwill of a hostile clerical bureaucracy.
Culture, Religion & Society
Israel National News: X’s new “About this Account” feature is exposing a cottage industry of fake “Gaza eyewitness” profiles actually run from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Russia and even London. The platform’s push for transparency is accidentally doing real OSINT, and it turns out half the people filming “live from Rafah” are in fact LARPing from a different continent.
Times of Israel: Tucker Carlson used a softball chat with Nalin Haley to amplify the “Israel controls US politics” trope and complain about Israeli “interference,” while politely ignoring that regimes like Qatar spend far more on actual lobbyists in Washington (or reportedly on Tucker himself).
Jerusalem Post: Candace Owens claimed — without a shred of evidence — that Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron hired a French-Israeli hit squad to assassinate her, tying it to Charlie Kirk’s murder and her defamation suit over her “Brigitte is secretly a man” conspiracy series.
Developments to Watch
Northern Front (Lebanon / Syria)
Hezbollah Leadership Vacuum Deepens – Israel’s strike on Haytham Tabataba’i in Dahieh has forced Hezbollah’s political bureau into open debate over retaliation timing, while additional strikes hit Farran, Kafr Hamam, Nabi Sheet, and Baalbek launch sites. Hezbollah’s need to “respond” collides with its inability to absorb a broader Israeli air campaign, making miscalculation the main driver of escalation. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
IDF Alert Level Quietly Raised in the North – Quasi-official messages circulated to northern bases instructing soldiers to stay near protected spaces as the IDF maintains forward positions in southern Lebanon and beefs up defensive lines on the Golan. The silence in official guidance is deliberate: Israel is preparing for a sudden Hezbollah volley or a one-off symbolic retaliation for Tabataba’i’s killing. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Syria Corridor Scan Reveals Rocket Parts – Reserve units operating 15 km inside Syria located RPG components and rocket remnants along known smuggling routes. It signals Iran’s corridor remains active despite Syrian regime weakness, with Israel keeping a forward tripwire against reactivation of the weapons highway.
Gaza & Southern Theater
Hamas Threatens to Collapse Ceasefire – Hamas told mediators the agreement is “over,” demanded U.S. intervention, and accused Israel of “advancing westward” despite being the one crossing the Yellow Line repeatedly to open fire. It’s a pressure stunt designed to stop lethal enforcement in Rafah while the tunnel grid implodes; Israel will treat every breach as combat regardless of the rhetoric.
Rafah Tunnel Survivors Report Starvation – Interrogations of captured terrorists confirm 60–80 fighters trapped in segmented shafts with nearly no food or water. The collapse accelerates the timeline for IDF-controlled re-entry into western Rafah because starving, desperate fighters create more breach attempts. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Multiple Home-Targeted Eliminations Across Gaza – Precision strikes killed several Hamas military leaders from Nuseirat to Gaza City, including key figures in the production and weapons-transfer chain. Israel is hollowing out the mid-tier logistics network, which matters more than symbolic hits: it directly reduces Hamas’s ability to arm survivors west of the Yellow Line.
Judea & Samaria
Central Command Prepares Village-Wide Sweep – A senior security official confirmed a pending large-scale operation across multiple villages amid PA-police gunmen joining attacks. If PA uniformed personnel keep moonlighting as terrorists, Israel will treat parts of the PA apparatus as combat entities rather than “partners.” LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Regional Axis (Iran, Houthis, Militias)
IRGC Forward Deployment Continues – More senior IRGC officers have entered the Yemen–Red Sea arc while Iran raises readiness and stonewalls the IAEA. This widens the southern encirclement of Israel’s trade routes and raises the chance of a Houthi-triggered escalation layered onto Lebanon. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Diplomatic & Legal
ISF Appears Dead on Arrival – Senior Israeli assessments now state the International Stabilization Force “will not be established at all,” with Azerbaijan privately confirming it won’t deploy troops. This leaves the U.S. Gaza plan missing its enforcement pillar and locks in the reality that Israel—not foreign forces—will determine Gaza’s security geometry.
Lebanon Courts UN Oversight as Cover – President Aoun asked the truce committee (U.S.–France–UN) to enforce LAF sovereignty south of the Litani, even as the LAF can’t and won’t confront Hezbollah. It’s diplomatic camouflage ahead of heavier Israeli strikes; Beirut is trying to outsource responsibility without taking any.
Home Front & Politics
Yemen Field Affair Goes Nuclear – The Attorney General’s prosecution office requested another High Court hearing minutes before Shabbat, in direct contradiction to a prior ruling citing conflict of interest. This looks like a coordinated stall to block scrutiny of prosecutorial misconduct, and the institutional war between Levin and the Court is about to enter a new phase.
Fake “Israel Post” SMS Campaign – A wave of phishing texts claiming packages can’t be delivered is running across Israel, targeting civilians’ personal data. It’s likely tied to hostile-state cyber ops probing Israeli soft targets during a high-alert period. A good reminder to all of us to maintain appropriate digital hygiene practices.
Japan Deploys Missiles Near Taiwan – Tokyo confirmed deployment plans for medium-range missiles just 110 km from Taiwan amid rising Sino-Japanese tensions. If China pressures Israel diplomatically over Gaza or Iran, Japan’s shift becomes an important counterweight in the Indo-Pacific alignment with Jerusalem.
The ceasefire is a legal fiction and the IDF is done pretending otherwise. Hezbollah lost a senior commander in the heart of Dahieh and answered with speeches because the alternative is a short war it can’t win. Hamas is screaming “collapse” because the tunnels already have. And the PA’s security apparatus—funded abroad and celebrated by diplomats—keeps supplying the shooters Israel neutralizes at night.
We are keeping an eye on: whether Washington keeps selling “phases” or accepts that enforcement is the only language Hamas understands; whether Beirut lets Hezbollah drag it into a war it can’t afford; and whether Israel’s leadership finally breaks with the old evasions around service, sovereignty, and accountability. Momentum favors the side willing to enforce reality. Israel is showing it still remembers how.
— Uri Zehavi · Intelligence Editor
With Modi Zehavi · Data + Research Analyst
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