Israel Brief: Thursday, December 11
Ran Gvili’s body, the Yellow Line, and an unfinished constitution all say the same thing: no more pretending the rules are something other than force, borders, and who actually holds the pen.
Shalom, friends.
Contrary to what Western pols will have you know, Hamas continues to openly say it will never disarm. Islamic Jihad is lying about the last hostage. The IDF is pouring concrete and armor into a Yellow Line that behaves less like a “coordination strip” and more like a new border. In the north, Storm Byron gives Hezbollah the kind of cloud cover it dreams about as Syria backtracks and Iran quietly rewrites the IAEA rulebook. At home, the Attorney General attacks the Haredi draft bill while the government fights to turn service into duty instead of a lifestyle choice, all inside a constitutional order that was never actually finished.
Here’s the map before we go sector by sector — and later this morning, the Long Brief will zoom out and dissect that half-built constitutional house we all live in. Meanwhile, Washington is privately warning Beirut that if Hezbollah keeps its precision-missile and UAV arsenal past year-end, Israel will not limit its strikes to border villages but will take the fight straight into Dahieh and the Bekaa. Storm Byron gives Hezbollah incentive and cover at exactly the wrong moment. Even Iraq’s prime minister is begging the U.S. to “pressure Israel” to stop hitting Hezbollah — a perfect tell of who fears escalation and who’s preparing for it.
⚡️Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less
Gaza: Israel ties any Phase II to Ran Gvili’s return as Hamas rejects disarmament and ISF deployment talk grows. See The War Today.
North: Storm Byron blinds ISR as Hezbollah shifts fighters south; U.S. warns Beirut Israel may strike Dahieh and the Bekaa if precision missiles aren’t surrendered. See Developments to Watch.
Iran / Axis: Tehran demands “wartime” IAEA safeguards, restarts missile production, and its proxies probe the Jordan corridor and Gulf balance. See The War Today & Developments to Watch.
Judea & Samaria: Mass arrests ahead of Hamas Foundation Day and a new Tulkarm bomb cell exposed behind multiple IED ambushes. See The War Today & Developments to Watch.
Inside Israel: AG slams the draft bill, IDF maintains storm lockdown, and the government rolls out a NIS 100m Eastern Negev growth plan as Netanyahu and Lapid quietly huddle for a security briefing. See Inside Israel.
Diplomacy & Lawfare: Washington weighs UNRWA terror sanctions, pushes early-2026 Gaza ISF, and threatens fresh penalties on the ICC. See Israel and the World.
Diaspora & Info-war: Hamas’s baby-formula hoard surfaces, Amnesty finally calls Hamas crimes “crimes against humanity,” while coded online Jew-hatred spreads. See Briefly Noted.
The through-line today is unpleasantly simple. Hamas is done pretending disarmament is on the table and has switched to pretending it “lost” Ran Gvili’s body instead, hoping to turn a fallen policeman into a veto over Trump’s 20-point circus. Iran watched Israel punch holes in its nuclear bunkers and responded by trying to rewrite the inspection manual mid-war. Hezbollah is eyeing a storm window to restore “dignity” before the Dec 31 deadline, and jihadi networks from Daraa to Tulkarm are probing for weak spots.
Inside Israel, the state is fortifying the Jordan and the Yellow Line, ripping up terror infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, and trying to convert a warped draft system into something that looks like shared burden, while a legal guild that was never elected insists only it can decide what “equality” means. That’s why today’s Long Brief — on the unfinished constitutional order and the judicial war it incubated — matters: you cannot fight Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and lawfare with a rulebook that was never actually written, just improvised by clever people in robes.
The War Today
Hamas is Playing its Last Card While Israel Holds the Rest of the Deck
Islamic Jihad tried to gaslight the world this week by claiming it “returned all hostages,” prompting Gal Hirsch to dump photos, names, and coordinates on mediators to remind them that someone in PIJ knows exactly where Ran Gvili’s body is — and is lying about it. Searches in Zeitoun yielded nothing, heavy rains halted operations, and Gvili’s parents publicly implored the government to stand strong: there is no Phase II, no “Board of Peace,” no technocratic anything until Rani is home for burial. Meanwhile, the IDF kept the Yellow Line hot: eliminating operatives attempting to breach it, and expanding engineering works in Khan Yunis. Trump’s envoy talks about Palestinian “technical authorities” and early 2026 ISF deployments that magically avoid Hamas-controlled areas, while Hamas leadership — Mashaal especially — rejects disarmament outright and warns that separating Palestinians from their weapons is like “separating soul from body.” In other words: they’re not even trying to hide that their plan is to regroup and attack again and again.
Assessment: Ran Gvili’s body into a hard national red line, forcing every foreign capital to choose between their timelines and Israel’s reality. Hamas is executing the Hezbollah playbook — stall, lie, stash guns, seek international guardians — but the Yellow Line and continued kinetic enforcement are Israel’s veto on that script. The next phase will only advance after Rafah’s tunnel command dies and Gvili comes home.
Iran Rewrites Nuclear Rules, Militias Eye Jordan, and Washington Pretends It’s Still in Charge
Iran, still embarrassed by its failed claims of shooting down Israeli F-35s, is now demanding that the IAEA revise its safeguards regime because “normal rules don’t apply during war.” Translation: now that Israel has shown it can hit hardened nuclear sites, Tehran wants new inspection terms that let it hide damage, hide data, and hide whatever it rebuilt. It refuses immediate access to struck facilities, demands binding guarantees that IAEA information won’t leak to “enemies,” and insists it’s still honoring the NPT while denying the very inspections that verify that claim. Meanwhile, the regional arm of Iran’s strategy is accelerating: Iraqi militias and Houthis are telegraphing a push through Jordan. Syrian forces found with missiles in Daraa. Syrian chants calling for “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yehud” in military parades. And senior Israeli officials warning that understandings with Damascus are slipping fast. In Yemen, UAE-backed forces seized the south’s oil belt, weakening Saudi influence and opening a potential future Abraham Accords foothold for Israel — if a South Yemen state emerges. And with Washington telegraphing the repeal of Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, the message to al-Julani (once a terrorist, always a terrorist), Hezbollah, and Iran is unfortunately simple: hold out long enough and Washington eventually gets tired. A Hezbollah-aligned outlet now reports that American envoys warned Beirut Israel will strike Dahieh and the Bekaa if Hezbollah keeps its precision-missile stockpile past year’s end.
Assessment: Iran is rebuilding its nuclear posture under rhetorical cover, betting that “wartime safeguards” will become a diplomatic shield for its next enrichment sprint. Its proxies are probing the Jordan corridor because they assume Israel is distracted — and because Amman’s capacity to stop a determined ground push is limited. The U.S. trying to manage Syria with soft incentives while pushing Israel hard on Gaza sequencing is a recipe for losing both theaters. Israel’s only stable path is the one it’s already taking: fortify the Jordan line, retain freedom of action in Syria, and treat IAEA theatrics as what they are — Iran’s attempt to buy time. Time Israel won’t give them.
Anti-Hamas Militias Multiply, Hamas Media Collapses, and Israel Locks Down Judea, Samaria, and Its Legal Warfighting Tools
After the Popular Forces commander Yasser Abu Shabab was killed, his deputy Ghassan al-Duhaini inherited the movement and, counterintuitively for Hamas, recruitment surged. Israel still controls over half the Strip, which is why anti-Hamas groups flourished after the ceasefire: 400 new fighters in weeks, according to Egyptian sources. Hamas is executing collaborators, tightening its checkpoints, and branding these groups as traitors, which only underscores how fragile its grip is in Israeli-held zones. Add the revelation that the vast majority of “journalists” killed in Gaza were Hamas or PIJ terrorists, and you see the rot inside Hamas’s information apparatus: its media arm was never journalism — it was camouflage. In Judea and Samaria, the IDF launched mass arrests ahead of Hamas Foundation Day, detaining dozens of operatives from Qatanna to Jenin to keep Hamas from staging celebrations of its own existence. Meanwhile, the IDF uncovered yet another Tulkarm cell tied to multiple explosive attacks, and the new Military Advocate-General toured Gaza personally to build legal frameworks for victory rather than self-defeat.
Assessment: The insurgency map inside Gaza is diversifying — not because Gazans suddenly love Israel, but because Hamas’s authority is cracking wherever the IDF maintains pressure. These militias won’t govern Gaza, but they do prevent Hamas from pretending it governs all of it. In Judea and Samaria, Israel is finally treating Hamas as a continuous battlespace, not a partitioned one. And the collapse of Hamas’s “media martyr” narrative forces foreign capitals to reckon with the truth: Gaza’s press corps was often Gaza’s combat corps.
Inside Israel
Government Pushes Service; AG Pushes Status Quo in a Black Coat
The Attorney General dropped her latest position paper on the conscription bill — and, in classic fashion, declared that a law meant to increase Haredi enlistment would reduce enlistment because it “doesn’t incentivize equality.” Translation: she dislikes the bill because it’s written by the elected government rather than her guild. The AG insists on “personal sanctions” and immediate enforcement, all while knowing perfectly well she spent years blocking every attempt to create workable Haredi service tracks. The Haredi parties, meanwhile, deny the obvious — that the IDF needs 12,000 additional recruits yesterday — and shout “political plot” because the AG dared to mention math. Into this swamp steps Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, which held an emergency rabbinic summit and emerged with clarity: they’ll back the draft bill only if it produces real enlistment, not another loophole masquerading as piety. Several rabbis warned against “shaming Hesder” and reminded the room that their students are carrying half the war effort right now. Some feared the IDF cannot yet absorb large Haredi cohorts — a correctable issue, not an excuse for inaction — but all agreed that a law must end the monopoly on holiness and replace it with contribution and duty. The party’s message is explicit: it will vote only for a bill that results in meaningful, trackable enlistment. In the background, Netanyahu publicly framed the bill as “the beginning of a historic process,” and he’s right — provided the text is tightened, the sanctions are real, and the state finally enforces the covenant we laid out in The Long Brief: From Deferment to Duty.
Assessment: Israel cannot fight Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and internecine bitterness with a manpower model built for 1992. The AG is defending a theological fiction disguised as constitutional concern. The coalition is inching toward a universal norm: every able adult serves, every genuine scholar learns, and no one gets to hide behind someone else’s sacrifice. This is the moment to force reality into law — and the only version worth passing is one that aligns with our Long Brief: equality with kippot, without theatrics, without blackmail, and without permanent exemptions baked into statute. Anything else is surrender disguised as legislation.
Energy Doctrine Shifts to Sovereignty: Nuclear, Negev, and No More Monopoly
Energy Minister Eli Cohen pulled off something rare. He’s got a national plan that treats electricity, gas, and sovereignty as one strategic map. He confirmed Israel is now seriously preparing for a nuclear power program — not the fantasy version pushed by green NGOs, but actual base-load electricity anchored in Israeli R&D and global standards. With electricity demand set to double in 20 years, Cohen is right, you cannot power an AI economy (or a war economy) on rooftop panels and good vibes. Natural gas remains the scaffolding, with exports to Egypt nearing a historic $35 billion agreement that Cairo temporarily tied to the Trump-Netanyahu-Sissi summit. Cohen slapped down Treasury attempts to hobble exploration or limit exports. He also killed a Treasury effort to grab his ministry’s authorities and announced the demise of the Electric Corporation monopoly. And in a wartime lesson taken seriously, he proposed relocating the Haifa refinery to the Negev instead of shutting it down — a move that strengthens jobs, fortifies national redundancy, and deepens the Jewish footprint east and south.
Assessment: Israel’s energy portfolio is maturing with nuclear power for resilience, gas exports for leverage, settlement integration for national footprint, and no apologies for acting like a state instead of a Ivy League seminar.
Policing the Negev Like It Matters: Crime Is Not a Civil Right
New National Security policy is treating Bedouin criminal militias as security threats and is responding accordingly. Operation “New Order” cracked down on weapons, rackets, and clan violence in Lakiya, Hura, Rahat and the surrounding belt — the same belt that funneled weapons north and served as a quiet staging area for Iran-linked smuggling networks. Jewish towns like Meitar and Carmit report quieter nights and safer roads. Critics scream “martial law” because concrete blocks and large-scale raids offend their sensibilities, but those same critics were silent while Arab families were extorted, shot, or burned out of their homes. The government showed up and enforced the rule of law in places the state abandoned for decades. Local Bedouin leaders complain about “humiliation,” but residents privately admit they want criminals stopped, not protected.
Assessment: The doctrine is simple: crimes are crimes, not cultural artifacts. Israeli citizens get law and order, not excuses. He is doing for the Negev what the state did too late in mixed cities — projecting authority before the next escalation. The Jewish and Arab citizens who actually live in the south can now send their kids to school without ducking bullets.
Israel and the World
Two-Tier Policing Meets One Shared Hamas Problem
A British conservative think tank just spelled out what every London Jew could have told you for free: the Met is running “two-tier policing,” clamping down on both Jewish and right-wing events while letting anti-Israel mobs scream support for jihad and block Parliament with barely a wrist tap. The report notes that police happily restricted a UKIP rally to protect a “heavily Muslim” area, but somehow can’t muster the same zeal when Jews ask not to have a hate march parked outside a synagogue. At the same time, European security services admit Hamas is not just a “foreign conflict.” German and Dutch prosecutors are now charging a Hamas-linked cell, allegedly tasked with locating arms depots in eastern Europe and preparing potential attacks in Germany, dispatched and handled from Gaza long before October 7. On the narrative side, the Palestinian Authority continues to train the next wave, not in math but in martyrdom: official school events proudly display kids holding signs about “sweet-smelling martyrs” and maps erasing Israel from the river to the sea. Wikipedia plays its own part, deleting pages a bereaved Israeli brother wrote about his murdered, abducted sibling on the grounds that “we don’t write entries about soldiers” — a rule that mysteriously doesn’t apply to other darlings of the same war. All this sits next to fresh data that some most “journalists” killed in Gaza were Hamas or PIJ operatives or staff of their media arms, exactly as Israel has been saying while Western press clubs hold candlelight vigils for “fallen colleagues”— who ran rockets and drones rather than concerning themselves with filing copy.
Assessment: Europe spent two decades convincing itself Hamas would only kill Jews in Israel while using Europe as a cash machine. That illusion is dead. Hamas builds cells in Berlin, indoctrinates kids in Tulkarem, launders propaganda through “journalists,” and relies on police commissioners who think chanting for terrorism is “contextual” but a Jewish counter-protest is dangerous. This is one continuous battlespace: London, Berlin, Ramallah, campus quads, Wikipedia editing slacks. The longer Europe clings to two-tier policing and fake neutrality, the more it invites the war it pretends to observe from a safe distance.
While Europe Wobbles, Israel’s Serious Friends Double Down
On the hard-power side, the US House just passed a $900+ billion defense bill with a very un-subtle Israel section baked in: $500 million for joint missile defense (Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow), $80 million for anti-tunnel work, $35 million for shared AI/cyber R&D, plus more funding to counter drones and language nudging Israel into the US National Technology and Industrial Base. It also tells the Pentagon to avoid defense expos that boycott Israel and orders US security chiefs to continually assess the impact of arms embargoes on the Jewish state. That is what an alliance looks like when it isn’t run by HR. At the same time, Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister quietly slipped into Israel for defense talks, while Taipei openly says it’s learning from Israel on air defense, deterrence, and fighting while outnumbered by a bigger neighbor that lies for a living. Netanyahu and Modi just held a warm call, agreed to meet “very soon,” reaffirmed their “zero tolerance for terrorism,” and under Modi, Indian officials now calmly call Hamas what it is: a terrorist organization. Trade has doubled, defense cooperation is thick, and India has started abstaining rather than reflexively voting against Israel at the UN. On the flip side, Washington is considering adding another layer of security theater for visitors from visa-waiver countries, including first-time Israeli travelers: mandatory disclosure of five years of social media, emails, phone numbers, and family data to get ESTA approval. It won’t stop a single serious terrorist, but it will absolutely annoy thousands of Israelis coming to spend money in New York and Miami.
Assessment: Look at the ledger. The countries that matter for Israel’s survival and growth — the US, India, Taiwan, some in East Asia and the Gulf — are tightening military, tech, and political cooperation even as parts of Europe and the UN continue to chase performative “sanctions” and campus hashtags. Israel is wired into the serious world: missile defense, AI, cyber, air-defense doctrine, and shared R&D. There is a price in friction (like US data demands at the border), but the net is clear: the more Israel behaves like a front-line Western arsenal state, the more the real democracies bet on it as a partner, not a problem.
Syria Drags Its Feet, Qatar Washes Its Hands, Israel Tightens Its Grip
Qatar’s prime minister announced that Doha won’t pay to rebuild Gaza, suddenly discovering fiscal prudence after a decade of bankrolling Hamas’s rule, salaries, and media machine. The same regime that hosted Hamas leadership in luxury, wired “humanitarian” cash into their coffers, and ran Al Jazeera as the movement’s loudspeaker now pretends it’s just a bystander to the wreckage. If Qatar funds reconstruction, it admits in public what everyone already knows: it financed the monster that turned Gaza into a bunker network and launched October 7. Israel is not playing that game. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar is crystal clear: Phase II in Gaza means real disarmament and demilitarization, not “storage,” “freezing” or any other Hezbollah-style scam. He also says publicly acknowledges that Iran has not given up any of its programs — missiles, nukes, proxies — and Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are the same problem wearing different headbands. Sa’ar says Syria has just shoved new demands onto the table, pushing any Israel–Damascus security understanding further away, not closer, even as the US House moves to repeal Caesar Act sanctions and Trump’s envoy openly talks about tying Syria’s future to a security and border deal with Israel. Israel is in no hurry to give up its positions on the Hermon range — described internally as a “major strategic asset.” In Latin America, the map tilts back: Bolivia has restored relations with Israel and signaled a broader shift away from the Morales-era axis of Iran clients and Caracas fans. And in the background, Trump’s Gaza “Board of Peace” plan inches forward: his UN ambassador tells Herzog that announcements are “upcoming,” promises a technocratic Palestinian utility authority, a funding mechanism, and an international force — while insisting that Hamas “has to go” for any of this to be more than a rerun of the last 30 years.
Assessment: The region is sorting itself into two camps with less and less camouflage. On one side: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, al-Julani, and their favorite laundromat in Doha, all trying to keep their guns and narratives while someone else pays the bill. On the other: Israel and a growing ring of states — US, India, parts of the Arab world, Latin partners like Bolivia’s new government — that understand there is no “day after” with armed jihad movements still intact. Sa’ar’s line is the only one anchored in reality: disarmament is not a semantic game, it’s the entrance fee. If Qatar, Syria, and assorted UN hobbyists don’t like that, they’re free to rebuild some other failed terror project. Israel’s job is to lock in borders, alliances, and rules that match the war it is actually in — not the fantasy script others would prefer to stage.
Briefly Noted
Frontline & Security
Jerusalem Post: Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib published footage showing Hamas hoarding and then dumping literal tons of baby formula and children’s nutritional shakes that were hidden during Gaza’s worst hunger days. It confirms what Israelis have been saying and Western NGOs have been desperate not to hear: Hamas was happy to starve its own kids to produce a better photo op.
Jerusalem Post: Amnesty International released a major report accusing Hamas and other Palestinian factions of crimes against humanity on October 7, including murder, extermination, torture, enforced disappearance, rape, and systematic abuse of hostages. When even Amnesty — which has thrown “genocide” at Israel — is forced to admit Hamas did the actual butchery, it blows a crater in the moral-equivalence industry.
Israel National News: An official IDF Instagram post accidentally revealed detailed blueprints of a sensitive central Israel base during an exercise, before the images were yanked and handed to information security.
Diplomacy & Geopolitics
Jerusalem Post: Lebanon’s foreign minister publicly declined an invitation to Tehran, proposing instead to meet Iranian officials in a neutral third country and pointedly stating that only the Lebanese state should hold weapons. For a country long treated as an IRGC franchise, even this mild pushback — plus a nod to exclusive state arms — signals how radioactive Hezbollah’s private army has become at home and abroad.
Jerusalem Post: Saudi Arabia and Iran reaffirmed their commitment to the China-brokered “Beijing Agreement,” praising Beijing’s role while calling for an end to Israeli “aggression” and hinting at deeper coordination over Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Riyadh is hedging hard: buying Chinese mediation and calmer borders with Tehran even as it quietly positions itself — potentially — as a channel between Iran and the US and a future Abraham Accords 2.0 player.
Jerusalem Post: The US is in advanced internal talks about hitting UNRWA with terrorism-linked sanctions, up to and including a possible “Foreign Terrorist Organization” designation, over its deep entanglement with Hamas. If Washington actually pulls that trigger, it would formally admit what Israel has said for years — that UNRWA is not a neutral aid agency but a structural part of the problem — and blow up a big chunk of the old UN aid architecture.
Culture, Religion & Society
Jewish News: UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood canceled the visa of Pakistani influencer Tuaha Ibn Jalil, who was due to tour mosques and a school despite pushing conspiracies about Jews “controlling the world” and calling on Muslims to travel for “jihad” in “Palestine.” For once, Britain used its border for something other than harassing comedians and Jewish schoolkids — and showed how much Islamist radicalization is still being piped in by imported preachers.
JNS: Tel Aviv–based CyberWell reports a surge in coded online antisemitism, with users swapping “Jews” for “juice” or “tiny hat” and using emojis — juice boxes, pigs, mice, devils — plus phrases like “Jill Kews” (“kill Jews”) to skirt moderation, especially on TikTok.
JNS: A Network Contagion Research Institute study finds that Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes’ posts are being boosted by unusually fast, concentrated, mostly anonymous early shares — many likely foreign or automated — giving him retweet velocity higher than Elon Musk. Antisemitism isn’t suddenly more popular; it’s being juiced by coordinated networks that treat Jew-baiting as a strategic information operation, not an organic vibe.
Developments to Watch
Judea & Samaria
Mass Arrests Before Hamas Foundation Day — Israel detained roughly 100 operatives across Judea and Samaria, including repeat offenders like Gilboa escapee Muhammad al-Arda. The scale and timing suggest the IDF is pre-empting coordinated Hamas demonstrations designed to show “strength” while their Gaza command bleeds. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Tulkarm Bomb Cell Rebuilt Again — Shin Bet exposed yet another Tulkarm network tied to multiple IED ambushes, including the blast that injured a regional brigade commander. The pace of cell regeneration shows Hamas’s external handlers are treating Judea and Samaria as their fallback battlespace as Gaza constricts.
Northern Front (Lebanon / Syria)
Storm Byron Opens a Retaliation Window — Severe weather now blankets the north while Hezbollah relocates operatives into Nabatiyeh and border villages. Storm cover historically reduces aerial ISR, giving Hezbollah an incentive to test Israeli red lines before the Dec 31 disarm-or-else deadline. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
American Warning on Precision Missiles — A Hezbollah-linked newspaper reports U.S. envoy Morgan Ortagus told Beirut Israel will strike deep — Dahieh and the Bekaa — if Hezbollah keeps its precision missiles past year-end. Washington rarely telegraphs escalation on Israel’s behalf unless the clock is genuinely short. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
UNIFIL Noise and Hezbollah Movement — Warning shots fired near Metula triggered UNIFIL complaints despite the IDF engaging a real intruder — not peacekeepers. Hezbollah is exploiting UNIFIL’s hypersensitivity to manufacture diplomatic friction while quietly repositioning fighters southward under storm concealment.
Syria Backtracks on Security Terms — Damascus injected new demands into negotiations just as US sanctions relief looms, widening gaps with Israel. al-Sharaa reads Washington correctly: when America signals fatigue, he pushes for concessions and tests whether Israel will anchor the line itself. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Gaza & Southern Theater
Yellow Line Hardening Accelerates — Engineering brigades expanded earthworks around Khan Yunis and Salah al-Din Road, encircling pockets of Gazans caught between IDF bulldozers and Hamas checkpoints. Israel is entrenching the new de facto border faster than diplomats can pretend it’s “temporary.”
Regional Axis (Iran, Houthis, Militias)
Iran Demands ‘Wartime Safeguards’ — Tehran now insists the IAEA rewrite its inspection framework to shield nuclear-site damage from “enemy exploitation.” This is Iran’s attempt to define a loophole large enough to rebuild its enrichment program under diplomatic fog. LIKELY TO ESCALATE
Houthis Declare Saudi Defense Pacts Irrelevant — A senior Houthi official dismissed any Saudi–Iran defense deal as meaningless to their campaign, reaffirming the group’s alignment with Tehran’s timetable rather than Riyadh’s survival. Expect renewed missile or maritime harassment as they try to regain initiative.
Militia Rumblings Along Jordan Corridor — Iraqi and Yemeni militia chatter again references rapid-drive incursion routes into the Jordan Valley. Israel’s accelerated Jordan-front build-up suggests concern that Iran may test least-protected areas while Gaza diplomacy absorbs international bandwidth.
Diplomatic & Legal
ISF Deployment Talk Before Gvili Return — Washington is briefing media and mediators about early-2026 stabilization-force deployments despite Israel’s explicit red line on Ran Gvili. This mismatch between timelines and realities will sharpen the coming US–Israel friction over Phase II sequencing.
UNRWA Terror Designation Seriously Explored — The Trump administration is weighing terrorism-related sanctions against UNRWA, including a potential FTO label. Even floating this publicly destabilizes the agency’s donor pipeline and will force allies to choose between old habits and new intelligence.
Home Front & Politics
Weather Lockdown Stresses Readiness Gaps — The IDF’s blanket freeze on training, navigation, and troop releases through Friday exposes the fragility of wartime manpower rhythms. Any escalation in the north during this period would test reserve-mobilization mechanisms already stretched by the long war.
Negev Growth Plan as Security Policy — The government approved a NIS 100m 2026 plan to strengthen the Eastern Negev — airfield planning, police build-up, education, transportation, and urban development. Israel is hardening the periphery before the next northern round.
Schools Go Phone-Free by February – The Education Ministry ordered a nationwide ban on student mobile phone use on school grounds starting February 2, giving schools a few weeks to prepare parents and staff. In a society that needs functional attention spans for war, tech, and everything in between, this is a small but very real resilience move.
Haredi Alternative-Service Trial Balloons — Coalition actors hint at recognizing ZAKA and United Hatzalah service tracks as potential substitutes for Haredi conscription. It’s time to make some decisions and get the legislation passed. It’s only complicated in politics. In reality, it’s clear.
Three takeaways:
Gaza: the line is explicit — no Ran Gvili, no Phase II. Not “maybe later,” not “let’s finesse the language.” aAdead Israeli is the lock on every diplomat’s fantasy until he comes home. At the same time, every new Yellow Line fortification and every dead infiltrator makes that strip less “temporary measure” and more “fact,” which is exactly why Hamas and its sponsors are screaming about ISF timelines.
The region: Iran isn’t moderating, it’s editing. Demanding “wartime safeguards” from the IAEA while ramping missiles and letting Houthis and Iraqi militias eye Jordan and the Gulf tells you everything you need to know about their intentions. Storm Byron over the north just compresses the clock — if Hezbollah miscalculates under cloud cover, the Dec 31 deadline may arrive early.
The state itself: a serious energy doctrine, a long-war budget, and a draft fight framed explicitly as duty rather than identity all point in one direction — a government trying (sometimes clumsily) to align law and manpower with the war we are actually in. The problem is that it’s doing this while still shackled to an improvised constitutional arrangement where the Court wrote itself into the role of final guardian without anyone ever signing the bottom of the page.
Later this morning, the new Long Brief — “The Unfinished State” — will walk through that architecture: how Israel ended up with one hyper-empowered court, one hyper-fragile Knesset, no completed constitution. A war on its borders makes those structural choices lethal when they fail. What happens in Gaza, on the Litani, and along the Jordan now depends as much on those rules as on tanks and jets. If we don’t fix the operating system, we will keep being stuck in much the same crisis.
Israel’s job is to stop letting other people’s timelines rewrite our red lines. The bigger job, which can’t wait forever, is to finally write down who gets to draw those lines in the first place.
— Uri Zehavi · Intelligence Editor
With Modi Zehavi · Data + Research Analyst
P.S. Later today around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, I’m sending that Long Brief on Israel’s half-built constitutional order — if you’ve ever shouted “judicial coup” or “legal dictatorship” at the TV, this is the one you want to read.
🔒 Tip? Send it securely via signal: (@Uri.30) or proton: ([email protected]).
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