Israel Brief: Tuesday, November 18

Diplomats Lock In a Gaza Plan While Hamas, Tehran and Judea–Samaria Turn Up the Heat

Shalom, friends.

Many apologies for the very delayed Brief today. Cloudflare’s outage combined with travel (no working wifi on the flight to California), sunk our usual routine. We’ll be back tomorrow at closer to a normal time (though our time zone change will impact it by a few hours).

The UN just voted through Trump’s Gaza plan with talk of demilitarization, a Board of Peace, and a “pathway” to Palestinian statehood on the same day Hamas says, again, that it will not give up a single rifle. In Gaza, the Strip is now two maps: an eastern belt where the IDF kills infiltrators and pours concrete into tunnels, and a western belt where Hamas arrests desalination workers, taxes everything that moves, and rides a polling wave that blesses October 7. Up north, Israel is no longer nibbling at Hezbollah—it is hitting a camp in Ain al-Hilweh, vehicles in Blida, and gear in Bint Jbeil while Washington quietly admits Iran may need “further action.” And in Judea and Samaria, the Gush Etzion junction just proved what we’ve been saying for weeks: the home front is now a front.

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⚡️Flash Brief: The Day in 90 Seconds or Less

• Gaza / UNSC: IDF kills multiple terrorists in repeated Yellow Line breaches as UNSC Resolution 2803 backs Trump’s Gaza plan and Hamas publicly rejects disarmament and “guardianship.” See The War Today.

• North / Iran Axis: IAF hits a compound in Ain al-Hilweh, a vehicle in Blida, and a bulldozer in Bint Jbeil while US officials say Iran may face renewed strikes after June’s nuclear hits. See The War Today / Developments to Watch.

• Judea & Samaria: Aharon Cohen, z”l, is murdered in a ramming-stabbing at Gush Etzion; Duvdevan and Yahalom raid Orif and seize weapons workshops as the Hebron belt slides from policing to combat. See Inside Israel / Developments to Watch.

• Smuggling Front / Egypt Border: IDF’s 80th Division reports 130 smuggling drones downed and 85 weapons seized in a month along the Egyptian frontier, while Katz orders a “war” on UAV smuggling. See The War Today / Developments to Watch.

• Diplomacy / Saudi File: MBS lands in Washington with F-35 sales and normalization on the table; US signals support for a deal as Israeli officials warn about eroding aerial superiority. See Israel and the World / Developments to Watch.

• Homefront / Burden & Law: New data show only 11% of eligible Israelis carried the reserve burden while the comptroller slams pay and protections; Haredi anti-draft protests target their own MKs’ homes as the coalition pushes a “draft-exemption” law. See Inside Israel.

• Info-War / Islamists & Jew-Hatred: Texas designates the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terror/criminal organizations even as a viral Arabic conspiracy, “Tired Islam,” recycles Protocols-style libels about a fake Jewish plot to destroy Muslim societies. See Israel and the World / Briefly Noted.

The full brief and analysis continue below.

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On paper, today looks like progress: a unanimous Security Council vote (minus two abstentions), a formal mandate for an International Stabilization Force, a Board of Peace chaired by a friendly US president, and language about stripping Hamas of its weapons. On the ground however, the same Hamas leadership tells Al Jazeera that disarmament “was never on the table,” arrests employees at Gaza’s biggest desalination company until they shut taps for a million civilians, and enjoys polling that says most Gazans think October 7 was “the right decision.”

In the north, analysts talk about “containment” while the next round has already begun: operatives killed in a Lebanese camp that was under surveillance for weeks, bulldozers linked to Hezbollah rehabilitation hit in Bint Jbeil, drones over Blida. Along the Egyptian border, the smugglers have upgraded from donkeys and Toyota beds to agricultural UAVs hauling Iranian and Yemeni firearms into the Negev, destined for both gangs and terror cells. And in Judea and Samaria, the picture we flagged in the last few briefs hardened: a coordinated Islamic Jihad attack in Gush Etzion, explosives in the attackers’ car, and a belt from Hebron northward that now behaves like a combat zone, not a policing problem.

The rest of this brief walks through those fronts with the only lens that still matters: who enforces what, where, and with which tools.

The War Today

Hamas Tightens Its Grip as the UN Sells a Fantasy