Israel Brief: Tuesday, October 28

Deadlines Expire, Patience Evaporates — Hamas stalls, Hezbollah rebuilds, and the ceasefire frays by habit.

Shalom, friends.

The quiet is once again theoretical. Hamas has spent the ceasefire faking compliance and digging deeper; Israel has spent it preparing for round two. The staged handover of a murdered hostage’s body — already buried once — crossed from cynicism into psychological warfare. It reminded Israelis what “negotiation” means to terrorists and pushed Washington’s truce diplomacy closer to collapse.

North of the border, Hezbollah is testing limits under French and American supervision. Israel’s airstrikes in the Beqaa Valley and the revelation that France ordered UNIFIL to shoot down an Israeli drone stripped away the last pretense of neutrality. At the same time, Iran has gone public with a new radar array in Sudan, wiring its surveillance net from Yemen to the Red Sea. It now watches Eilat with the same precision it watches Haifa.

Inside Israel, patience is as thin as the calm. Lapid and Liberman are turning the draft fight into a constitutional weapon; Smotrich is turning annexation into a campaign slogan. The same coalition that promises sovereignty abroad is losing coherence at home. The IDF is still eliminating cells in Jenin; the High Court is still deciding whether the law applies equally. Both are fighting insurgencies — one armed, one legal.

Every front moves, even when it pretends not to. The war’s shape is now familiar: Hamas fakes restraint, Hezbollah rebuilds under a flag of diplomacy, and Iran measures Israel’s hesitation in minutes.

The War Today

Ceasefire Under Strain: Israel Rearms, Allies Hesitate, and Hamas Digs In

Israel has made tunnel demolition the central mission of its forces still operating inside Gaza’s “yellow zone,” with Defense Minister Israel Katz ordering the IDF to prioritize destroying Hamas’s vast subterranean network—an infrastructure he says remains 60% intact two years after the October 7 pogrom. While Katz’s directive aligns with U.S.-brokered truce terms, Washington’s involvement has deepened operational oversight, and legal constraints still hamper action beneath Gaza’s civilian grid. At the same time, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the IDF is preparing for a “renewed occupation of Gaza” and “very violent, forceful” strikes if Hamas continues to stall on returning the 13 remaining bodies of Israeli hostages—violations that the Hostages and Missing Families Forum says should freeze the next phase of the Trump peace deal. Trump’s 48-hour ultimatum for compliance still looms, as U.S. officials coordinate closely from southern Israel. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council and Arab partners remain deadlocked over the mandate for the planned multinational force: Arab states want a passive peacekeeping presence, while Washington insists it must enforce Hamas disarmament. Jordan’s King Abdullah and Senator Lindsey Graham both warned that the concept of “peace enforcement” is untenable—Abdullah saying no Arab state will “run around Gaza on patrol,” Graham calling the plan “unrealistic” and warning that “every day Hamas grows stronger.” Trump’s allies counter that Hamas’s refusal to disarm could trigger an Israeli return to full-scale combat.