Israel To Surge Troops in Expansion of War on Hamas

Israel is poised to escalate its military campaign in the Gaza Strip after nearly 19 months of war. 

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday approved plans to surge thousands of troops and expand military operations in the coming days, an Israeli official said, confirming Hebrew media reports. The security cabinet was scheduled to vote on Sunday to give final authorization to the plans.

Netanyahu’s office declined to comment.

A spokesman for the military confirmed that earlier this week preparations began for a large-scale mobilization of reservists to support the escalation in Gaza. Reserve commanders were called to duty and notified their brigades to prepare for deployment starting as early as next week—in some cases to Gaza and in others to replace active-duty troops who have already begun to redeploy to the strip from the West Bank and Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon.

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Israeli Leaders Privately Hope for Failure of Trump Negotiations With Iran

JERUSALEM—Officially, Israel’s position is that President Donald Trump could negotiate a “good” deal to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. 

Unofficially, Israeli decision makers believe U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, which are scheduled to begin on Saturday in Oman, will almost certainly end in either failure or disaster. 

From Israel’s perspective, the best plausible outcome of the talks would be failure—the sooner the better. The disaster would be if Trump allowed Iran to drag out the talks indefinitely or agreed to a deal that allowed Iran to remain a nuclear threshold state.

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Oct. 7 Victims Take Aim at Al Jazeera. Plus, Trump Unplugs Maryland's EV Mandate.

See you in court: Qatar’s Al Jazeera has stoked controversy for platforming terrorists in the Middle East, and both the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority have banned it. The network also maintains an office in Washington, D.C., and victims of Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack are now putting its American outpost on notice.

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Trump, Sitting Alongside Netanyahu, Announces Direct Nuclear Talks With Iran and Teases 'Great Danger' if Tehran Rejects Diplomacy

The United States and Iran will hold direct discussions on Tehran's contested nuclear weapons program this weekend, President Donald Trump announced on Monday, just hours after the Islamic Republic affirmed that one-on-one negotiations with America remain off limits. If the talks fail, "Iran is going to be in great danger," Trump said.

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More Countries Will Leave 'Corrupt' ICC, Netanyahu Says After Hungary's Exit

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán announced that his country is withdrawing from the International Criminal Court over its prosecution of Israeli leaders—and more countries will follow, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.

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ABC News Quietly Removes All Four Reporter Bylines From Piece That Referred to Israel's 'Occupation Forces'

ABC News has quietly removed the bylines of four reporters from a controversial piece that initially contained a false report accusing Israel of dropping menacing leaflets throughout Gaza and used a phrase popularized by Hamas, "occupation forces," to describe Israel's military. The Disney-owned network has not commented on the piece, which has gone through four byline changes, a correction, and the unacknowledged removal of the "occupation forces" epithet since it was published a week ago.

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Israel Resumes War in Gaza With Plan To Conquer Entire Strip

JERUSALEM—When Israel’s defense minister on Friday threatened to take the Gaza Strip from Hamas piece by piece, he was not just sabre-rattling. 

Rather, Israel Katz was describing a war plan that already appeared to be underway. Amid airstrikes across Gaza starting early Tuesday, Israeli ground forces on Wednesday retook much of the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza and on Thursday entered the cities of Beit Lahiya in the north of the strip and Khan Younis and Rafah in the south, according to military officials. 

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Trump and Bibi Issue an Ultimatum. Iran and Hamas Should Heed It.

After more than two weeks of fruitless negotiations for further hostage releases, Israel’s patience ran out. On Tuesday, the Israeli military bombarded Hamas leaders and positions in Gaza, and ground forces soon reentered the Hamas-ruled enclave.

Renewed fighting caused consternation for many. The remaining hostages’ friends and family fear for the safety of their loved ones. Israelis of all stripes want their countrymen free from the horrors described by some of the recently released captives. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political opponents accuse him of restarting the war to wriggle his way out of the most recent scandal to rock Israeli politics.

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ABC News Retracts Claim That Israeli ‘Occupation Forces’ Dropped ‘Harrowing’ Leaflet in Gaza

ABC News retracted its claim that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) dropped leaflets containing "harrowing messages" in Gaza. An editor’s note said the outlet couldn’t confirm the leaflets’ authenticity—but didn’t disclose that it also scrubbed language referring to the IDF as "occupation forces."

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'Psychological Warfare': Hamas Says It's Willing To Release Last Living American Hostage While Rebuffing Hostage Deals

Hamas says it is willing to release the last living American hostage, Edan Alexander, as well as the bodies of four other dual citizens the terror group murdered in captivity. At the same time, it is rebuffing deals that would secure the continued release of both living and dead hostages, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu […]

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