KOENIG

American Ambassador to Israel Jacob Lew gave an intricate interview at the Institute for National Security Studies online conference on Thursday, discussing a broad spectrum of topics, including hostage negotiations, the U.S. arms shipment delay, Israel-U.S. ties, Saudi Arabia and regional normalization efforts.

Lew emphasized the need for flexibility in talks with Hamas, firmly rejected the notion that a two-state solution would reward terrorism, and provided insights into the ongoing hostage deal talks and the complexities of achieving regional normalization.

More rockets were fired at Israel from Lebanon in August than in any previous month since war broke out almost a year ago, according to data published by the Shin Bet security agency Thursday.

The report said that 1,307 rockets were fired at Israel in August from the northern front, meaning Lebanon and Syria, amounting to just over 40 a day on average, with the vast majority coming from Lebanon.

July saw 1,091 rockets, June saw 855, May saw 1,000, April saw 744, March saw 746, February saw 534, and January saw 334, according to the Shin Bet

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi discussed the Gaza war and ways to further repair the long-frozen ties between the regional powers during talks in Ankara, in the first such presidential visit in 12 years.

Relations between Ankara and Cairo collapsed in 2013 after Egypt's then-army chief Sisi led the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi, a Turkish ally who had become Egypt's first democratically elected president the year before.

Ties between the two countries began thawing in 2020 when Ankara launched a diplomatic drive to ease tensions with its estranged regional rivals, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Talks with Hamas on a renewed deal to exchange hostages for terrorists are faltering due to the Islamist group’s rejectionism, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated in an interview on Thursday morning.

Commenting in an interview with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on reported claims by a senior U.S. official that an agreement with Hamas is close, Netanyahu said that these claims were “exactly inaccurate.”

“There’s a story, a narrative out there that there’s a deal out there,” the premier said. “In fact, while we agreed in May, in July and in August to a deal, an American proposal, Hamas has consistently said no to every one of them.”

“They don’t agree to anything. Not to the Philadelphi Corridor [on Gaza’s border with Egypt], not to the keys of exchanging hostages for jailed terrorists, not to anything,” Netanyahu said.

Senior officials of the Biden administration met with Israeli officials in a virtual meeting on Tuesday to explore options to calm the tensions on Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah has been intensifying its attacks once again.

According to Axios, the U.S. had called the meeting to “take the pulse on the Israeli side” and coordinate the approach to the situation in Lebanon.

After a temporary lull in attacks following the IDF’s preemptive strike that prevented a planned large-scale attack on Israel, Hezbollah increased the frequency of its attacks to the previously high level it had reached before the escalation.

An overwhelming majority of Israelis support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s negotiation positions regarding a hostage deal with Hamas and oppose anti-government demonstrations in Tel Aviv demanding an immediate deal at any price, according to a new, in-depth JNS poll. 

Netanyahu’s positions are supported not only by coalition-party voters, but also by approximately one third of voters for opposition parties, the survey found.

The long-suffering residents of Israel's northern regions, who have not yet been evacuated from their homes, experienced another day under Hezbollah fire, as the terror group fired over 100 rockets into the Upper Galilee on Wednesday. The rocket fire did not result in any casualties but destroyed at least one building and caused several fires.

The largest attack occurred around noon, when 65 rockets were launched in a short time toward the Upper Galilee region near the city of Kiryat Shmona. Most of the rockets landed in open areas, sparking several fires.

Israel’s decisive defeat of Hamas in Gaza will facilitate regional peace with Saudi Arabia, whereas failure to achieve such a result is thwarting a deal, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

Friedman, who served under former President Donald Trump when the Abraham Accords were signed four years ago, told JNS that U.S. pressure on Israel regarding the war was making the chances of regional peace more remote.

The White House declared Tuesday that its latest, Israel-backed hostage deal proposal includes an IDF withdrawal from heavily populated areas along the Philadelphi Corridor, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared Israel must indefinitely maintain a presence along the Egypt-Gaza border stretch.

“The deal itself, including the bridging proposal that we started working with… includes the removal of Israeli Defense Forces from all densely populated areas… in phase one… and that includes those areas along and adjacent to that corridor,” said White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby in a briefing with reporters. “That’s the proposal that Israel had agreed to.”

However, Kirby declined to clarify whether this means that the US supports allowing Israeli troops to remain in less densely populated areas along the Philadelphi Corridor during the six-week, first phase of the deal.

The Philadelphi corridor, also known as the Salah al-Din axis, refers to a narrow strip of land just under 9 miles in length and around 100 yards wide that runs along the Gaza side of the coastal enclave's border with Egypt.

The corridor was set up as a buffer zone in accordance with the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, with the aim of controlling movement in and out of Gaza and preventing arms smuggling between the Egyptian Sinai and the Palestinian enclave.

The area was under Israeli control until Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, prior to which Israel and Egypt signed the Philadelphi Accord, which allowed Egypt to send hundreds of border guards to patrol the corridor's borders. In May, the Israeli military announced it had established “tactical control” over the corridor... Israeli officials said troops had discovered some 150 tunnels along the corridor believed to have been used by Hamas to smuggle weapons and supplies into the enclave, though they said it wasn't clear if the tunnels had been used since Oct. 7.

In his first public address since Sunday’s mass protests showed many Israelis’ furious response to the discovery of six more dead hostages, Netanyahu said he will continue to insist on a demand that has emerged as a major sticking point in talks — continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons into Gaza. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

The Israel Defense Forces will stay on Gaza’s border with Egypt to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its strength by smuggling in arms, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday night. He also vowed to exact a “very heavy price” from the terrorist group for its recent execution of six captives.

“We are in the midst of an existential war against Iran’s axis of evil, and the first condition of victory is unity among us,” the Israeli leader said in an address to the nation. “We must stand united against a brutal enemy seeking to destroy us all—left or right, religious or secular, Jews and non-Jews. We have seen that not only on October 7, but throughout the war.”

President Joe Biden accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday of not doing enough to secure a ceasefire-for-hostages-and-terrorists-release deal with Hamas, two weeks after Jerusalem accepted the latest proposals put forward by Washington.

Asked by reporters outside the White House whether Netanyahu was doing enough, Biden said, “No.”

Rather than respond to the heartbreaking news with condemnations of Hamas and demands that Israel fight to victory; rather than call for Israel to execute an equal or larger number of Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 atrocities who are currently in Israeli jails, Israel’s opposition leaders in the Knesset have joined the anarchist groups in blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Hamas’s murder of the six. 

As one, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Yair Golan and their underlings have joined the leftist groups that have been using mass riots, political violence and general mayhem since 2019 in an effort to oust Netanyahu from power, and have called on Israelis to take to the streets in response to the executions and bring down the government through violence.

The behavior of the likes of Lapid, Gantz, Golan; of 90% of Israel’s media organs and the rest of the left’s representatives, raises the question: Have they lost their minds?

The IDF announced the recovery of the bodies on Saturday night, but the identities of the hostages could not be confirmed until after they were returned to Israel.

The military believes the hostages could have been killed by Hamas after the rescue of al-Qadi, in order to prevent them from being rescued. The IDF clarified that the hostages were not killed as a result of IDF activity, as no force was used by the troops in that area.

The Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast (JPB) is a prayer movement initiated and chaired by Knesset Member Robert Ilatov and co-chaired by U.S. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Each year, The JPB brings together government, business, and influential Christian leaders from all walks of society for a gathering in Israel’s capital city to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). The JPB takes the prayer breakfast to the nations, including the United States, Uganda, the UK, Italy, Singapore, Ghana, Netherlands, Finland, Brazil, and many more.

While Israel has been willing to go a long way to return the remaining hostages, negotiators say that the real obstacle is Hamas' demands, as protests in Israel continue to demand a deal.

Hamas is attempting to pressure Israel to abandon its fundamental principles by warning that the Gaza hostage talks are close to collapse, Israeli sources said Saturday, after the security cabinet voted 8-1 to retain IDF forces in the Philadelphi Corridor in any agreement with the terror group.

This revelation dramatically increases the scope of what was already considered to be one of the most severe breaches of the State of Israel’s security ever recorded. A staggering 6,000 Gazans infiltrated Israel during the October 7 massacre, nearly double the previously estimated amount, according to a new probe by the Gaza Division that was submitted to IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and published on Saturday on the N12 News site.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy increased pressure on the United States to let Kyiv strike military targets deep inside Russian territory after his representatives met senior U.S. officials in Washington on Saturday.

Washington has provided Ukraine with more than $50 billion worth of military aid since 2022, but has limited the use of its weapons to Ukrainian soil and defensive crossborder operations.

Zelenskiy said guided aerial bombs killed six people and injured 97 in Kharkiv on Friday, with more attacks on Saturday. These could be averted only "by striking Russian military airfields, their bases, and the logistics of Russian terror."