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‘Gaza Buffer Zone Is No Substitute for Preventing Buildup of Terror Armies’
An armored personnel carrier (APC) maneuvers near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Israel, March 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
JNS.org – As reports continue to emerge about efforts by the Israel Defense Forces to set up a kilometer-wide buffer zone in Gaza to protect southern communities, a leading Israeli military strategist has told JNS that the broader goal of preventing the re-emergence of a terror army in the Strip should be a far more important, long-term Israeli objective.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal, former commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking, an IDF military studies department, who is today a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, noted the dominant thinking within military circles today about the need to establish such a zone, complete with multiple barriers.
He added, however, that this is merely the latest in a series of Israeli ventures to set up defensive structures, most of which were not successful.
“Why do we think that this time the obstacle will work? Each one of these past obstacles was state of the art in its time,” said Ortal.
“I am not against barriers, but the real question in my eyes is not whether a kilometer of a buffer zone will provide sufficient space to generate a warning before attacks occur,” he added.
Ortal said that for example, over time it will become increasingly difficult for Israel to enforce a “kill zone” within the buffer area, as terrorists will continuously test Israel’s responses by approaching the border, mingled among civilians or under the guise of civilian activities.
Instead, he argued, Israeli long-term strategic efforts in Gaza should be focused on the primary goal of preventing the re-emergence of a terror army anywhere in the Strip, which would mean that a buffer zone would not even be necessarily required to protect the south.
In a paper to be published soon by BESA, Ortal writes that developing a sustainable defense strategy should be based on competitive thinking, meaning not only providing solutions to enemy threats, but enabling Israel to proceed with military efforts over a long term, and to “deal with the fact that the enemy responds.”
Automatic responses to failures, which occurred both after the 1973 Yom Kippur War (such as enlarging the military to an unsustainable size), and currently, by creating new and improved border obstacles and by (once again) enlarging the IDF, could turn out to be little more than “technical lessons,” Ortal cautioned.
A deeper strategic mistake, he argues, has been the repeated pattern of allowing terror armies in Lebanon and Gaza to gradually build up large arsenals of ballistic projectiles and anti-tank missiles, and accepting a reality in which Israeli decision makers became deterred by the paralysis these arsenals could cause to the Israeli home front. Ultimately, this pattern that generated a vicious cycle of further enemy force build-up and Israeli passivity, Ortal argued.
As such, Ortal said, continuous offensive raids into Gaza by the IDF, combined with forward offensive systems that automatically strike anti-tank missile cells and rocket launchers immediately after these attack Israel, would go a long way towards a sustainable approach.
To enable this, he said, Israel should consider setting up on the border with Gaza a forward detection and strike system that automatically locates the source of anti-tank and other rocket fire, and returns fire within seconds.
This, he said, would pose an intolerable risk to enemy missile cells, a fact that could be highly relevant in the coming months due to the possibility that many anti-tank missiles and launchers might still be accessible to terrorists in Gaza.
Setting up such a forward automatic-strike layer would be far more effective than a buffer zone, Ortal argued, since even basic anti-tank missiles with a five-kilometer range could threaten southern communities from deeper in Gaza, behind the buffer zone.
“On the defense perspective we failed twice,” Ortal wrote in a previous paper that examined fundamental errors leading up to Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion.
“First, we allowed the Hamas and Hezbollah terror entities to build full-size military systems on our doorstep, in populated terrain that deprives us of even minimal early warning. Secondly, facing that situation, we did not fully deploy for defense. Rather, we kept our deployment on a ‘routine security’ protocol, the IDF’s version of a system of border security.”
During periods of calm, he said, Israel refrained from any significant preventive activity and allowed the enemy to entrench itself right next to Israel’s borders.
The result: “We lost the early warning buffer and did not reevaluate our defensive deployment.”
In addition to ongoing cross-border raids by the IDF in Gaza to prevent terrorists from regrouping, ensuring proper operational readiness on the part of IDF border units and the setting up of a militia-based, well-armed civilian response teams in southern communities, Ortal outlined a solution he has been advocating for several years.
This approach involves the building of mobile intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems (unlike the fixed IDF border sensors taken out by Hamas on Oct. 7) and an automatic return-fire system, operating constantly on the border, together with units that can independently activate aircraft, unmanned aerial systems and other capabilities.
Rapidly locating and automatically striking sources of enemy fire should be a key aspect of this future array, he said. “The IDF once had excellent counter-battery fire [the ability to hit the enemy’s firepower sources] capabilities, but they are now outdated. A much faster and more precise capability must be developed that can destroy launchers before they are withdrawn behind cover,” he said.
The post ‘Gaza Buffer Zone Is No Substitute for Preventing Buildup of Terror Armies’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
The post Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
The post Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
The post US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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