RSS
Israel’s Defense Chief: IDF Will Intensify Fight Unless Hamas Frees Hostages
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
JNS.org — If Hamas does not release the 100 hostages it has been holding for 454 days and halt its rocket attacks on the Jewish state, Israel will deal it “blows with a force not seen in Gaza for a long time,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday.
“The IDF will intensify its activities against the terrorist nests in Gaza until the release of the hostages and the elimination of Hamas,” Katz warned during a visit to the southern Israeli city of Netivot.
Hamas terrorists welcomed 2025 by firing two rockets towards the Netivot area. No damages or injuries were reported in the attack.
“I call on Gaza’s residents to rise up against the murderous Hamas group, which also uses you as human shields, and to bring about the release of the hostages, to prevent suffering and end the war,” Katz said.
The defense minister in his remarks highlighted Israel’s “willingness to make far-reaching compromises in accordance with the principles outlined by the US president.”
Israeli ground forces entered Gaza on Oct. 27, 2023, following weeks of airstrikes in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, wounded thousands more and took more than 250 men, women and children back to the Gaza Strip as hostages.
Israeli Air Force aircraft conducted more than 1,400 strikes on Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip during the month of December, the Israel Defense Forces said on Wednesday.
The IAF strikes — which were carried out by fighter jets, helicopter gunships and drones — targeted Hamas terrorist operatives, tunnel systems, weapon depots and attack positions, the military said.
“Air Force aircraft and control rooms are in direct contact with the fighting [ground] forces and support the fighting in the various sectors,” the statement continued, adding that the IAF has managed to kill terrorists “within a few meters” of Israeli soldiers.
Jerusalem’s year-plus-long offensive against Hamas and other Iranian-backed groups has greatly curbed rocket fire from Gaza, although the Palestinian terrorists still intermittently target the Jewish state.
Following Wednesday’s assault on Netivot, the IDF issued a warning to noncombatants in the Bureij camp, located near the IDF’s Netzarim Corridor dividing Gaza, ahead of a retaliatory strike on Hamas.
“This is an early warning. Terror groups are again firing rockets from this area, which has been warned several times in the past. For your safety, immediately move to the humanitarian zone,” the IDF notice read.
The post Israel’s Defense Chief: IDF Will Intensify Fight Unless Hamas Frees Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.