Fight to destroy Hamas ‘may never end’, says former Israeli security chief
The former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, has said Israel’s battle to destroy Hamas may drag on indefinitely.
Speaking to Israel’s Maariv newspaper, Amidror said Israel’s military would need to remove the Palestinian organisation’s operational capacity, but acknowledged the process would “take a long time, and may never end”.
Israel could only turn to the question of Hamas’s potential replacement in Gaza “when we reach a situation where the movement does not pose a threat”, he added.
Expose Netanyahu if he sabotages captive deal: Head of Israel’s Labor Party to security chiefs
Yair Golan, head of Israel’s Labor Party, has called on Israeli security chiefs to publicly take on Prime Minister Netanyahu if he is sabotaging a captive exchange deal with Hamas.
In a post on X, Golan said if reports of Netanyahu “torpedoing” captive exchange negotiations are proven true, “it is the duty of the heads of the security services to come out of the shadows and talk directly to the people of Israel.”
“This is the time when you will enter the history books as those who faithfully represented the people of Israel or as those who allowed a prime minister who lacks any popular confidence to continue abandoning the kidnapped and lead Israel to destruction,” Golan said, addressing the security chiefs.
Yesterday, several Israeli media outlets, including Haaretz and Channel 12, reported that there are growing doubts among Israeli security chiefs whether Netanyahu actually wants to reach a captive exchange deal.
US calls for de-escalation in region ‘ring hollow’: Analyst
Abdullah al-Arian, associate professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, said few in the region are taking the US’s calls for de-escalation seriously, as Washington has been the “crucial partner in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and in its regional escalation” over the past 10 months.
“The US has never once condemned or at least even attempted to pull back from the brink of this all-out regional war. We’ve never really seen any action in that regard,” al-Arian told Al Jazeera.
“So all of these statements [on de-escalation] ring hollow for most of the people in this region who are observing, for instance, that the US has not had a word to say about the dual assassination this past week, and what that means in terms of a very dangerous escalation. And what it could mean in terms of the spillover into a much wider regional conflict,” he said.
US aircraft carrier arrives in the Strait of Hormuz: Report
Israeli Army Radio reports that the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt has arrived in the Strait of Hormuz, just 10km (6.2 miles) from the coast of Iran, amid fears of Iranian retaliation for the killings of Hamas’s political leader in Tehran and a Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also ordered additional ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the Middle East and areas under the United States European Command, as well as a new fighter squadron to the Middle East.
In April, the US, UK, France and Jordan helped shoot down missiles and drones fired by Iran at Israel in retaliation for an Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus.
Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said on Friday that “the Department of Defense continues to take steps to mitigate the possibility of regional escalation by Iran or Iran’s partners and proxies”.
