Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said on Thursday that the Iran-aligned group is ready to enter talks with the Lebanese government on a national defense strategy, with the focus on ensuring the removal of Israeli troops from Lebanon’s territory.
US-backed President Joseph Aoun, who pledged to establish a state monopoly on the control of arms when he took office in January, is set to start talks with Hezbollah about its weapons arsenal, three Lebanese political sources told Reuters.
The IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) killed Haitham Razek abd al-Karim Sheikh Khalil, a commander in Hamas‘s Shejaiya battalion, in Gaza City on Wednesday, the military confirmed on Thursday.
The commander had participated in the invasion of Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and executed multiple attacks against the IDF in combat zones since the beginning of the war, the IDF said.
Part of those attacks saw boobytraps and explosives planted where the IDF operated.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the security cabinet on Wednesday that negotiations are underway with two large countries to absorb large numbers of Gazans who will emigrate voluntarily.
Netanyahu continued that Israel knew in advance about the US talks with Iran regarding its nuclear program, and the US wanted to know what a good agreement was from Israel’s perspective.
An Israeli air force jet crashed in Lebanon due to a technical malfunction, the IDF announced on Wednesday.
There is no concern over security issues nor over an information leak.
The incident is being investigated.
Israel and Turkey have recently discussed creating a coordination mechanism in Syria in efforts to prevent friction, a source familiar with details told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
According to the source, the two countries are looking to “establish a mechanism similar to the one that had existed with Russia” during the rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The source noted that the mechanism “successfully prevented unnecessary friction” between Moscow and Jerusalem in the past.
Although the IDF is making consistent progress against Hamas on many fronts, the army sources acknowledged to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that it could easily take a full year or even years to fully root out the terror group.
The starting point of the conversation was the recent success of the IDF killing 300 Hamas terrorists and the success prior to the January 19 ceasefire of having killed 18,000-20,000, but then combining that picture with the fact that Hamas may have another 25,000 or more fighters and that currently, the IDF is focusing lots of energy on eliminating the terror group’s remaining fighters in Rafah.
Hamas launched a massive attack on October 7, with thousands of terrorists infiltrating from the Gaza border and taking some 240 hostages into Gaza.
Over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were murdered, including over 350 at the Supernova music festival and hundreds of Israeli civilians across Gaza border communities.
59 hostages remain in Gaza.
49 hostages in total have been killed in captivity, IDF says.
The IDF launched a ground invasion of Lebanon on September 30.
The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire came into effect on November 27 at 4 a.m.
Netanyahu confirmed the first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire on January 17, 2025.
