Iran had to show its regional proxies, and its own citizens, that it could extract a price from Israel, especially after Hamas had proven that Israel could be humiliated by its October 7 surprise attack.

The result was underwhelming, to say the least.The attacks overnight Saturday-Sunday only managed to harm one Israeli, a 7-year-old Muslim girl.
“It’s kind of pathetic,” said Danielle Pletka, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC. “This is not the outcome they were hoping for.”

Even among Israel’s closest allies, pressure had been growing to end the war in the Gaza Strip. The focus since October 7 had shifted to suffering Gazan civilians, with the world losing sight of the need to decisively defeat Hamas on the battlefield.

With its missile and drone attack on Israel, Iran succeeded in rallying the US and top European powers to Israel’s side. Not only did the US, the UK, and France express their unequivocal support for Israel; they actively took part in its defense, using a network of satellite, planes, and radars on the ground and at sea. And instead of the UN Security Council discussing the need for a ceasefire in Gaza, it will be debating the Iranian threat and Israel’s right to self-defense on Sunday, with three permanent members sure to band together to condemn Tehran and Moscow.

An Israeli hostage who was abducted during the Hamas-led terror onslaught on October 7 said Monday that she was captured by armed Palestinian civilians who later sold her to the Gaza-ruling terror group.

Nili Margalit’s revelation in an interview with the Le Point French magazine appeared to further highlight the extent to which participation in the shock attack in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed and 253 were taken hostage extended beyond fighters in the Hamas terror group.

Margalit shared her story while on a Paris stop of a tour throughout Europe aimed at raising awareness of the 133 Israelis still in captivity.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and IDF intelligence Unit 504 revealed on Monday that Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokesman Tarik Salame Uda Abu confessed to Gazan terrorists taking over all of the hospitals in Gaza.

“Gaza terror groups use all of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip.... The organization lied and deceived regarding the story of an Israeli rocket hitting a hospital at the start of the war,” he told his interrogators.

The PIJ spokesman was arrested recently during the second takeover of Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, along with 500 other Hamas and PIJ terrorists, plus another 200 whom the IDF killed when they refused to surrender.

The terror spokesman said his role was to fool the global media and foreign countries to turn them against Israel.
Previously revealed recordings of Hamas members blaming PIJ

On October 18, IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari laid out the IDF’s full comprehensive intelligence case to prove that a failed rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza was the cause behind the damage and the death at al-Ahli Arab Hospital. This was the incident that Uda Abu was referring to.

Amid reports on Monday of US backing for Palestinian Authority (PA) control of post-war Gaza, tensions between Fatah and Hamas appear to be escalating, posing a threat to existing plans.

The US and other influential entities anticipated that the Palestinian Authority would implement crucial reforms to function as a "normalized" authority.An Israeli official told the Wall Street Journal, "The understanding is that one way or another, we will work with entities connected to the Authority. However, it doesn't mean that the current format of the Authority will be the leading force in Gaza." Hamas, on the other hand, is intensifying efforts to ensure its central role in governing the Gaza Strip, aiming for significant political influence.

The terror organization arrested six Palestinians suspected of collaborating with PA intelligence operatives who entered Gaza with Egyptian Red Cross aid at the end of March.

Hamas targets PA for alleged collaboration with Israel

Hamas sent a sharp message to the PA, alleging cooperation with Israel in "the destructive war against Gazans." A Fatah spokesperson, in turn, stated that Hamas is focusing on activities against the Palestinian Authority and that "Palestinian Authority intelligence operatives operate in Gaza solely to distribute aid to residents."

JERUSALEM – It gives journalist Matti Friedman no satisfaction to know he was early to realize that a change had come to covering Israel, favoring fixed narratives and activist journalism over a tradition of fact-based reporting.

Friedman, a former reporter and editor at the Associated Press based in Jerusalem from 2006-2011, quit the global news agency after being censored by his editors, and realizing he would have to censor what he and his colleagues knew to be true about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And what was the case a decade ago is more true now, he told me.

“The press has been gutted. The bureaus have shrunk, and into that vacuum have come ideological voices,” he said. “Now Human Rights Watch gives you a report, in English, and you write a story based on that report. And you end up serving as the media arm of the hard left, the world of NGOs.”

This mattered less when the conflict had fallen out of the headlines. But now that the heated war between Israel and Hamas has come to dominate the global news cycle, this shift has dramatic consequences on regional tension amid a frightening spike in anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment around the world.

Examples of this shift abound

An unconfirmed number of Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service members were apprehended in Gaza by Hamas after being accused of sneaking into the Gaza Strip in collaboration with Israel, according to Arab media reports on Monday, citing an interview on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV.

According to the reports, the General Intelligence Service members entered the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt during a mission to secure and facilitate the humanitarian aid truck convoys. At some point after entrance, they were apprehended by Hamas terrorists.

An unnamed Hamas official told Al-Aqsa TV that the PA General Intelligence Service leader, Majed Faraj, was using this mission as a guise with the aim of creating a "state of confusion and chaos among the ranks of the home front, and with security from the Israeli Shin Bet service and the enemy army.”

--snip--

An unnamed PA official in Ramallah said in a separate statement, “The statement of the so-called Hamas Interior Ministry about the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip yesterday is baseless, and we will continue to provide everything necessary to provide relief to our people.”

IDF: Troops find weapons cache at Shifa Hospital’s MRI center
The IDF says troops of the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit located a cache of weapons at Shifa Hospital’s MRI center, during the military’s ongoing raid against Hamas at the medical center, the largest in the Gaza Strip.

Mortars, grenades, firearms and ammunition were found hidden within the building, in some cases under the floors and in the drop ceiling, according to the IDF.

The IDF says the Nahal troops killed several gunmen during their scans of the MRI center and Shifa’s maternity ward.

Weapons were also found in the maternity ward, the IDF says.

IDF publishes evidence of weapons found inside Shifa Hospital’s MRI center

The Israel Defense Forces releases evidence of Hamas weapons found inside Shifa Hospital during a raid in the medical center today.

It says members of the elite Shaldag unit and other forces of the 36th Division found the weapons inside Shifa’s MRI center.

Troops had battled Hamas gunmen outside the hospital, killing five.

“During searches inside one of the hospital’s wards, the troops located a room containing unique technological means, combat equipment, and military equipment used by the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF says.

It publishes images and videos showing several assault rifles, grenades, and other military equipment. It says that in another ward, it found a Hamas operational headquarters and “technological means” which it says indicates Hamas’s use of the facility for terror

The near-universal assumption is that Hamas viewed its surprise offensive as another phase in a long-term war against Israel. There’s some truth to it, but that misreads why Hamas decided now to deliberately provoke a massive Israeli response—which is the long-standing power struggle between the Islamists in Hamas and their smaller ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), against the secular nationalists of Fatah who control the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and, more importantly, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which represents Palestinians diplomatically.

Fatah, of course, knows this full well, but a surge of nationalist sentiment and shared outrage at the mass killing and suffering of the 2.2 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza muffled nationalist leaders like President Mahmoud Abbas (also the chairman of the PLO) in publicly acknowledging Hamas’ breathtaking cynicism.

--snip--

“Those who caused Gaza to return to living under Israeli occupation and caused a nakba [catastrophe] to befall the Palestinian people, especially in Gaza, have no right to make dictates related to national priorities,” Fatah said, batting aside Hamas’ assertion of authority. “The real side that is out of touch with reality and the Palestinian people is the Hamas leadership that has until this moment failed to realize the extent of the catastrophe endured by our oppressed people in Gaza and the rest of the Palestinian territories,” it continued, shifting quickly into a narrative framework that, for the first time in major Palestinian politics, acknowledged the full extent of Hamas’ responsibility for deliberately provoking Israel’s entirely predictable onslaught.

Fatah’s statement flung the accusation of unilateralism back at Hamas, saying the Islamists consulted with no other Palestinians before launching “an adventure on Oct. 7 that has led to a nakba that is more severe than the 1948 Nakba,”—one of the most punishing accusations in the Palestinian political lexicon.