US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned today that war could break out in Lebanon even though neither side wants it.
In an interview at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Blinken said that Israel "has effectively lost sovereignty over the northern quadrant of its country because people do not feel safe to return to their homes."
He reiterated his belief that Israel does not want a war in Lebanon, but acknowledged that it may be well prepared to engage in such a war if it deems it necessary to protect its interests.
Blinken added that Lebanon's Hezbollah does not actually want war either, that Lebanon does not want it either because it would be the main victim, and that Iran does not want war because it would rather save Hezbollah for a scenario in which it directly confronts Israel.
"On the one hand, nobody really wants war. On the other hand, there is a flywheel that can take things in a direction that we are determined to stop," Blinken said.
The US is trying to facilitate an agreement that will ensure the sides withdraw so they cannot endanger people on a daily basis, an apparent allusion to Israel's demand that Hezbollah withdraw north of the Litani River, 30 kilometers from the border.
Blinken also assessed that securing a ceasefire in Gaza is the best way to end attacks by both Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis as well, Israeli media reported.
Cross-border clashes between Hezbollah and the Israeli army began a day after the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7 last year, initiated by an attack by Palestinian extremists on the south of Israel.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that the release of the arrested director of the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza was a "serious mistake and ethical failure".
Israeli ministers and senior security officials are shifting the blame to each other, claiming they are not responsible for the release of the director of the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip.
"That man, under whose responsibility our hostages were held and killed, should be in prison," Netanyahu said in a statement, Israeli media reported.
He ordered an investigation into how it happened that the director of the hospital, Muhammad Abu Selmiya, was released.
The head of the Israeli security service, Ronen Bar, will present the results of the investigation to Netanyahu tomorrow, the prime minister's office announced.
The Israeli leader emphasized that the decision to release Abu Selmiya was made without the knowledge of the political echelon and the heads of the security agencies.
The Prime Minister of Israel establishes an interagency body composed of the Ministry of Defense, the Israeli Army, the Security Service and the National Security Council, which will serve to approve the release of prisoners whose investigation has been completed.
Al Shif Abu Selmiya, a doctor at the hospital, was arrested by Israeli soldiers in November on suspicion of allowing Hamas to use a hospital in the capital of Gaza as a center of operations.
He was arrested while trying to evacuate to the south of the Gaza Strip via the humanitarian corridor controlled by the army and was taken for questioning by the Shin Bet security service.
He was returned to Gaza this morning with 54 other Palestinian detainees.
Abu Selmiya was released without charge or trial, and Netanyahu said the decision to release him came after a petition by a human rights organization.
Those organizations claimed that the detention center was overcrowded and that Palestinians were being abused there, reports the Associated Press. This led the government to transfer most of the Palestinian prisoners to other prisons and to release some.
The director of Šifa Hospital said that he was kept in difficult conditions and tortured. He and other Palestinian health officials have denied the Israeli accusations.
Shifa Hospital has been raided by Israeli forces twice since the start of the war against Hamas in Gaza on October 7 last year.
"Which of the prisoners will be released is decided independently by security officials, based on professional assessments," Netanyahu wrote in a call for an investigation.
Abu Selmija said at the press conference after his release that torture was almost daily and that other Palestinian prisoners were also tortured.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today that Israel is "making progress towards the elimination of the Hamas terrorist army".
Netanyahu, addressing the participants of the National Defense College, said that there is a continuation in order to defeat the remnants of Hamas, Israeli media reported.
He added that the intense phase of the fighting in Rafah is coming to an end and stressed the importance of achieving all the goals in the war: the return of the hostages, preventing Hamas from ruling Gaza, nor controlling it militarily, as well as preventing it from being a threat to Israel again.
Netanyahu says he is committed to the return of residents of southern and northern border settlements who were unable to live safely in their homes after a Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year that began the Gaza war and cross-border clashes with Lebanon's Hezbollah.
The lecture of the Israeli Prime Minister was attended by foreign students from Germany, Japan, Italy, the Czech Republic and Korea, Israeli media reported.
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The Israeli army's proposal to create "humanitarian enclaves for civilians not connected to Hamas" in Gaza will soon be implemented in several settlements in the north of the Palestinian territory, reports the Financial Times.
The plan, which calls for local Palestinians to be responsible for the distribution of aid, has reportedly been met with skepticism by former officials.
Based on the alleged plan, Israeli forces would be in charge of security for the time being, and the Palestinians would gradually take over civilian administration.
If that plan succeeds in the north of Gaza, Israel would also establish enclaves in its south, laying the groundwork for the replacement of Hamas rule in all of Gaza.
Some of those familiar with the plan played down the chances of success and told the British newspaper that Israel had already tried a similar method in various parts of central and northern Gaza with local Palestinian clans.
Officials said Israel had been trying to find a potential local leadership unaffiliated with Hamas since November, but without success.
"Either they were beaten or Hamas killed them," said a former Israeli official familiar with post-war planning.
He explained that the "humanitarian enclaves" are only part of the three-phase post-war plan advocated by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant and the Israeli security establishment.
The goal is to involve the international community and the Palestinian Authority, which rules in the other Palestinian territory, the occupied West Bank, and to involve the moderate Arab countries that would diplomatically and financially take responsibility for Gaza after the war.
Members of that coalition would practically manage "humanitarian enclaves".
Persons familiar with the matter said that training of former employees of the Palestinian Authority in Jordan and the West Bank is planned, and that US Lt. Col. Michael Fenzel would take responsibility for the security of the enclaves where there is no Hamas.
Palestinian Authority intelligence chief Mahed Faraj has already identified several thousand people who could do this, according to the FT.
That plan is opposed by people close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because they do not want to accept the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip as well.
Israel's National Security Adviser Chahi Hanegbi said last Sunday that the implementation of the "day after Hamas" plan would begin in the coming days in northern Gaza.
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The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has scheduled a special session for tomorrow on the difficult humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, at which efforts for reconstruction and reconstruction in the region will also be discussed, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
UN Security Council members will be addressed by UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Gaza Reconstruction Sigrid Kag, former Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
A recent UN report states that rebuilding the destroyed homes in Gaza will take at least until 2040 and could take decades.
It is estimated that 85 percent of schools in Gaza have suffered damage since October 7 of last year, when the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas began, and that 70 percent need complete or major renovation.
Most of the 36 hospitals in Gaza were damaged or destroyed in the war.
Abdallah al-Dardari, director of the UN Development Program's Arab Countries Bureau, said in May that the level of destruction in Gaza had not been seen since World War II and estimated that post-war reconstruction could cost $50 billion.
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Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said today that the Israeli army needs 10.000 soldiers, the media reported.
Galant told the parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee that 4.800 soldiers could be recruited from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, which makes up 13 percent of Israel's population.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled in June that ultra-Orthodox Jews must be drafted and serve in the military, upholding a ruling in May that the state had no authority to exempt ultra-Orthodox men.
Military service is mandatory for Jewish citizens, men and women, but thanks to legal compromises, ultra-Orthodox men did not join the army but instead studied religious books funded by state scholarships.
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men clashed with Israeli police in central Jerusalem last night during a protest against a Supreme Court order mandating them to serve in the military.
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A Palestinian woman and a boy were killed in an Israeli operation in the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced. There was no immediate information on the boy's age.
Israeli forces raided Tulkarm on Sunday and killed a member of the Islamic Jihad militant group.
More than 37.900 Palestinians have been killed and 87.060 injured in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, Reuters reports.
Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners, including the director of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and transferred them to medical centers in the Gaza Strip, an unnamed doctor from that territory told the media today.
A source at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah said Israel had released dozens of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, including Dokar Mohammed Abu Salmi, who was arrested in November, and released them through the eastern crossing at Khan Younis.
Five of those freed were admitted to that hospital, and the others were transferred to hospitals in Khan Yunis, the source said.
When asked by France Presse about the release of the prisoners, the Israeli army replied that it would verify the information.
A correspondent of Agence France-Presse in Deir al-Balah saw people with their loved ones at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israeli forces arrested Mohamed Abu Salmi in November. Israel accuses Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007, of using the hospitals for military purposes, which Hamas denies.
The Israeli military said at the time that the hospital run by Abu Salmi was the site of numerous terrorist activities by Hamas.
Israel's Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, assessed today that the release of the director of the al-Sif medical center in Gaza, along with "dozens of other terrorists" is a waiver of security.
Palestinian associations for the defense of the human rights of prisoners claimed in May that two Palestinians, including Al Shifa's doctor, died in an Israeli prison as a result of torture and lack of medical assistance. The Israeli army then told AFP that it was not aware of such facts.
On December 19, the army opened an investigation into the deaths in custody of several Palestinians arrested in Gaza after October 7 and the start of Israel's war with the Palestinian Islamist Hamas.
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The Israeli army announced today that a salvo of 20 missiles was fired from the southern part of the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory in an attack claimed by the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.
"Around 20 missiles have been identified as coming from the Khan Yunis sector. "A number of missiles were intercepted, and others fell in the south of Israel," the Israeli army said.
The army added that there were no wounded, and that it retaliated with artillery fire at the territory from where the rockets were fired.
The Al Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said it launched a concentrated rocket attack on Israeli positions around the Gaza Strip in "response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy" against the Palestinian people.
Islamic Jihad has been fighting alongside Hamas in the Gaza Strip against the Israeli army since October 7.
Then Hamas carried out an attack on Israel in which 1.195 people were killed. In response to that attack, Israel launched a major offensive on the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 37.877 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry of Hamas, which is in power in Gaza.
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Thousands of ultra-orthodox Jewish men clashed with Israeli police in central Jerusalem last night during a protest against the Supreme Court's order on their mandatory military service.
The historic decision last Sunday ordered the government to begin recruiting ultra-Orthodox men and could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition at a time when Israel is waging a war in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of men gathered in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood to protest the order. As darkness fell, the crowd headed towards the center of Jerusalem and the protests turned violent.
Israeli police said protesters threw stones and attacked the ultra-Orthodox minister's car. The police used water cannons and dispersed the crowd on horseback, but the protests continued until late last night.
Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women, but the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have granted conscription exemptions for their supporters, who instead attend religious seminars.
That long-standing arrangement has caused discontent among the general public, and that feeling has intensified during the eight-month war against the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip. More than 600 soldiers died in the fighting in Gaza, and tens of thousands of reservists were activated, disrupting their careers, jobs and lives.
Ultra-Orthodox parties and their supporters say forcing men to serve in the army would destroy their way of life.
Earlier in the day on Sunday, thousands of men gathered in the square and joined the mass prayer. Many carried placards criticizing the government.
Ultra-Orthodox parties are key members of Netanyahu's ruling coalition and could trigger new elections if they decide to leave power in protest. The leaders of those parties have not yet said whether they will leave the government.
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Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 269th day.
The US military said it had destroyed three unmanned Hutu surface sea vessels in the Red Sea in the last 24 hours, as part of a "self-defense engagement".
"The vessels have been determined to pose an imminent threat to US and coalition forces, as well as merchant shipping in the region," US Central Command said.
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