GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 139

Ending Terrorism On All Fronts

Paris Bound

Israel will be sending a delegation to Paris in the hopes that a new hostage deal can happen as we see in an article from The Jerusalem Post:

The war cabinet agreed to send a high-level delegation to a second Paris summit on hostage talks in hopes of a breakthrough that would allow a deal to be reached before the month-long Ramadan holiday, which begins on March 10.

“We are confident that the Israeli delegation... will promote a quick deal to return all the hostages, those who are alive and those who have been murdered,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said as it welcomed the decision.

The summit this weekend, likely to be on Friday, is expected to be held by CIA Director William Burns, who led the last such meeting at the end of January. It follows talks he held in Cairo.

The article goes on to detail who will attend this time:

Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief Ronen Bar, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Al Thani, and the head of the Egyptian Intelligence Services Abbas Kamel are all expected to attend. Qatar and Egypt have been mediating a deal.

At the same time, a United States official met with high ranking government and military leaders and some hostage families:

The war cabinet’s decision came as US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk was in Israel, where he met with that military forum as well as individually with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and relatives of the six hostages with dual Israeli citizenship. McGurk arrived in Israel after a stop in Cairo.

As would be expected, some in the Knesset are not happy with the negotiations:

In a sign of the political division over the best way to secure the release of the hostages, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (Religious Zionist Party) attacked the decision, warning that attempts to negotiate a deal had delayed the release of the remaining 134 captives in Gaza.

“I am convinced that if all the heads of state and the security establishment had... refused to negotiate and had only spoken with fire and brimstone, the absolute majority of the hostages would have been home safe and sound a long time ago,” Smotrich said.

Positive Developments Noted

Moving over to the conversations between military officials of the United States and Israel, we see more information about the negotiation and military side from the same Post report:

But in the last few days, there has been a sense that Hamas might be more willing to make a deal. France’s announcement on Wednesday that it had received confirmation that medications had reached 45 of the hostages, was seen as a positive signal.

White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby that initial reports from McGurk had indicated that discussions were “going well.”

Gallant optimistically told McGurk when they met in Tel Aviv that he believed Israel would “widen the mandate for the officials involved in the negotiations on the hostages.” He also underscored however that the IDF “will continue to expand its ground operation in Gaza.”

The two also discussed military action in Rafah:

They also spoke about the importance of an Israeli plan to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians should the IDF embark on a military operation in Rafah.

The pending Rafah operation, which has been widely condemned by the international community even before it has been executed, has been one of the pressure levers Israel has used to push Hamas to soften its stance on the terms of a deal.

The two men also discussed “operational developments in Hamas strongholds in central and southern Gaza, and humanitarian aid efforts facilitated by Israel, together with US leadership and international partners.” Gallant stressed “the importance of dismantling remaining Hamas battalions in central and southern Gaza,” his office stated.

In another portion of the article, mention of how long of a pause in the fighting was mentioned as six weeks and was conditional on the release of all the remaining hostages. Will that happen? Given recent comments from Hamas leaders, I highly doubt it.

Attacks Continue Against Israel

As talks of releasing hostages dominate the news, Israelis are attacked over and over again as we see in an article from CBN.com:

Israel’s “Arrow” Aerial Defense System intercepted a missile heading for the Red Sea city of Eilat before it crossed into Israeli territory.

Outside Jerusalem, three heavily armed terrorists from the Bethlehem area opened fire with automatic weapons on vehicles stuck in traffic at the main checkpoint into the city. One person was killed, and 11 others wounded, including a young woman in the advanced stages of pregnancy.

Two terrorists were shot and killed by civilians at the scene and a third was arrested by security forces.

In the north, an anti-tank missile from Lebanon made a direct hit on a home in northern Israel. No injuries were reported.

We get more information on the attack at the checkpoint entering the West Bank from a report on this attack from an article from The Times Of Israel:

An Israeli man was killed and 11 others were wounded in a terror shooting attack carried out by three Palestinian gunmen near a checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement city of Ma’ale Adumim on Thursday morning, police and medics said.

According to police, the trio opened fire with automatic weapons at Israelis waiting in traffic while heading toward Jerusalem on the Route 1 highway, a few hundred meters before the az-Za’ayyem checkpoint, close to the West Bank town of the same name.

A man in his 20s was killed in the shooting, medical officials said. He was later identified as Matan Elmaliah, 26, of Ma’aleh Adumim.

A pregnant woman aged 23 was listed in serious condition, and four others were in moderate condition, including a woman in her 30s, a man aged 23, a man aged 51, and a woman aged 52, MDA said.

Another five people were treated for minor injuries and acute anxiety, it added. All the victims were taken to hospitals in Jerusalem.

While one person lost their life, it is a miracle others survived:

Amir Ararat, a medic who was on his way to work at the Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, said he managed to save one of those injured because he happened to have a tourniquet in his car.

As the attack unfolded, he saw a woman who had been shot by the terrorists and was trying to escape further injury.

Ararat ran to help her. “She had a bullet in her forearm; it hit an artery,” he said.

Fortunately, Ararat had a tourniquet with him of the kind issued to Israel’s combat soldiers, and he applied it to the woman’s arm “in the midst of the shooting.”

It should also be noted that armed citizens were key to ending the attack, people who I believe were not just coincidentally among those at the scene. As we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, pray that those inside of Israel with hate in their hearts will be rooted out and dealt with. As I’ve said, demilitarizing Israel will be far easier than deradicalizing it. This is just more evidence of that.