The Ceasefires Are Too Dangerous!

by Omer ben-Hamu, Deputy Director of the "Victory Generation Reservists Movement", translated by Hillel Fendel.

The situation in southern Lebanon cannot be allowed to continue. The last several weeks of explosive drones killing a soldier or two every week are intolerable. Ceasefires are agreed upon between Tehran and Washington, instead of in Jerusalem, and northern Israel is paralyzed and bleeding.

How did we reach this situation, and what can be done now?

Over a year ago, the IDF initiated an offensive, in the wake of the successful beeper operation against Hizbullah in September 2024. The offensive saw the practically-crippled terrorist organization running for its life, leaving behind equipment and installations worth tens of millions of dollars; IDF troops uncovered valuable military stockpiles in every abandoned village they reached.

This should have marked an unquestionable Israeli victory. We eliminated Hizbullah's charismatic leader Nasrallah and nearly all of its entire leadership, the large majority of its field military commanders were wounded from the beeper operation, and the entire population of southern Lebanon – strong Hizbullah supporters, based on what our soldiers found in their homes – had left on its own for the north.

But instead, as has happened so often in the past, we did not take advantage of the military momentum, and our government decided on a "stalemate" devoid of both logic and self-respect.

Israel signed an agreement that everyone knew in real-time was worthless. Our forces were to withdraw from all the territory (except for a small area with five military bases) we had captured, at a great cost in lives; the Lebanese citizens were to be allowed to return; and the Lebanese government committed to disarm Hizbullah – even though there was no dispute that it had neither the will nor the capability of doing so.

The breathing-room that this fake agreement gave Hizbullah enabled the terrorists not only to avoid being disarmed, but also to renew its stockpiles and armaments, rehabilitate its chain of command, and acquire hundreds of fiber-optic-guided FPV's (First-Person View, i.e., an operator can see a video of exactly what the drone "sees"). Because these can carry several kilometers of extremely thin optical fiber that connect them back to their base, they are not easily jammed or stopped, as in the past.

When Hizbullah later attacked us following the campaign against Iran, we responded again with many of the same mistakes: Instead of setting up for a short but powerful offensive, with full-scale recruitment and utilization of the element of surprise to capture southern Lebanon, the IDF – which admittedly was focused mainly on Iran – crawled around from village to village. And when the ceasefires in Iran and Lebanon were forced upon us, we found ourselves far from the Litani River (except in the east), not protected naturally by the river but rather by an imaginary "yellow" line that was easily infiltrated by terrorists.

In addition, our "consent" to the ceasefire meant that our forces were stuck mostly inside buildings, tracked and observed by Hizbullah. The terrorists had time to recover, stopped retreating, and began attacking our vulnerable soldiers with their new drones.

Contrary to what many talking-heads say, the great failure was not that we weren't prepared for the drone threat. The Russians, Ukrainians, and even the Americans were also not ready for it, even though their bases were attacked dozens of times. Rather, the problem was that we didn't finish the job when we had the chance; we weakly accepted these ceasefires that enabled the enemy time and again to regroup and start over.

The situation is creating considerable frustration among our forces. Not only are the campaigns prolonged, thereby creating manpower crises, but the ground forces are not clear on what their missions are. Are they supposed to advance and occupy territory up to the Litani? Are they supposed to destroy Hizbullah? Are they supposed to defend the Yellow Line? Are they supposed to wait and see what Trump decides?

Soldiers must know what their mission is, and reservists' families need to understand the goals of the fighting for which their loved ones are once again leaving home for the unknown.

Of course, not all is lost.
Israel is still the strongest and most dominant player in the Middle East. But what has to be done now is, firstly, to make sure not to repeat past mistakes. We relied too heavily on the Iron Dome anti-rocket system and underground tunnel-blocking methods; we cannot now rely once again just on our technological genius to come up with an anti-drone system. The drones are not our enemy, and neither were the tunnels in Gaza; the enemy is Hamas and Hizbullah. We didn't seem to realize this in Gaza, and at this rate, neither have we grasped this in Lebanon.

Secondly, the IDF must mobilize large-scale reserves for a short, decisive campaign. It has to occupy territory in Lebanon equivalent to the length of the optical fiber that guides the drones, whether it be 30 kilometers or even twice that, well beyond the Litani River.

Next, we must make it clear to the Lebanese public that Hizbullah is destroying Lebanon and causing it to lose its land. It must be distinctly established – despite Trump's temper tantrum this week – that every Hizbullah rocket or drone launch will be met with destroyed buildings in Hizbullah headquarters in Beirut and deep damage to infrastructure.

If children in Kiryat Shmona cannot take a bus to school safely, then no one in the Dahiya district and throughout southern Lebanon will find a single functioning gas station. Infrastructure that serves both Hizbullah and the Shiite population must be struck, including electricity and water, thus that Hizbullah will be blamed and pressured to disarm.

And finally, we must declare unequivocally that what has been will no longer be. For years, our enemies have grown accustomed to the cycle wherein they attack, we respond, and then a ceasefire kicks in, leaving the map more or less as it was. It must be made clear that from now on, an attack upon us will cost them a lack of sovereignty, permanently. Israel must announce formally that it will adopt the Golan Heights approach: Just as we never withdrew from the Golan, we will never retreat from Lebanon south of the Litani. Our enemies must be made to realize that attacking Israel will cost them in territory, for generations. And just to fill out the picture, Israel must add that we will retain the area north of the Litani as well if Lebanon does not disarm Hizbullah, as it promised.

This decisive, brisk approach will not only push back the threat of fiber-optic drones, but will also finally end the "cycle of violence:" Whoever starts a war against Israel will pay, on their own land, a price they simply cannot afford.

To-Do List About Gaza

by Adi Mintz, former Director-General of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, translated by Hillel Fendel.

“You cannot build a future with armed groups running the streets, hiding in tunnels and stockpiling weapons." So declared last week Nikolay Mladenov, chairman of the “Peace Council” appointed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump. Mladenov, who repeated these remarks at the Munich Security Conference and in his meetings in Jerusalem, effectively stated unequivocally: The disarmament of Hamas is not open to negotiation.

That is, even senior figures in the American “Peace Council” understand what some among us still refuse to accept: There is no chance of dismantling the Hamas terror monster peacefully. Victory will be achieved only through force of arms.

This is not to say that Mladenov has become a Zionist. He still believes that Hamas can compete in national Palestinian elections if it disavows armed activity. But he insisted that it is "not negotiable [to have] armed factions or militias with their own military command and control systems, with their own arsenals or tunnel networks, existing alongside a transitional Palestinian authority.”

Sadly, the Knesset opposition in Israel, together with some of our popular media, engage in systematically minimizing the IDF’s achievements. The situation on the ground, however, tells a completely different story: In recent months the State of Israel carried out a series of strategic operations that has changed the face of the Gaza Strip.

First of all, a thorough and unprecedented cleansing of terrorist infrastructure was carried out in the Gaza areas under our control - from drilling and locating deep tunnels, to the systematic destruction of command compounds. 

Secondly, and most importantly, the IDF gradually and consistently expanded its territorial zone of control. The “yellow line” dividing Hamas and Israeli forces moved westward, towards the Mediterranean – and Israel now fully controls roughly 60% of the Gaza Strip. Combine this with our intelligence capability to carry out precise, surgical targeted killings - such as last week's elimination of the Sinwar brothers' successor as Hamas chieftain arch-terrorist Izz a-Din al-Haddad – and the result is a bottom line of tremendous achievements.

Despite this, opposition leaders in Israel, motivated by narrow political considerations, insist on proclaiming time and again how poorly we have fared and are faring in Gaza. They ignore our achievements there, choosing rather to create headlines about supposed "Hamas empowerment." They don't seem to mind that along the way, the combat morale of our soldiers in the field suffers. 

In the past, Yichye Sinwar – Hamas leader and architect of the Simchat Torah/Oct. 7th massacre – would emerge from the tunnels after an Israeli strike, sit among the ruins, and announce: "We won!" But today, most shamefully, some of our own politicians and "experts" do Sinwar's work for him, by sitting in the TV studios and declaring, "We lost!" 

I'm not suggesting that Hamas is not dangerous; the recent bitter past has taught us that all too well. But the facts are clear: During the recent Israeli-U.S. military operation "The Lion's Roar," Hamas sat paralyzed on the side. Nor did it dare to try anything, even if only to distract Israel, when the IDF was engaged (and still is) in attacking and wiping out Hizbullah capabilities. Hamas was simply too weak to do so, and Israeli deterrence is too strong. 

The Five Steps Needed for Total Victory

Now is precisely the opportunity that Israel cannot allow itself to miss. In light of the international recognition that Hamas has sorely violated the ceasefire agreements of seven months ago, the Israeli government must take the following five strategic steps in order to completely dismantle Hamas. 

• The logistics faucet must be closed immediately: The number of trucks with "humanitarian aid" entering Gaza must be reduced to the absolute minimum. Currently, 650 (!) trucks enter each day, and many of them are stocked with luxury items or dual-use products. Reducing the daily number of trucks to 150 would ensure that there is no famine in Gaza, while also preventing Hamas from ruthlessly controlling the resources arriving there. 

• Not a trace of Hamas sovereignty may remain. Air strikes must destroy every sign of the Hamas regime in areas that have not yet been conquered. Anyone bearing arms, every local policeman, and any semi-governmental building must be legitimate targets, in order to shake and weaken the Hamas foothold among the populace.

• Hamas territory must be constantly eroded. The "yellow line" must keep on shifting westward, so that Israeli control will be expanded and terrorist expanses will be narrowed.

• Intelligence capabilities must be increased: The Shabak and IDF Intelligence Wing must be more firmly and deeply emplaced in Gaza, in order to more precisely prepare for a future IDF ground-forces entry to completely dismantle the terrorist infrastructures.

• Willful emigration from Hamas must be encouraged. Efforts to do so have been underway to one extent or another, but an official body totally dedicated to this end has not yet been formed. 

We must emphasize that there are no shortcuts to dismantling Hamas. The IDF’s attempts to cultivate “local militias” or armed clans as an alternative governing authority are a form of playing with fire. Predictably, in the long term, these weapons will inevitably be turned against us.

Defeating Hamas will not be achieved by transferring control to other gangs - but rather through decisive Israeli security control, territorial firmness, and stripping the Gaza Strip of any governing capacity and terrorist capabilities.

Editor’s Note: It is important to note the all-but-forgotten promises by President Trump to disarm Hamas. As Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA has noted repeatedly, President Trump told reporters last October that Hamas "said they were going to disarm - and if they don't disarm, we will disarm them. It will happen quickly and perhaps violently. But they will disarm, do you understand me?" 

Earlier this year, Trump wrote on Truth Social, "Hamas must IMMEDIATELY honor its commitments… and proceed without delay to full Demilitarization. As I have said before, they can do this the easy way, or the hard way." 

Meanwhile, BBC reported last month that Hamas rejected the latest Trump-administration disarmament proposals. Lerner notes that Trump and his team are "stone-silent regarding this development… Iran and Hezbollah, not to mention China and others, are taking notes. If President Trump willingly ignores an inconvenient reality regarding Hamas, why should they take him seriously in substantially more challenging situations?"

Breakthrough in the Settlement Enterprise: Bet El Is Set to Become a City

After years of delays, the land reserves of the community of Bet El have finally been legally regulated — a move that opens the door for the construction of thousands of housing units.

A dramatic development has taken place in Bet El after a long and complex legal process regarding land ownership and planning was completed. The move removes longstanding restrictions that had blocked large-scale construction projects for years.

As a first stage, plans are already advancing for approximately 1,200 housing units, with the broader vision of transforming Bet El into a city. The project is expected to significantly increase the population of the area.

The expansion also includes major transportation upgrades, particularly widening the access road to the community in preparation for increased traffic and improved accessibility.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed the development, describing it as a “moral and national obligation” and saying the government is continuing to strengthen Jewish presence in the area through building and development.

Local council officials said the move will allow younger generations to remain in Bet El and establish their homes there, while turning the community into a major urban center in the Binyamin region over the coming years.

The Massive Egyptian Threat in Sinai: A Scary Reminder of the Six Day War Exactly 59 Years Ago

by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author, translated by Hillel Fendel.

We are commemorating this very week 59 years since the Six Day War of 1967 – a miraculous and decisive victory in which we thankfully liberated the areas of Judea, Samaria and Binyamin; the Jordan Valley; the Golan Heights; the Sinai and Gaza Strip – and of course, most historically, the Old City of Jerusalem and the site of the two Holy Temples, the Temple Mount (Har HaBayit).

Six decades is a long time, and we might have forgotten how it all started. It began when Egypt violated the terms of the agreements reached with Israel and the United Nations following the Sinai Campaign of 1956. The Sinai, a part of Egypt, became largely demilitarized, with the UN's Emergency Force (UNEF) stationed there to keep the peace. However, after just ten years, on Israel Independence Day in 1967 (the 5th of Iyar, May 15), Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser streamed his country's army into the Sinai Peninsula. 

The front page of Israel's daily Maariv newspaper blared the alarming development the next day, but added this sub-headline: "Washington is advising Israel not to take the Egyptian show of force seriously.” Three weeks later, it became quite clear how strongly advisable it would have been to take that show of force quite seriously.

Our sweeping victory in the Six Day War obscured the fact that there had actually been an intelligence failure here no less significant than that of the Yom Kippur War. That is, our intelligence leaders evaluated in the months preceding the war that, in the words of one of them, "1967 will not be a year of war." The difference is that then, Egypt's activities were so above-board, and the calls across the entire Arab world for Israel's destruction were so loud, that Israel had no choice but to launch a preemptive counterattack to save the state – but on Yom Kippur we all but ignored the abundance of evidence showing that Egypt and Syria were planning a surprise attack against us, and we did nothing. 

I recall this in light of the reports of the very significant Egyptian violations of our agreements with them going on right now. As reported on Channel 14 a few days ago, the Egyptians have no fewer than 60,000 troops (possibly now up to 70,000), as well as nearly 1,000 tanks and hundreds of artillery units in the Sinai. Very close to our border in the Negev, just 100 meters from Israel, the Egyptians are carrying out training exercises, and have also deployed air defenses.

Not much is left of the Begin-Sadat (Camp David) peace agreement of 1979, but it did have one clear advantage: the demilitarizing of the Sinai Peninsula of all Egyptian forces, except for small forces enumerated in the agreement. Even this advantage, however, has been nearly totally erased in recent years.

The "Netziv" internet site, based on open-source intelligence, reports that elite Egyptian units, advanced weapon stores, infantry and tanks have been detected between El-Arish and the Israeli border 45 kilometers (28 miles) away. Only light-weapons are allowed there, according to the agreements. Underground bunkers have been built in mountain sides, for control and missile storage, Netziv reports, and even the Sinai's airport runways in Rafid and Um-Hashiba have been widened, enabling combat aircraft activity.

The Biggest Threat: Apathy 

Israel appears to be relating to these threatening violations with apathy. The main lesson of the Six Day War, and even more so, of the Yom Kippur War and the Simchat Torah massacre (Oct. 7th), is that the enemy must be evaluated not according to his intentions, but according to his capacities and abilities. And the Egyptian abilities are quite worrisome.

Even assuming that Israel does not wish to enter into war with Egypt at present, Israel must deal with these threats and violations publicly, noisily, and internationally.

First of all, Israel must advance its own armored forces very openly to its border with Egypt. It must also insist publicly that the United States, which is a guarantor to the Camp David Agreements, demand that Egypt remove the forces that violate the accords. Israel must even threaten, in a headlines-grabbing manner, a military response to the violations. 

At present, even more worrisome than the strong Egyptian military presence in the Sinai is Israel's current passive approach.

The Threat Within: When Will the PA Turn its Guns on Judea and Samaria?

by David Alsbang, Spokesman for the Regavim Movement, translated by Hillel Fendel.

An ordinary morning on the roads of Judea and Samaria (Yesha): A white Palestinian Authority police jeep passes by an IDF checkpoint, the officers exchange a nod with the soldier at the post, and go along their way. To the naked eye, this is a picture of the effective and serene “security coordination” between the IDF and the PA. But behind the pressed uniforms and the old promises of the Oslo Accords lies a completely different reality: the reality of a Palestinian Authority army in the making, armed from head to toe, well-trained, and waiting for the signal to “turn its guns around.”

Thirty years have passed since the famous White House lawn handshakes and the launching of the Oslo Accords. The agreements were clear: The PA would have a limited civilian police force, armed with light weapons with which to preserve public safety in the PA cities. Perhaps slightly less formally, it was also designed to solve internal issues "without the Supreme Court and without [the left-wing civil rights organization] B'Tzelem," as then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin said.

However, that's not quite the situation today. A new, disconcerting study by the Regavim Movement – which focuses on land use, construction, and Israeli state policy, particularly in Judea, Samaria, the Negev and the Galilee – reveals that the small police force has grown tremendously both in numbers and in military capabilities. Instead of the agreed-upon 12,000 policemen, we now see at least five times (!) that number, including in the paramilitary National Security, Preventive Security, General Intelligence, and Presidential Guard forces.

This is far from a civilian guard corps; it is on the scale of military divisions in every sense.   

The threat this presents is not just in numbers, but of course also in the quality and mindset of the PA forces. In the past we thought of the PA policemen as directing traffic in Ramallah and Shechem, but today we know their elite units are training for the bona-fide capture of military targets. Neither the commando units like “101” (yes, the name is not coincidental; this was Arik Sharon's special commando unit), which specializes in night warfare and raids, nor its fast motorcycle unit, are intended for fighting local crime. The same applies to the Jericho police training for parachuting, guerilla warfare, and the like, in places such as Russia and Pakistan.

And what of their hateful ideology of those holding and aiming the guns? It is no less dangerous than their military capabilities. In the PA's Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho – which offers academic degrees as it trains students in practical warfare – the students aren't exactly dreaming of "compromise" with Israel. On the official social media accounts of the military training wing, videos are posted under the heading “Blessed Friday” pining not for Bethlehem or Ramallah in Yesha, but for Haifa and Jaffa. Their uniforms signify for them only a temporary status until they can realize the ultimate goal of the “right of return” by force. The PA forces have formulated a clear military doctrine that sanctifies battle as a legitimate tool for eliminating the "occupation" from the river to the sea.

The ongoing security coordination with Israel is basically for the purpose of guaranteeing the flow of money to the PA. Last year's declaration by PA chief Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) of the end of the "pay for slay" program – by which terrorists, or their surviving families, receive life-long salaries for their murderous actions – is basically a sham. A U.S. State Department report presented to Congress states categorically that these PA payments have not at all stopped. Hundreds of millions of dollars are paid out via a "Welfare Authority" that was established specifically to provide funding to terrorists and their families.

A PA policeman knows with confidence that the day he decides to "reverse his gun" and shoot Israeli civilians or soldiers, he and his family will have no more financial worries throughout their lives. Together with the murderous ideology he has been taught since childhood, this is the type of motivation in the back of the mind of every future enemy PA policeman/terrorist.

The writing has long been not just on the wall, but is already engraved in blood. Over the past five years, more than 110 cases have been documented of PA policemen setting out to perpetrate terrorism against Jews. They are invariably killed in the process, leading to ceremonious, PA-sponsored military funerals and the naming of schools and streets for them so that their "heroism" can be remembered by future generations.

The State of Israel has absolutely no choice but to finally awaken from its self-imposed captivity to the false conceptions of "security coordination" and imaginary quiet on the PA front. The assumption that someone else will do the security work for us has proven historically dangerous time after time. The reversal of the guns is no theoretical danger; it has happened in the past, and is simmering in the present. We do not enjoy the privilege of treating a potential ideological enemy of myriads of well-trained and well-equipped soldiers as a far-off scenario.

The question is not whether the threat exists, but when we will wake up to it.

Translator's note: The IDF's large-scale operations against terrorist infrastructures in Jenin and elsewhere, beginning in January 2025 with Operation Iron Wall, saw great success in degrading terrorist capabilities in Yesha – but these had nothing to do with the potential threat from the PA police. In fact, PA security forces actually took part in a small number of battles, and the IDF even briefly considered handing over some of these terrorist areas to PA police control. This precisely supports the premise of this article, which is that the IDF is not taking the threat from the PA police forces themselves sufficiently seriously.