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Israel-Lebanon Deal Under Strain as Hezbollah Disarmament Falls Short

Aug31

Israel-Lebanon Deal Under Strain as Hezbollah Disarmament Falls Short

Ailin Vilches Arguello

Smoke billows from southern Lebanon following an Israeli strike, as seen from Nabatieh, southern Lebanon, June 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer

Two months after Israel and Lebanon signed a US-brokered memorandum of understanding, frustration is mounting in Jerusalem as the Lebanese army falls short of its pledge to dismantle Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in the country’s south — threatening to stall the fragile agreement before the two sides can move to the next stage of negotiations.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), an Israel-based research institute, released a new report on Friday warning that the pilot program in southern Lebanon has failed to deliver on the security commitments outlined in the MoU between Beirut and Jerusalem, as the Lebanese army has yet to demonstrate that it can disarm the Iran-backed terrorist group and establish a state monopoly over weapons in the country.

ITIC’s data shows that Hezbollah is not only refusing to give up its weapons but also remains firmly entrenched in the country’s south, with affiliated and allied organizations maintaining a strong presence on the ground, providing a civilian front for the Islamist group’s military-terrorist activities and helping it preserve its foothold in the area.

Under a US-brokered framework, Israel and Lebanon signed a MoU in June outlining the Israeli military’s withdrawal from the country’s south and the transfer of security responsibility to Lebanese authorities.

Although the agreement did not set fixed deadlines, it established pilot zones to test the parties’ compliance and assess whether the Lebanese army could dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure and prevent the terrorist group from reestablishing its presence in the area.

According to the ITIC’s assessment, the Lebanese army is both failing to uphold the agreement’s terms and effectively allowing conditions that violate them, as Hezbollah-linked organizations continue operating openly in the pilot zones and the government struggles to confront the group’s extensive civilian infrastructure.

The army’s efforts are further complicated by legal restrictions that limit its ability to search private properties, which are widely known to be used by the terrorist group as civilian cover for its military-terrorist infrastructure.

Among the two most prominent organizations operating in the area are the Islamic Health Organization, which falls under Hezbollah’s Executive Council, and the Wa Ta’awanu Association, which runs aid programs and supports the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure.

Established in 1984, the Islamic Health Organization provides medical services to Shi’ite communities as well as Hezbollah’s operatives, through a vast network of hospitals, medical centers, and clinics across Lebanon, particularly in the south. ITIC points to its extensive presence as a key part of the civilian infrastructure that supports and shields Hezbollah’s terrorist activities.

For its part, the Wa Ta’awanu Association provides food and housing assistance to local residents but has long been suspected of also serving as civilian cover for Hezbollah’s activities in the area.

According to a report by the Israeli news outlet Walla, Israel has warned the United States that the pilot program in southern Lebanon has failed, sharply criticizing the Lebanese army’s efforts and accusing it of failing to effectively dismantle Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the country’s south.

Israeli officials have reportedly accused Lebanese Army Chief of Staff Rudolf Heichal of continuing to cooperate with Hezbollah, avoiding confrontation with the terrorist group’s commanders and failing to carry out effective operations to locate the group’s infrastructure and weapons.

Hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel reignited on March 2, when the terrorist group opened fire in support of Iran two days after the start of the joint US-Israeli military campaign against the Iranian regime. 

Since then, Israeli forces have established a “buffer zone” extending into southern Lebanese territory, which officials say is meant to shield northern residents from Hezbollah attacks amid thousands of rockets and drones fired throughout the war.

Even though a US-backed ceasefire has sharply reduced violence, negotiations and prospects for lasting peace remain fragile, with Israeli forces still launching strikes while positioned in southern Lebanon to maintain its buffer zone and dismantle Hezbollah military infrastructure.

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Why Tisha B’Av — and the Current Moment — Are Not the End of the Story

Aug5

Why Tisha B’Av — and the Current Moment — Are Not the End of the Story

Pini Dunner

The Western Wall in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikicommons.

The Tisha B’Av experience is utterly unique. You sit on the floor in the half-dark, your shoes off, your voice cracking through the dirge-like cadences of Eichah, and then you recite — line by line, calamity by calamity — the worst tragedies that have ever happened to the Jewish people. 

The destruction of two Temples. The expulsions. The massacres. The Crusades. The pogroms. The death camps. It is, without question — and deliberately so — the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, a day set aside to stare directly into the abyss of our tragic history and weep.

And yet, as I went through the Tisha B’Av motions this year, sitting on the floor and reciting the Kinnot, something struck me with unexpected force. This day of mourning — this concentrated distillation of every Jewish tragedy into twenty-five hours of grief and lamentation — carries within it the very antidote to the sorrows it commemorates. 

Because here is the astonishing thing: we are still here to mourn them, but every enemy catalogued in those Kinnot is gone. 

Just consider that for a moment. The very fact that there is a Jew in 2026 who can sit on the floor and cry over Jerusalem destroyed by Roman legionaries is itself the punchline to a two-thousand-year-old joke that Rome did not live to hear. Titus is dust. We are not.

Or consider the Crusaders. In the spring and early summer of 1096, mobs sweeping toward Jerusalem turned their swords, clubs, maces and spears on the flourishing Jewish communities of the Rhineland — Speyer, Worms and Mainz, the great triad of communities that stood at the heart of the emerging Ashkenazi world. These were thriving centers of Torah, commerce and communal life. Within a matter of weeks, they were annihilated.

In Worms, approximately eight hundred Jews were slaughtered. In Mainz, the greatest carnage of all, more than eleven hundred were brutally murdered. Speyer escaped destruction on the same scale only because its bishop intervened to protect the community. 

The chronicles that survive this tragedy read like Eichah itself. Had you stood among the mutilated bodies of Mainz’s murdered Jews in the summer of 1096, you would have been certain — utterly certain — that it was over for good. After all, who could possibly rebuild from that?

But what happened next is astounding. The Crusader horde led by the repulsive Count Emicho — many thousands strong, and convinced that the murder of Jews was a holy task — never made it to Jerusalem. 

They marched toward Hungary and laid siege to the fortress of Moson. Then, just as victory seemed within reach, panic swept through their ranks. The Hungarian defenders surged out, the Crusading army disintegrated, and many of them were slaughtered or drowned. 

The force that had imagined itself an instrument of divine judgment collapsed before it ever reached the Holy Land. The wheel had turned, and it turned fast. 

Meanwhile, the Jews of the Rhineland began the astonishing work of rebuilding. Within years, synagogues and communities were restored. Within generations, the great centers of Rhineland Torah learning had re-emerged, producing scholars, liturgy and faith energy that would shape Jewish life for centuries.

It is a pattern so consistent that it has become almost tediously reliable. The Nazis built an empire meant to last a thousand years and to stand upon the ashes of our people. It lasted twelve. Its leaders died in bunkers, fled like fugitives, or stood in the dock at Nuremberg. Ten of the principal defendants ended their lives at the end of a hangman’s rope. 

The men who orchestrated the horrors of October 7 imagined that they were writing the opening chapter of the end of Israel. Instead, one by one, they are being eliminated. Yahya Sinwar — the arch-mastermind, the man who thought he had lit the fuse of our destruction — was hunted down and killed. 

And it isn’t only the leaders. A few weeks ago, the IDF eliminated Mohammed Abu Taima, a Nukhba commander who participated in the October 7 assault and infiltrated Kibbutz Nirim. 

He is not the only one. Scroll through your X feed. Day after day, terrorists who participated in the massacre — some of whom filmed their crimes on GoPros — are being located, targeted and eliminated, in real time, on our watch.

I am fully aware that not everyone sees hope in the present moment. There are those who look at the world around us and predict doom. They point to the surging antisemitism on our streets and campuses, the diplomatic isolation of Israel, the exhaustion of a nation at war, the fracturing of old alliances, and the rise of politicians like Zohran Mamdani to positions of power and influence. 

And they say: this time it is different. This time we will not come back.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: in a narrow and immediate sense, they may not be entirely wrong. Things may get darker before they get lighter, and the road ahead may be harder for Jews and for Israel than any of us would wish. 

But darkness has a peculiar power. The final hours before dawn can feel like the blackest part of the night, deceiving the frightened eye into believing that the sun will never rise. And that is precisely the moment when judgment fails. 

The Jews who survived Mainz in 1096 could not see 1120. The Jews of 1943 could not see 1948. Standing inside a disaster, it is nearly impossible to believe that there will be an afterward — and harder still to imagine that the afterward might be positive. And yet there always, always is.

To be clear, this is not naive optimism. It is the single most well-documented fact in the entire span of human history — a fact written in the disappearance of every civilization that ever raised its hand against the Jews, and in the stubborn, miraculous persistence of the Jewish people. 

The Shabbat immediately following Tisha B’Av is Shabbat Nachamu. Before we have even wiped away our tears, the Haftarah roars back at us with the words of the prophet Isaiah (Is. 40:1): נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי – “Comfort, comfort My people.” 

Just days after the deepest grief, as if to insist that mourning was never intended to be a destination, the prophet who was among the sharpest in his predictions of tragedy guarantees comfort and relief from that very same tragedy.

So let the pessimists have their say. I will not argue that the night is not dark. But I will point out that we have been here before. We have stood in the ruins of the Rhineland, in the ruins of the Temple, and in the ruins of Europe. We buried our dead. We said Kaddish. We wiped our eyes.  And then we got up, dusted ourselves off and rebuilt what was gone — bigger and better than before.

The Jewish people are going to fight back. And make no mistake: we are going to win. Not because we are stronger, cleverer or more numerous than our enemies. We will win for the same reason we have always won: Because they are chapters, and we are the book. 

Because while the remnants of the army that thought it had ended Jewish life in the Rhineland were scattering across Hungary, there was already a Jewish child being born amid the ruins of Mainz who would grow up to teach Torah. 

Be comforted, My people – the tears of Tisha B’Av are real, but they are not the end of the story. Dawn is coming — it always does — and when it breaks, as it broke over the Rhineland, over the DP camps and over a reborn Jerusalem, we will still be standing.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California. 

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IDF bars Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria communities after attacks

Jul26

IDF bars Palestinian workers from Judea and Samaria communities after attacks

JNS Staff

They can still work in industrial zones.

Palestinian workers line up at the entrance to Ma’ale Adumim near Jerusalem, Feb. 23, 2023. Photo by Erik Marmor/Flash90.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday moved to bar Palestinian laborers from entering Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria until further notice, the army confirmed to JNS.

Palestinians will still be permitted to work in industrial zones, while construction sites may also be exempted at the request of individual communities, a military spokesman said.

The military order followed a series of terrorist attacks, including a shooting near Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) in northern Samaria on Friday that left two IDF soldiers dead.

Another attack took place on Saturday, when a Palestinian terrorist seized an Israeli soldier’s weapon during an altercation south of Hebron in Judea, fired several shots and escaped.

Eliram Azulay, head of the Mount Hebron Regional Council, said a reservist was moderately wounded after being struck by a rock before the assailant took his weapon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz decided on “a series of steps” in the wake of Friday’s deadly attack, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

The approved measures include demolishing the homes of the attackers; stepping up military operations in terrorist strongholds, including seizing weapons and revoking work permits; reinforcing IDF deployments across Judea and Samaria; separating Israeli and Palestinian traffic at key routes and checkpoints; and accelerating the legalization of existing farms and the establishment of new ones.

IDF Central Command head Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth described the past several days as “tense,” speaking in a meeting with Judea and Samaria community leaders on Friday.

“Following the recent events, and especially this morning’s attack, there is concern about escalation throughout Judea and Samaria,” the military quoted him as saying. “We are carrying out counter-terrorism operations to prevent the area from spiraling into further violence and are using every means at our disposal.”

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Hamas’s New Leader, Same Old Jihad

Jul24


Hamas’s New Leader, Same Old Jihad

Khaled Abu Toameh

  • The election is… evidence that efforts to remove Hamas from power have failed.
  • Instead of discussing disarmament, Hamas is discussing succession. Instead of preparing to relinquish power, it is choosing who will govern.
  • Terrorist organizations do not negotiate themselves out of existence.
  • Al-Hayya was Sinwar’s closest associate. He served as Sinwar’s deputy. He helped shape Hamas policy before and after October 7. After the massacre, al-Hayya praised October 7 as “a source of pride for our people… to be passed down from generation to generation.”
  • The election sends a clear message throughout the Middle East: The Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” remains intact.
  • It also explains why al-Hayya’s first public remarks as Hamas leader included thanks to Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Iraqi Shiite militias. His loyalties are clear.
  • The continued protection afforded to Hamas leaders by terrorist-sponsoring “friends” of Trump, such as Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan, undermines international efforts to combat terrorism.
  • The people paying the highest price remain the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Instead of rebuilding homes, reconstructing schools, restoring hospitals, and creating jobs, Hamas is holding leadership elections. Its priorities could not be clearer. Its leaders are busy securing their own political future while ordinary Palestinians continue living amid destruction.
  • The election of al-Hayya should finally end the fantasy that Hamas may evolve into a political movement willing to coexist peacefully with Israel. It should also end the illusion that negotiations alone will persuade Hamas to disarm.
  • Allowing Hamas to survive politically after October 7 would send a message to terrorist organizations and the Iranian regime: that committing mass murder carries no lasting consequences, and that even after one of this century’s worst terrorist atrocities, its perpetrators can simply elect a new leader and carry on as before.

Hamas’s election of Khalil al-Hayya demonstrates that the terrorist group remains sufficiently organized to manage internal political affairs while continuing to rule much of the Gaza Strip and dictate the lives of more than two million Palestinians. Pictured: Al-Hayya meets with Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on February 8, 2025. (Image source: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader)

Nearly three years after the October 7, 2023 massacre – the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust – the Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas has calmly elected a new head of its “Political Bureau.”

This simple fact should alarm everyone who believed that the terrorist organization had been defeated or dismantled.

Organizations that have been defeated do not hold orderly leadership elections. Organizations that have ceased to exist do not choose successors, debate candidates, and prepare for the future. Hamas does.

Its election of Khalil al-Hayya demonstrates that the terrorist group remains sufficiently organized to manage internal political affairs while continuing to rule much of the Gaza Strip and dictate the lives of more than two million Palestinians.

The election is therefore not merely an internal Hamas matter. It is evidence that efforts to remove Hamas from power have failed.

Instead of preparing to surrender its weapons or dissolve itself after the atrocities of October 7, Hamas is preparing for its future. Holding internal elections means that Hamas expects to remain a permanent player in Palestinian politics.

This completely contradicts any expectation that Hamas will eventually disappear from the Gaza Strip. More than seven months after US President Donald J. Trump’s 20-point peace plan called for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, the terrorist group remains intact.

Instead of discussing disarmament, Hamas is discussing succession. Instead of preparing to relinquish power, it is choosing who will govern.

The election of al-Hayya also exposes the failure of current American strategy. For months, the Trump Administration and its “Board of Peace” have continued believing that negotiations could somehow persuade Hamas to disarm voluntarily. What has happened is the opposite.

Hamas never intended to disappear. It never intended to surrender its weapons. It never, as its internal election proves, intended to leave the Gaza Strip. Terrorist organizations do not negotiate themselves out of existence.

The assumption that al-Hayya is more pragmatic than his predecessor, the late Yahya Sinwar (the mastermind of the October 7 massacre) is dangerously misleading. Changing from military fatigues to a business suit does not transform a terrorist into a statesman.

Al-Hayya was Sinwar’s closest associate. He served as Sinwar’s deputy. He helped shape Hamas policy before and after October 7. After the massacre, al-Hayya praised October 7 as “a source of pride for our people… to be passed down from generation to generation.”

Those are not the words of a moderate. Al-Hayya has never renounced Hamas’s 1988 charter calling for Israel’s elimination. He also never apologized for the murder, rape, torture and kidnapping of Israeli civilians – and he has consistently rejected demands that Hamas disarm.

His election signals not change but continuity.

Perhaps the biggest winner is Iran’s regime. Al-Hayya has long maintained close relations with the Iranian regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). His victory over Khaled Mashaal consolidates the influence of Hamas’s most pro-Iran faction.

Iran, despite repeated declarations that Hamas had been weakened, therefore retains one of its most valuable terrorist proxies. The election sends a clear message throughout the Middle East: The Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” remains intact.

It also explains why al-Hayya’s first public remarks as Hamas leader included thanks to Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Iraqi Shiite militias. His loyalties are clear.

Another troubling question: Why is al-Hayya still living safely in Qatar? Why do senior Hamas officials continue enjoying sanctuary in Qatar and Turkey? At least 43 American citizens were among those murdered on October 7, while another 12 were taken hostage to the Gaza Strip. Al-Hayya was one of the leaders of Hamas on October 7. Why has Washington not demanded his extradition? If Hamas leaders planned attacks that killed Americans, why are they still free?

The continued protection afforded to Hamas leaders by terrorist-supporting “friends” of Trump, such as Qatar, Turkey and Pakistan, undermines international efforts to combat terrorism.

The people paying the highest price remain the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Instead of rebuilding homes, reconstructing schools, restoring hospitals, and creating jobs, Hamas is holding leadership elections. Its priorities could not be clearer. Its leaders are busy securing their own political future while ordinary Palestinians continue living amid destruction.

Hamas repeatedly insists that Palestinian suffering is a necessary sacrifice. Its leaders celebrate martyrdom while living comfortably abroad. This is precisely the mentality that Sinwar embraced. Al-Hayya has recently echoed the same rhetoric:

“We tell the occupiers that we are the owners of a cause. Neither the killing of our children nor the martyrdom of our leaders will frighten us or instill fear in our hearts.”

The election of al-Hayya should finally end the fantasy that Hamas may evolve into a political movement willing to coexist peacefully with Israel. It should also end the illusion that negotiations alone will persuade Hamas to disarm.

Instead, the election confirms that Hamas remains committed to the same ideology, alliance with Iran, and strategy of perpetual jihad (holy war) that produced the October 7 massacre. A terrorist organization that can calmly elect a new leader nearly three years after committing one of the worst atrocities in modern history is not collapsing. It is adapting.

That is why Hamas has no place in Gaza’s future – not as a government, not as a political party, and certainly not as an armed movement.

Allowing Hamas to survive politically after October 7 would send a message to terrorist organizations and the Iranian regime: that committing mass murder carries no lasting consequences, and that even after one of this century’s worst terrorist atrocities, its perpetrators can simply elect a new leader and carry on as before.

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

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Israeli man seriously wounded in West Bank terror stabbing, two Palestinian attackers killed

Jul23
Israeli man seriously wounded in West Bank terror stabbing, two Palestinian attackers killed

MAYA ZANGER-NADIS

According to police, the stabbing victim was attempting to put out a fire, which had been set by Palestinian residents of a nearby village.

Magen David Adom responds to a stabbing attack in Samaria on July 23, 2026.
(photo credit: Magen David Adom)

A 51-year-old Israeli man was seriously wounded in a stabbing attack near the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh on Thursday morning.

The man was attacked at the Derech Avraham Farm by two Palestinian attackers, who were killed by Israeli forces at the scene. He was evacuated via helicopter for further medical treatment at a hospital, the IDF said.

According to Israel Police, the stabbing victim was stabbed in the chest after attempting to put out a fire which had been set by Palestinian residents of Beit Furik, a nearby village. IDF and police have cordoned off the village of Beit Furik, and investigators are working with Israel Fire and Rescue Services to clarify the circumstances surrounding the outbreak of the fire.

Magen David Adom responds to a stabbing attack in Samaria on July 23, 2026. (credit: MAGEN DAVID ADOM)

Yossi Dagan issues public statement following the stabbing attack

“We are repeatedly witnessing arson and attempted attacks,” Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan said following the attack.

“We expect the government to crush terrorism and those who incite it,” Dagan added. “We will win. A thousand terrorists will not help. This is our land, and we will win.”

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