Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls a security briefing after the government meeting marking the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel.
The meeting seems to be urgent, as a scheduled meeting between Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was postponed at the last minute.
Britain has withdrawn the families of its embassy staff working in Israel due to the escalation in fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and the risk of a wider regional conflict.
The decision comes in the wake of Israel sending troops into southern Lebanon, its killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and an Iranian missile attack on Israel.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vows that Israel will pay a price for the “genocide” in Gaza as he marked October 7, the day of the Hamas massacre that sparked the war.
“It should not be forgotten that Israel will sooner or later pay the price for this genocide that it has been carrying out for a year and is still continuing,” he says on X, formerly Twitter.
A vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause and a supporter of the Hamas terror group, Erdogan has often attacked Israel, branding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and comparing him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
“Just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network will be stopped in the same way,” Erdogan says.
There is a “direct and immediate connection between pressure on Israel and Hamas’s appetite for negotiations” on a hostage deal, says government hostage point-man Gal Hirsch, hinting at recent decisions by France and the UK.
“When there is international pressure on us, in the UN for instance, in the Security Council, from different government officials, from the International Criminal Court, from the International Court of Justice, in the hope of taking advantage of tensions between us and Iran, or between Hezbollah… and us, the idea of ‘no daylight between us and our allies’ is important. Very important,” says Hirsch at Reichman University.
“Hamas identifies every ‘daylight,’ every sliver of light, and whenever it identifies ideas like ‘we won’t give you ammunition,’ arms embargoes, removing reservations about the ICC, this doesn’t help us to reach hostage deal.”
Israeli fighter jets struck and destroyed rocket launchers in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis used by Hamas in an attack earlier today on central Israel, the military says.
The IDF says secondary explosions were seen following the strike, indicating that additional weapons were stored in the area.
Five rockets were launched from Gaza in the attack this morning, with impacts in Kfar Chabad, where two people were lightly injured, and Holon.
Separately, the IDF says the 215th Artillery Regiment shelled a rocket launcher used to fire five more rockets at Sderot an hour ago.
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