The BBC, Reuters, The Financial Times and The Telegraph all report on our main story, that Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri was killed in a blast in Beirut. The Spectator weighs up the risks Israel took with the killing.

The BBC and The Financial Times report that Turkey says it has seized 34 people who are alleged to have been involved in spying and planning abductions for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. Officials said 57 addresses were raided in Istanbul and elsewhere and they were still searching for 12 more suspects. Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya shared video of Operation Mole taking place. The BBC also publishes a piece on Turkish President Erdogan’s support for Hamas.

The Guardian , The Financial Times, Sky News and The Telegraph  report that Israel’s supreme court has overturned a law at the heart of Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul project, potentially plunging the country into political crisis. The judges ruled on Monday by a slim majority of eight to seven to throw out a law that curtailed the court’s own powers, saying it would severely damage Israel’s democracy. The Economist also publishes on this, adding that at any other time such a move would have provoked a constitutional crisis. The Financial Times adds that Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have blasted Israel’s top court for harming wartime “unity” while signalling they will wait to resurrect contentious judicial reforms struck down in a landmark ruling.

The BBC and Reuters report that Israel officials have said that the country will defend itself in next week’s hearing at the International Court of Justice, days after South Africa called for proceedings based on its accusation that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The move is rare considering Israel often denounces the United Nations’ top court as biased against it and rarely cooperates in international cases involving Israel.

The Independent reports that Israel says it will begin pulling thousands of troops out of Gaza this week, indicating a shift to more targeted operations against Hamas. An Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) official said toppling the Islamist faction remained an objective of the offensive in the Palestinian enclave, and that some of the five brigades withdrawn will prepare for a possible flare-up of a second front against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Telegraph adds that it may also be as a response to “severe” labour shortages inside Israel.

The Financial Times reports that Israel will do “whatever it takes” to shield its technology start-ups from the fallout from the war with Hamas, the head of the country’s innovation agency has said, as he urged private investors to throw their weight behind the sector. The Israeli government has so far set aside $100mn to help early-stage companies that faced the prospect of running out of money after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel spooked investors and customers.

The Guardian reports that Bernie Sanders issued a statement Tuesday calling on Congress to block additional funding to Israel amid the war in Gaza. “While we recognize that Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack began this war, we must also recognize that Israel’s military response has been grossly disproportionate, immoral and in violation of international law,” Sanders said. “Enough is enough. Congress must reject that funding. The taxpayers of the United States must no longer be complicit in destroying the lives of innocent men, women, and children in Gaza.”

Reuters reports that only 15% of Israelis want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay in office after the war on Hamas in Gaza ends, though many more still support his strategy of crushing the militants in the Palestinian enclave, according to a poll published on Tuesday.

The Telegraph reports that An Iranian war ship has passed through the Houthi-plagued Bab Al-Mandab strait into the Red Sea, Iran’s Tasnim news agency has reported. It did not disclose the Alborz frigate’s mission but said Iranian naval vessels had been operating in the region “to secure shipping lanes since 2009”. The strait has been the setting of a spate of attacks on container ships by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel groups in recent weeks. The group has said it will only stop if aid into Gaza is significantly increased.

Clive Myrie writes for The Guardian on the hope of Israeli peace activists: “I wondered where Yonatan Zeigen found his strength; then I realised it comes from his dead mother. Vivian Silver was a Canadian-Israeli humanitarian and peace activist, who was murdered by Hamas gunmen at her home on Be’eri kibbutz, just a few kilometres from the Israel-Gaza border, on 7 October. On that day Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis at multiple sites, with more than 100 perishing at the kibbutz. Visiting her burnt-out home a few weeks later, Yonatan told Canadian television that he’d managed to salvage a few of her personal belongings, but ‘everything was ashes there”, as the killers had torched the 74-year-old’s home’…Yonatan is a man I have never met, but he’s someone I greatly admire, and I can see his mother’s convictions in her son.”

Peter Hain writes for The Guardian arguing that Western policy towards Gaza represents collusion in a terrible failure and will not lead to the permanent elimination of Hamas or security for Israel. The Guardian Diplomatic Editor Patrick Wintour also comments on the piece. 

All the Israeli papers report on the latest Israeli casualties from Gaza. Meiron Moshe Gersch, who was killed while fighting in northern Gaza, is the 175^th Israeli killed since the start of Operation Swords of Iron.

Israel Hayom reports that amid ongoing American and domestic Israeli pressures to discuss “day after” issues in the Gaza Strip, the first official discussion of the subject is scheduled to be held this evening by the security cabinet. One option being considered is an Israeli buffer zone in Gaza. According to Reuters, Israel had informed a number of neighbouring Arab countries of its intention to create a buffer zone of this kind. “Israel wants the buffer zone, which will extend from north to south, to prevent Hamas or other armed groups from infiltrating or attacking Israel,” said one of the sources that spoke to Reuters. In general, a number of options are on the table for an alternative regime in Gaza. One of them is a US-supported plan that includes rule by the Palestinian Authority in Gaza as in the West Bank, after the PA undergoes a change of some kind, mainly with regard to school curriculum. Other options include area-based rule, in which local clan leaders will be tasked with administering civilian affairs. Another option, is to have former PA officials who are familiar with the system but who are no longer directly linked with the PA, assume control over the Gaza Strip. An additional option is a central international ruling body that will oversee and implement the day-after transition over the course of several years.

Ynet reports on a terror complex, embedded in residential area and rigged with subterranean control nodes, which has fallen under Israeli control after intense combat in close-quarters. In a coordinated military operation, the IDF, successfully took control of Hamas’ central intelligence and command center in Gaza City. During a raid on a school, troops uncovered various hidden weapons in one of the classrooms, including AK-47 rifles with magazines, anti-tank missiles and a hand grenade disguised among Lego pieces. Additionally, they discovered a suitcase containing a vest marked “Al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of Hamas, packed with additional magazines.

In an additional piece Ynet reports on interrogations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives.  Zuhadi Ali Zahadi Shahi, a former Hamas operative, said, “We felt we’re being used as human shields. Why should we protect them? We want to live too. IDF gave us a clear path south, where there would be food and water, but Hamas stopped us along the way and took us to sit with them inside Al-Shifa Hospital. I even argued with one of them, telling him he should be out there, fighting, but he just threatened me in return. “In all honesty, I prefer the IDF. If they had been there, right where we lived, we wouldn’t have been starving. At first, we were scared about what would happen when the IDF came inside Al-Shifa, but they actually gave us food and water and sat with us. We felt safe.”

Most Israeli papers focus on the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut. In Haaretz, Amos Harel writes that the assassination of Arouri will presumably lead to a harsh response from Hamas, mainly from Lebanon. The key question is how Hezbollah will respond to an assassination that took place in its home court – the Shi’ite neighborhood of Dahiyeh in southern Beirut. Hamas cells have already fired rockets from south Lebanon, in coordination with Hezbollah. Nasrallah will have to decide whether to give them more rope and allow firing further south at Acre and Safed. Discussing Gaza, Harel adds that the military capabilities of Hamas have been badly but not completely damaged across northern Gaza. The two Hamas brigades, made up of 12 battalions there, no longer function as brigades, as Hamas is trying to reorganize small forces in Gaza City and its surroundings. It seems that some terrorists are gradually returning to the battlefield via tunnels. The civil administration of Hamas in the north is completely crushed, while in the south it has administrative capabilities to run the area and deal with residents.

In Yediot Ahronot, Ronen Bergman writes: “Ever since the [Qadim] Soleimani [Commander of the Quds force within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards] assassination, Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly said that he would view the next assassination in Beirut as crossing a line… Nasrallah needs to decide whether to abide by the red lines that he publicly announced, or whether to treat this as an incident that has no real bearing on him. He is at a crossroads: Should he respond powerfully and run the risk of Israeli retaliation, or should he respond within the confines of the threshold he has tried to maintain ever since October 7?” Bergman reports that the “assessment held by most Israeli and American officials is that Nasrallah won’t risk leading all of Lebanon to ruin merely in solidarity with and in defense of Hamas after the latter launched its attack on Israel without first informing him.”

In his piece ‘the Gamble of the Aruri assassination’, Nahum Barnea in Yediot Ahronot, comments that the Aruri assassination won’t facilitate the negotiations that the Americans and French have been holding in Lebanon in the past few weeks…The hope was that an accommodation would be reached through diplomatic channels that might prevent war and allow the residents to return home. One thing is certain: the death of Aruri and his two aides, Samir Findi and Azzam Al-Aqraa, will set back Hamas’s Beirut office’s operations in the short-term, but it won’t change the fundamental reality. Hamas is a terrorist organization that is bigger than any single one of its potential martyrs, including Sinwar.

Yediot Ahronot and Maariv report on the death of former head of Mossad, Zvi Zamir. Zamir led the Mossad from 1968 to 1974, in which the organisation embarked on a hunt for Palestinian terrorists following the Munich Olympics attacks. He also met with an Egyptian source on the eve of the Yom Kippur War after which Zamir warned the government that war was about to break out.

Haaretz reports that Israel is to appoint a Judge and prepare a defence team for an ICJ hearing on ‘Gaza Genocide’. Israel is forming an inter-ministerial team including from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Justice, IDF Advocate General, and National Security Council to prepare a defence against the petition filed by South Africa. An Israeli human rights expert accuses Israeli law enforcement agents for not to acting against extreme statements by Israeli politicians calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide. Adv. Michael Sfard, an expert in international law and human rights, accuses senior Israeli law enforcement officials of failing to act against extreme statements by senior Israeli officials. Even before the opening of the ICJ proceedings, on behalf of former public officials, including three ambassadors, Adv. Sfard and Adv. Alon Sapir asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and State Prosecutor Amit Eisman to act against ministers and MKs who called for ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement says, “South Africa is collaborating with a terror group that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Hamas, which committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and tried to commit genocide on 7 October, is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, by using them as human shields and steal their humanitarian aid.”