What’s happened: The IDF has announced that the four Hamas battalions in Rafah have been operationally dismantled.

• Over the last few months more than 2,000 terrorists have been killed. The IDF have destroyed approximately 13 km of underground tunnel, constituting 80% of the smuggling routes underneath the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egyptian border.
• Combat engineers are expected to continue their work to find and destroy any remaining tunnels.
• In the north, Hezbollah have continued to fires rockets into northern Israel.  Last night around 20 rockets were fired toward Safed. No injuries have been reported, but the fire service worked through the night extinguishing flames.
• Sirens were again sounded across areas in northern Israel in close proximity to the border with Lebanon, as Israeli Air Force jets carried out counter strikes on Hezbollah military sites southern Lebanon.
• According to Syrian opposition sources, more details have emerged of the alleged Israeli strike on the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) facility in the Masyaf area in Syria earlier this week.
• According to their report the attack consisted of three phases:
  • Israeli fighter jets struck all the approach roads preventing access to the site. According to eye witnesses this also included striking vehicles in the vicinity that tried to reach the facility.
  • Israeli commandos dropped from their helicopter and entered the facility which Israel suspected was used by the IRGC to develop advanced weapons to Hezbollah. According to the report, the IDF commandos were on the ground for an hour and collected documents and other intelligence material
  • Once the troops left, the site was destroyed.
• There were further suggestions that Iranian personnel were also captured, but the Iranians have denied this. The Syrian government has denied the attack took place and Israeli officials have remained silent.
• Israel has targeted Iranian assets in Syria hundreds of times over the last few years, but an operation of this type, involving Israeli troops on the ground, if true, would be represent a significant and unique accomplishment.

Context: The completion of operations in Rafah seems to mark the end of Phase 2 of the war, with the conquering of the command and control capabilities of the Hamas battalions that operated in Gaza a year ago.

• Over the last few months the army had already begun transitioning to Phase 3, which is characterised by smaller targeted counter-insurgency operations (across the Strip) while forces hold the two key corridors – Netzarim that bisects the strip in the centre, and Philadelphi in the south.
• The ground operation in Rafah lasted around four months. It was considered extremely sensitive and caused friction with Israel’s allies over the concern for the civilian population, which had swelled to 1.4 million on due to Gazans fleeing from other areas of Gaza.
• However ahead of the operation the IDF cleared a humanitarian corridor north to Khan Yunis and the al-Mawasi safe zone.
• Israel had always cited the importance of taking over Rafah as it functioned as the main smuggling route for Hamas over many years and significantly enhanced their ability to import weapons and explosives into the Strip, largely from Iran.
• Rafah was also thought to be the hiding place of Hamas’s remaining leadership including Yahya Sinwar. Despite the IDF successfully targeting numerous senior Hamas figures, Sinwar and his brother Mohammad remain at large.
• The third motivation of the Rafah operation was to free hostages. Here there was limited success, with two successful operations that saw the release of four hostages alive.
• Two weeks ago the IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages, who were tragically assassinated days earlier, having survived in horrific conditions in a dark, humid tunnel, unable to stand up straight for over 10 months.
• The death of the six hostages and the exposure of the conditions in which they were held has led to further intensify the public protests to reach a deal for the release of the remaining 101 hostages.

Looking ahead: Israeli media reports are suggesting that IDF Chief of Staff Halevi is making preparations to resign at the end of the year.

• The end of Rafah operation adds further speculation as to whether the IDF will now pivot attention into a more offensive posture in the north.
• Around 80,000 residents of the north remain internally displaced, with growing pressure on the government to reach a solution either diplomatic or military to allow them to return home in peace and security

What’s happened: Israelis are bracing for a significant escalation in the north, following Saturday’s deadly Hezbollah strike on a football field in the Golan Heights which killed 12 children.

• The rocket attack, which also left 40 injured, targeted the Majdal Shams community late Saturday afternoon. Despite Hezbollah denials of responsibility, the IDF concluded that the attack was carried out by the Iranian-backed group, using an Iranian Falaq-1 rocket with a warhead of over 110 pounds of explosives, fired from southeastern Lebanon.
• The US echoed Israel’s attribution of the attack to Hezbollah, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson saying “it was their rocket, and launched from an area they control… Our support for Israel’s security is ironclad,” Watson added, “and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah,”  which, “started firing at Israel on October 8, claiming solidarity with Hamas, another terror organisation in Iran’s so-called ‘Axis of Resistance.’”
• UK Ambassador to Israel Simon Walters wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “especially horrific that the target was children playing football. Our hearts go to all the families of all of those who were killed or injured, and to the entire Druze population.” Condemnations of Hezbollah also followed from other western allies, including Germany, France, and Canada.
• The 12 fatalities were all aged between 10 and 20 and all from the Druze community. They were: Ameer Rabeea Abu Saleh, 16, Iseel Nasha’at Ayoub, 12, Hazem Akram Abu Saleh, 15, Milad Muadad Alsha’ar, 10, Alma Ayman Fakher Eldin, 11, Naji Taher Alhalabi, 11, Johnny Wadeea Ibrahim, 13, Yazan Nayeif Abu Saleh, 12, Fajer Laith Abu Saleh, 16, Vinees Adham Alsafadi, 11 Nathem Fakher Saeb, 16, and Jifara Ibrahim, 11.
• The Saleh family lost four brothers in the attack.
• Of the injured, two children remain in critical condition, and one in moderate condition. All have sustained abdominal injuries, chest injuries, and limb fractures.
• Israeli leaders swiftly promised a firm response. “I can say that the State of Israel will not allow this incident to pass quietly. We are not going to go about business as usual,” said Prime Minister Netanyahu.
• IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said, “this incident will lead to a very, very significant response. We’re going to hit Hezbollah hard; we’re going to take Hezbollah back in time. We’re going to bring the families back to their homes in the north safely.”
• The Foreign Ministry said Hezbollah had “crossed all red lines” with the attack. “This is not an army fighting another army, rather it is a terrorist organisation deliberately shooting at civilians.”
• Netanyahu cut short his visit to the US to return to Israel. The security cabinet then met yesterday afternoon to discuss Israel’s response, and authorised Netanyahu and Defence Minister Gallant to decide on the “manner and timing” of Israel’s retaliation. Far-right ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich, who have repeatedly and loudly called for tougher Israeli policy on all fronts, abstained from the vote.
• Speaking in Tokyo, US Secretary of State Blinken “emphasize[d] (Israel’s) right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that,” while adding that “we also don’t want to see the conflict escalate. We don’t want to see it spread. It’s so important that we help defuse that conflict, not only prevent it from escalating, prevent it from spreading, but to defuse it because you have so many people in both countries, in both Israel and Lebanon, who’ve been displaced from their homes.”
• Limited Israeli responses against Hezbollah operatives have already begun. Reports this morning claim that two died and three were injured in an Israeli drone strike outside the southern Lebanese town of Shaqra. In a separate attack, one person was killed and four wounded in Israeli airstrikes on a car and motorcycle driving between the towns of Mays al-Jabal and Shaqra in southern Lebanon.
• Lebanese and Palestinian sources also reported heavy shelling in the town of Houla this morning. The IDF also shot down a drone which crossed into the Western Galilee from Lebanon. The intrusion prompted alarms in Yaara and Adamit, Israeli towns near the Lebanese border.
• In a further statement of intent, earlier on Saturday, Hezbollah also launched a drone towards Israel’s Karish offshore natural gas platforms. The drone was intercepted by the Israeli Navy’s Saar 6 missile boat, but the attack served as a warning that Hezbollah has the capacity to launch more precise weapons to target Israeli energy infrastructure.

Context: The attack on Saturday was the deadliest strike on civilians carried out by Hezbollah since the Second Lebanon War, and the greatest loss of civilians on the Israeli side since October 7th.

• The initial Hezbollah denial is likely a result of their embarrassment at killing Druze children and an awareness that they have significantly escalated the simmering conflict by striking civilians. It appears likely that Hezbollah fired heavy but inaccurate rockets aimed at the IDF base on Mount Hermon, situated above Majdal Shams, and that one of the rockets overshot its intended target, causing devastation.
• Sirens were sounded in the community, but due to the close proximity and a matter of seconds there was no time to reach a protected space.
• The Druze of the Golan have a complicated relationship with the State of Israel. Taken over in the 1967 Six Day War, many held onto their Syrian identity despite Israel formally extending its laws, jurisdiction and administration to the Golan Heights in 1981.
• Druze of the Golan have the option of applying for Israeli citizenship, many more have done so in the last decade and half after observing at close quarters the regime violence during the Syrian civil war.
• The attack in Majdal Shams will also raise tension inside Lebanon and Syria, which both hold significant Druze communities and place Hezbollah in a difficult domestic predicament.
• Druze are traditionally loyal to their home country, hence residual loyalty of some Golan Druze to Syria, whilst  many of their Druze brethren in the Galilee proudly serve in the IDF and are fully integrated into Israeli society.
• The Israeli security cabinet decision to empower the prime minister and defence minister to decide on the Israeli response serves two purposes; it cuts the need to reconvene the cabinet, thereby adding to the element of surprise. Secondly, it excludes the more extreme government ministers from the decision-making process.
• Despite significant damage, Hezbollah attacks and Israeli responses have been carefully weighted, with both sides understanding the ‘rules of the game’, whereby fatal strikes are reciprocated but with an emphasis on avoiding the escalation to all-out war.

Looking ahead: In calibrating its response, Israel will need to carefully calibrate between a forceful response which underlines that attacks of this kind cannot go unanswered, with a desire to prevent further escalation.

• Among the possible responses being considered are:
  • Targeting a strategic Hezbollah site: a weapons depot or military infrastructure;
  • A strike on Lebanese civilian infrastructure, such as an energy depot or transport hub. An attack of this nature would serve the purpose of prompting the Lebanese government to act to restrain Hezbollah. However, it also runs the risk of uniting Lebanon’s various communities behind Hezbollah.
  • An attack on Hezbollah sites in Beirut which, with the exception of the targeted strike on Hamas leader al-Arouri in January, have largely been avoided.
  • Targeted assassinations of senior Hezbollah figures.