BICOM

The north: Hezbollah yesterday released a nine-minute, high quality drone-shot video showing multiple Israeli strategic assets in Haifa.

• The Israeli navy’s main port base was shown, with ships visible. Hezbollah also claimed to identify other strategic sites including air defence bases and the airport.
• Israeli Foreign Minister Katz commented on the incident, saying that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah “brags about filming Haifa’s ports, operated by international giants from China and India, and threatens to attack them. We’re very close to changing the rules of engagement against Hezbollah and Lebanon.”
• “In a full-scale war, Hezbollah will be destroyed, and Lebanon will be severely impacted. Israel will pay a price on the front and at home, but with a strong and united people, and with the full force of the IDF, we’ll restore security to northern residents.”
• The footage raises concerns about how the drone was able to both penetrate Israeli airspace and, presumably, return to Lebanon without interception.
• However, the IDF claims that the drone which captured the images was under IDF surveillance for entirety of their mission but was not shot down to avoid risking injury.
• The IDF is having to cope with the increasing sophistication of Hezbollah’s drone arsenal, as it is with the groups’ weapons stock more broadly. Israeli identification mechanisms are being constantly enhanced and updated to account for the greater sophistication.
• Meanwhile, after a two-day lull coinciding with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, at least ten rockets were fired last night into the Galilee panhandle and the Upper Galilee. All landed in uninhabited areas, while a rocket that was fired at Kibbutz Sasa was intercepted by an Iron Dome battery.
• In response, the IDF said that “IAF fighter jets struck a number of Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanon, including several terror infrastructure sites in the areas of Taybeh, Odaisseh, and Jibbain, as well as a military structure in the area of Ayta Ash Shab.”
• At least one drone then exploded over Metulla this morning, with no injuries reported. Sirens sounded in Kiryat Shmona and other surrounding villages and the IDF is currently returning fire at Lebanon.
• US envoy Amos Hochstein remains in the region to try to achieve a diplomatic resolution to increasingly intense cross-border fighting the US fears might develop into an all-out regional war.
• US and French efforts over the last eight months have so far failed to produce a breakthrough. 80,000 northern Israelis remaining displaced, and Israel insists it will be forced to proceed with further operations, possibly including a ground invasion, to resecure the northern front.

Rafah: The IDF permitted a group of Israeli journalists to tour the southern Gaza city of Rafah yesterday, where what the military describes as “precise, intelligence-based” operations remain ongoing.

• Nahal Brigade Commander Col. Yair Zuckerman told journalists that “the number of tunnels in this area is the largest we’ve seen in the Strip.” Zuckerman added that two of the four Hamas battalions in the city had been dismantled, though many Hamas fighters are thought to have fled to Khan Younis, having initially fled to Rafah from Khan Younis.
• Visiting journalists noted the high morale of troops, many of whom have been deployed constantly since October 7^th, and the generally lower intensity of fighting in Rafah compared with other sites earlier in the war.
• Zukerman said, “It’s fine to budget the use of munitions, and that is also the right thing to do professionally,” he says. “But let’s be clear: there has been no instance that I have asked for air support and not gotten it. There is no company commander who needs to fire a shell at a building and doesn’t do so. So it’s true that we aren’t using the full extent of our firepower, but I get what I need.”
• Elsewhere in the south, an air raid siren sounded this morning in the Gaza periphery, warning of a hostile aircraft. Israeli media later reported that a “suspicious aerial object” had fallen in an open field, causing no casualties.
• Despite political criticism, the IDF is currently maintaining a partial tactical pause to allow for the distribution of aid.
• According to the IDF, “Over 1,400 trucks of humanitarian aid that have been transferred from Israel into the Gaza Strip remain uncollected by International Organizations and the UN on the Gazan side of the Kerem Shalom Crossing.”

Qatar: The Qatari prime minister met yesterday with Hamas’s overseas leader Ismail Haniyeh and urged him to show flexibility on a hostage deal.

• Qatar has been much criticised for failing to exert greater pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal. Yesterday, however, the Gulf State was defended by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf.
• “Qatar really does punch above its weight, and it has a nimbleness of approach with a variety of actors that we don’t have relations with, but that we need to communicate with,” Leaf told a Senate subcommittee.
• “There’s a cadre of political officials of Hamas in Doha — and boy do they squeeze them [Hamas], I can assure you they squeeze them — But at the end of the day, there’s one guy 10 stories below the ground,” Leaf continued, referring to Hamas’s Gazan leader Yahya Sinwar; “a psychopath, messianic in his own belief that he has established himself in history, and [he believes that] there’s a sunk cost of having lost thousands of fighters and carnage in Gaza.”
• Reports from the US this week have suggested that Doha has threatened Hamas figures resident there with arrests, asset seizure, and expulsion if a deal is not reached.
• However, as Leaf’s comments suggest, Qatar’s leverage over Sinwar is lesser than any it enjoys over Hamas’s exiled leadership, and it is unclear how much sway Haniyeh and other senior officials in Doha have over pressuring the Gazan leadership to accept a deal.
• With Hamas claiming it is unable to confirm how many of the remaining 120 hostages remain alive, a senior Israeli negotiator said earlier this week that “dozens are alive, with certainty”.

Israel-US: Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday released a statement saying that it was “inconceivable that in the past few months, the [US] administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel. Israel, America’s closest ally, fighting for its life, fighting against Iran and our other common enemies.”

• “Secretary Blinken assured me that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case. During World War II, Churchill told the United States, ‘Give us the tools, we’ll do the job.’ And I say, give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster.”
• The White House responded by saying that “we genuinely do not know what he’s talking about. We just don’t.”
• “There was one particular shipment of munitions that was paused,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response, with respect to 2000-pound bombs the US withheld over concerns about their use in the highly densely populated Rafah. “We continue to have constructive conversations with the Israelis for the release of that particular shipment and don’t have any updates on that. There are no other pauses or holds in place… Everything else is moving in due process.”
• Netanyahu was also reassured/corrected by Biden envoy Amos Hochstein in their meeting earlier this week, while the White House is said to be furious about the prime minister’s remarks and set to cancel a joint American-Israeli strategic dialogue meeting on Iran in response.

Looking ahead: The IDF continues to raise the readiness of troops on the ground regarding the northern front. OC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin and IDF Operations Director Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk yesterday approved operational plans for an Israeli offensive in Lebanon.

• IDF officials said once more yesterday that they expected operations in Rafah to be concluded within a month. Zuckerman, though, said he expected an IDF brigade would have to remain deployed along the Philadelphi Corridor moving forward to stem the tide of illicit weapons smuggled into Gaza from Egypt