• Khamenei: U.S. Issue “Unsolvable,” Iran Will Never Bow Down in Nuclear Standoff
• Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Tehran would never bow to U.S. pressure, state media reported on Sunday. “They want Iran to be obedient to America. The Iranian nation will stand with all of its power against those who have such erroneous expectations….This issue is unsolvable,” he said.
• France, Britain and Germany have said they could reactivate UN sanctions on Iran under a “snapback” mechanism if Tehran does not return to the negotiating table. (Reuters)
• Australia Expels Iranian Ambassador after Iran Found to Direct Local Antisemitic Attacks
• Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Tuesday: “Since the terrible events of October 7, 2023, we have witnessed a number of appalling antisemitic attacks against Australia’s Jewish community…. Credible intelligence has now been gathered to reach the deeply disturbing conclusion that the Iranian Government has directed at least two of these attacks.”
• “ASIO [the Australian Security Intelligence Organization] assesses it was behind the attacks on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney on Oct. 20, 2024, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on Dec. 6, 2024. ASIO assesses it is likely Iran directed further attacks as well.”
• “These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil. This is an attack on our society, aimed at creating fear, stoking internal divisions and eroding social cohesion. These attacks on our society are totally unacceptable.”
• “In response, we have informed the Iranian ambassador to Australia he and three additional Iranian diplomats will be expelled. We have suspended operations at our embassy in Tehran and all our diplomats are now safe in a third country. The Government will legislate so we can list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the IRGC – as a terrorist organization.”  (Prime Minister of Australia)
• Palestinian Civilians Anticipate Gaza City Takeover – Ezz Al Din Abu Eisha
• Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved a plan to occupy Gaza City. According to Israel’s Channel 14, the plan will have three phases: first, allowing increased humanitarian aid to enter Gaza City, followed by the relocation of its residents to camps in the south of Gaza, and finally, a full blockade of the city, which will be placed under the control of the military.
• Gaza residents anxiously keep up with the details of the planned takeover of the city. Some Palestinians are busy making their own plans. Waseem has already begun making arrangements for a shelter in southern Gaza, and is working around the clock to get it set up. “Israel is going ahead with its war plans for Gaza, and as the sole provider of a family of 13, I have to protect them,” he says.
• Waseem has set up three tents on a plot of land in the south, with a separate toilet, a water tank, and some basic necessities. “I hesitated before making this decision, but I concluded in the end that complying with Israeli orders might save my family’s life,” he explains.
• Netanyahu has set Oct. 7 as the deadline to evacuate Gaza City completely of its civilian residents. Tayseer says, “The army has set the deadline of Oct. 7 in the hope that it will make the people of Gaza forget the 2023 attacks, and that this will become the anniversary of our new Nakba, because it will take from us the whole of Gaza City.” Ismail al-Thawabta, director of Hamas’s Government Media Office in Gaza, says, “Israel is trying to change the consciousness of Gazans by linking the occupation of Gaza with the anniversary of the [Oct. 7] ‘al-Aqsa Flood’ operation.”
• Tayseer says the IDF is coming to destroy and level the place. He predicts, “We will have no street to walk on, and no building to defend,” imploring Hamas leaders to save Gaza before it is too late and announce the “zero hour” for exit. (Independent-UK)

News Resources – Israel and the Mideast:

• Israeli Official: Current Gaza Deal “No Longer Relevant,” Talks Will Resume on Israel’s Terms
• The current hostage, ceasefire deal on the table is “no longer relevant,” and any future negotiations must include the release of all hostages and a ceasefire on “terms that Israel is ready for,” N12 quoted senior Israeli officials as saying on Sunday. “The hostage deal talks will not stop the [upcoming military] operation [in Gaza], but the operation will accelerate the talks.”  (Jerusalem Post)

• Israel Retaliates after Houthis Fire Missile with Outlawed Cluster Warhead – Yoav Zitun
• The IDF launched airstrikes in Yemen on Sunday after confirming that a missile fired by the Houthis on Friday toward central Israel carried an internationally banned cluster warhead. The IDF struck missile bases in the Sanaa area as well as in the vicinity of the presidential palace that were used for launching missiles and drones toward Israel in recent days. Other targets included the Hizaz and Asar power plants and a fuel storage site. (Ynet News)

• If Hizbullah Is Disarmed, Israel Will Reduce Presence in Southern Lebanon
• The Prime Minister’s Office said Monday: “Israel acknowledges the significant step taken by the Lebanese Government, under the leadership of President Aoun and Prime Minister Salam. The recent decision by the Council of Ministers to work towards the disarmament of Hizbullah by the end of 2025 was a momentous decision. It marks a crucial opportunity for Lebanon to reclaim its sovereignty and restore the authority of its state institutions, military, and governance – free from the influence of non-state actors.”
• “Israel stands ready to support Lebanon in its efforts to disarm Hizbullah and to work together towards a more secure and stable future for both nations. If the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) take the necessary steps to implement the disarmament of Hizbullah, Israel will engage in reciprocal measures, including a phased reduction of IDF presence in coordination with the U.S.-led security mechanism.”  (Prime Minister’s Office)

• Israeli Foreign Minister: Accepting a Palestinian State Would Be an “Act of Suicide” – Keshet Neev
• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Tuesday that imposing a Palestinian state on Israel would be an “act of suicide.” “We saw what happens when a terror state is allowed to arise next to our communities,” Sa’ar said. “If there is a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, all of our population centers will live under threat. West of the Jordan, there can be no foreign sovereignty or any foreign army.”
• Sa’ar also said that Israel was now in a strategically better position than it was two years ago, noting that “the Iranian axis that militarily surrounded Israel has been greatly weakened. What was once a military siege is now turning into an attempt at a political siege of the State of Israel, with a clear goal: to force a Palestinian state upon us.”  (Jerusalem Post)

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis:

The Gaza War

• • The Battle of Gaza City Is Beginning – Col. (ret.) Richard Kemp
  • The battle of Gaza City does not need to happen. The expected loss of human life and physical destruction could be avoided if Hamas laid down its arms and released the hostages. That is made much less likely by the words and actions of Western leaders.
  • The pressure they are piling on Israel to end the war, including threats to recognize a “Palestinian state,” are translated by Hamas into signals to them to fight on. Why would they give up the struggle if there is a chance their enemy will be restrained by its own so-called allies? It is hard to reconcile the constant attacks on Israel’s vital self-defense with the near silence about the savages that started this war and keep it going.
  • Threats of force with the means to back it up, accompanied by unquestioned political will, is the only language tyrants understand. Instead, what is the West’s response? To undermine it with every means at their disposal.
  • The IDF has no choice but to destroy Hamas in Gaza City. Hamas has to be defeated, the hostages rescued, and their rule that threatens Israel and keeps the population subjugated to their will ended. This will be a battle for good against evil, and if Israel has to fight it, the West should not get in its way.
  • The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK’s national crisis management committee, COBRA.  (Telegraph-UK)

Syria

• • A Normalization Agreement between Israel and Syria Remains a Distant Prospect – Yoni Ben Menachem
  • Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel was forced to confront a new reality on its northern border. The collapse of the regime created a power vacuum that could have facilitated the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS or Iranian-backed militias, posing a new security threat to Israel. Israel acted swiftly, expanding its buffer zone in the Golan Heights and launching airstrikes to destroy Assad’s military arsenal, preventing it from falling into the hands of jihadist terror groups.
  • A senior Israeli political official stresses that in its talks with the new Syrian regime, Israel insists on protecting the Druze community in Suweyda and removing all armed forces from the Israeli border. He warned that jihadist groups in the area aspire to attack Israeli communities in the Golan Heights and carry out massacres similar to the Oct. 7 atrocities – necessitating precise military and diplomatic planning.
  • Syrian leader al-Jolani does not exercise full security control over all of Syria, and his security forces have sometimes been complicit in massacres of minorities, including the recent killings of Druze in Suweyda. Israel seeks a normalization agreement with Syria, but such an agreement remains a distant prospect.
  • A senior security source warned that signing a security agreement with al-Jolani’s jihadist regime would limit the IDF’s freedom of action and restrict Israel’s ability to defend Golan Heights communities and the Druze in Suweyda. “Insofar as a jihadist regime rules Syria, it is preferable for Israel not to sign any agreement and instead maintain the current situation, in which it faces no international constraints on essential security operations,” the source concluded.
  • The writer, a veteran Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, is a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center.  (Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs)

Arab World

• • Qatar’s Muslim Scholars: Nothing More Important than Killing Israelis – Bassam Tawil
  • More than 150 prominent Muslim scholars from 50 countries are currently attending a conference in Istanbul, Turkey, to discuss the situation in Gaza. The conference was organized by the Qatar-based International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a body founded in 2004 by the late Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian scholar known as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have added Qatar’s IUMS to their terrorism blacklists, saying it used “Islamic rhetoric as a cover to facilitate terrorist activities.” For Qatar’s Muslim scholars, the war in Gaza did not start on Oct. 7 when Hamas invaded Israel. Rather, the war began the moment Israel fired back, and the only victims are the Palestinians in Gaza.
  • The conference totally ignores Hamas’s responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians. The Muslim scholars at the conference also made no reference to the thousands of Israelis and foreign nationals, including children, women and the elderly, who were murdered, wounded and kidnapped by Palestinian Muslims on Oct. 7.
    Earlier this year, the IUMS issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) in which it called on all Muslims to wage Jihad (holy war) against Israel. The scholars want to see Muslims commit more massacres against Jews. (Gatestone Institute)

Israeli Construction Activity

• • Building Thousands of Homes in E-1 Is Critical for the Future of Jerusalem and for Israel’s Security – David M. Weinberg
  • Every Israeli prime minister since Yitzhak Rabin has planned and promised to build in the E-1 quadrant adjacent to Jerusalem. E-1 begins on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives and is the last significant piece of unsettled land in the Jerusalem envelope. It is the only place where thousands of homes can be built to overcome Jerusalem’s serious housing shortage.
  • There has been no significant new building underway in the Jerusalem envelope for more than two decades. Jerusalem needs 6,000 new apartments a year just to meet the demands of natural growth.
  • Highway No. 1, which runs from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and down to the Jordan Valley, is the only west-east axis across the State of Israel with a Jewish population majority. It is the only safe route through which Israel can mobilize troops from the coast to the Jordan Valley in case of a military emergency. Israel needs to secure the road via the E-1 corridor and the city of Maale Adumim.
  • The world needs to understand that Jewish communities beyond the 1967 lines are not “obstacles to peace” and do not constitute “occupation” of foreign land, but rather are manifestations of Jewish return to ancestral lands.
  • Many Israelis once entertained the possibility of a full-fledged, democratic, and demilitarized Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria living in peace alongside Israel – but no longer. The slaughter of the Second Palestinian Intifada disabused most Israelis of that notion, and Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault buried it even deeper. It is no longer believable or feasible, at least for the very long term.
  • The writer is a senior fellow at Misgav: The Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy.  (Israel Hayom)

The October 7 Massacre

• Those Who Manned the Israel Fire and Rescue Services Hotline Recall Oct. 7 – Itsik Saban
• In the first hours of the Oct. 7 massacre, a call that reached the Fire and Rescue Services hotline reported: “In Sderot, near the library…many dead. Hamas came in here and shot everyone at the station by the library. Hurry, there are people here…many people dead. They’re driving around in their vehicles shooting.”
• That morning, the calls flooding the hotline were emergency pleas from residents of the western Negev, from Nova festivalgoers, from terrified people begging for help in their last minutes. Calls were cut off suddenly, sometimes by a burst of gunfire.
• Idan Hazan, the shift commander at the Southern District command-and-control center, remembers the first calls, “choked whispers from my own firefighters on their way to work: ‘Idan, they’re shooting at me.’…My friends were murdered, and I will never see them again.
• “I’ll never forget a call from a family in Be’eri or in Kfar Aza. They were screaming: ‘We’re burning, they set our house on fire!’ – and then the line went dead….My job is to save lives, and in that moment, I realized there was nothing I could do.”
• Capt. Keren Hiba Naim, commander of the national command-and-control center, recalled that these were not normal calls. This time, they were from people trapped in a nightmare with no escape: fire raging inside, terrorists outside. “We were used to telling civilians to move to another room, to open a window for fresh air. But here, we couldn’t say that. On one side, terrorists. On the other, flames. What can you possibly say to someone in that situation?”  (Israel Hayom)

Observations:

Empty Gestures Set Back the Cause of Palestinian Statehood – Editorial (Washington Post)

• On a symbolic level, Palestinians’ dream of an independent state has never appeared closer. At the UN General Assembly in September, Britain, France, Canada and Australia plan to join 147 other countries in recognizing one.

• But on the level that matters – the ground truth – rarely has the goal of Palestinian statehood seemed more distant. After nearly two years of war against Hamas in Gaza – sparked after the terrorist group killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 people hostage – the vast majority of Israelis, 71%, oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, compared to roughly half a decade ago.

• Recognizing a state now comes at the wrong time. It actually sets back efforts to find a lasting peace. The establishment of a Palestinian state was always envisioned as the end goal of a process in which Israelis agree to swap conquered land for a guaranteed peace. But at the core, the future Palestinian state must recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence and terrorism.

• That means removing from any government role groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose calling cards are the elimination of the Jewish state. It means erasing from the education of young Palestinians in schools and mosques that insidious hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

• Palestinians already have a symbolic de facto state. They have their own passports, and their athletes compete in international sporting events, including the Olympics, under the Palestinian flag. Making the state a reality, if it ever happens, will take much more than symbolic recognition.

• It will require the eradication of Hamas, ironclad security guarantees for Israel, and internationally agreed upon borders. All that can only possibly come through painstaking negotiations that win buy in from Israelis and Palestinians.