March 18: Israel Strikes Gaza

Documents show Iran's involvement in Oct. 7; Trump/Putin call; WaPo's pro-Hamas reporter

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The Big Story

Israel launched new strikes throughout the Gaza territory on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning, leading to the deaths of several senior Hamas officials. The strikes have cast doubt on the cease-fire deal going forward. Netanyahu cited Hamas’ refusal to release the remaining Oct. 7 hostages as well as the terror group’s rejection of the proposals it has received from the Trump administration’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as the primary reasons for launching the strikes, according to The Times of Israel.

Within hours of the bombing, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claimed that more than 400 had been killed in the strikes (compare its accounting to U.S. Central Command, which said in its Monday press conference that it still had not had enough time to accurately assess casualties from its strikes on Yemen). Nevertheless, the strikes do seem to have done damage. Hamas says six senior operatives were killed, and the Israel Defense Forces announced earlier today that they had killed the “de facto prime minister” of the Gaza Strip, Issam Da’alis, the head of Hamas’ governmental activity monitoring committee. The other officials killed include the director general of Hamas’ Justice Ministry Ahmad al-Khatta, Hamas’ Interior Ministry head (responsible for Hamas’ police and internal security) Mahmoud Abu Wafta, and the head of Hamas’ internal security forces Abu Sultan. The Saudi channel Al-Hadath reported that the spokesperson for the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, known by his nom de guerre Abu Hamza, had also been killed in the strikes. In addition to those four officials, the strikes targeted midlevel Hamas commanders, members of the terror group’s politburo, and its infrastructure.

Earlier this month, Witkoff proposed that Hamas release five more hostages in exchange for five more weeks of cease-fire, and was frustrated by the group's refusal; in an interview on Sunday, Witkoff pointed to the strikes in Yemen over the weekend as an implicit warning to Hamas about what their continued refusal could potentially lead to. That appears to have been the prelude for the United States consenting to the strikes. In an interview with Sean Hannity on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Israeli officials consulted with President Donald Trump about the strikes during a phone call on Monday. National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said today that Hamas effectively “chose war” by declining Witkoff’s demand to release the hostages.

While the American press has been full of reports that the cease-fire has now “collapsed,” it is still not clear whether the current round of strikes represents a return to war. According to Jerusalem Post reporter Amichai Stein, this wave of Israel’s attacks do not represent a full-scale war or a specific threat of a ground operation, but instead are meant to pressure Hamas into complying with the “framework” outlined by the Trump administration these last few weeks and release all the remaining hostages. The Washington Post says that the strikes are part of a series of “escalatory steps” to ratchet up pressure on Hamas, which began earlier this month with Israel blocking goods and services from entering Gaza.

President Trump has said for months that if Hamas continues to refuse to release the remaining hostages that “all hell would break loose” and now, it appears, that hell has finally broken out. Though Trump was extremely important in securing the terms of the cease-fire deal, he seems to have grown disgusted with Hamas, particularly the macabre manner with which they’ve released Israeli hostages in propaganda ceremonies. Leavitt seemed to suggest that with Israel’s strikes on Gaza this morning as well as the U.S. strikes on the Houthis in Yemen over the weekend, Trump is making a definitive statement: “As President Trump has made it clear—Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” she said.

So, what does this mean for the war going forward? Tablet staff writer Armin Rosen believes that while the strikes don’t present any “decisive strategic reasoning” on behalf of Israel, the killing of several Hamas officials without stoking any retaliatory response is still a win for the IDF.

This is very likely a round of conflict that's going to unfold on a multiyear horizon, one that will have moments of calm, moments of greater and lesser violence. For that reason, I don’t believe there’s any decisive strategic reason being made here beyond freeing the hostages from Hamas. There seems to be no effort here to expand the buffer zone, for instance. But because they were able to kill so many senior targets without triggering any retaliation, this could be the model for this situation going forward, whether or not this is actually the plan. Also important to note is that Abu Hamza is one of the major international icons of the war, and he was one of the last recognizable terrorists in the Gaza Strip, one whose face was plastered on flags waved by the Palestinians.

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The Rest

→ In the years leading up to the Oct. 7 attacks, Hamas developed a plan to destroy Israel with the coordination of Iran and Hezbollah, according to internal Hamas documents captured by the IDF in Gaza and published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. The documents, according to a report in The Times of Israel, show that Iran and Hezbollah were fully aware of, and had endorsed and pledged to support, Hamas’ planned invasion of Israel, which Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar believed could “push Israel to collapse.” While prior to 2019, Hamas’ military plans were mainly defensive, the documents show a stark shift in the group’s thinking beginning that year, when, under Sinwar’s leadership, it entered into a “joint defense agreement” with Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force, the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Following the 2021 Gaza war, Sinwar and other Hamas officials sent a letter to Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani requesting $500 million for a plan to “uproot [Israel]” and “change the face of the region.”

The documents also describe a 2022 letter from Sinwar to the then head of Hamas’ politburo, Ismail Haniyeh, outlining three scenarios for a war to destroy Israel, including Hamas’ “preferred scenario”: A multifront invasion involving all “axis of resistance” actors except Iran, timed to a Jewish holiday. In a letter responding to Sinwar, Haniyeh revealed that Iran and Hezbollah had “approved” this scenario, but that he was still waiting for the Iranians’ “final review” of the plan. What still isn’t clear from the documents is why Hezbollah, presumably under Iran’s direction, ultimately declined to join the invasion on Oct. 7.

To read the full article, click the link below

https://www.timesofisrael.com/captured-gaza-records-show-that-iran-hezbollah-plotted-with-hamas-to-destroy-israel/

→After a lengthy call with President Trump earlier this afternoon, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to temporarily halt attacks on Ukrainian energy and infrastructure targets, CNN reports. Trump was unsuccessful in his attempt to get Putin to agree to the 30-day ceasefire agreement that he has endorsed and Ukraine has agreed to. For a ceasefire to be agreed to, Putin said he required an end to all foreign aid being sent to Ukraine.

→The Washington Post is facing scrutiny after one of its reporters, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, was found by writer and pro-Israel activist Eitan Fischberger to have made social media posts calling Israel “an illegal state,” openly identifying as “anti-Zionist,” and signaling support for Hamas and Hezbollah, according to the Jewish Insider. The social media posts were published between 2012 and 2014.

Mahfouz took to calling zionists “Zio-Nazis,” claimed that Israel hates “Africans” and “dark-skinned Jews,” and compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Holocaust, among other provocative claims. She joined the Post in 2016 and removed “anti-Zionist” from her X profile shortly after getting the job.

→Irish UFC champion Conor McGregor met with President Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other key administration officials at the White House yesterday for St. Patrick’s Day. During a press conference, McGregor blasted the Irish government for its immigration policies, an issue he first started discussing in 2023.

“Our government has long since abandoned the voices of the people of Ireland," McGregor said. “The illegal immigration racket is running ravage on the country.”

McGregor has openly pondered running for Irish prime minister since 2024. His visit to the White House drew a quick rebuke from Ireland’s current Prime Minister Micheál Martin, who said that the fighter’s remarks don’t reflect “the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day” or “the views of the Irish people.” Ireland, which has long been extremely liberal when it comes to immigration, has struggled accommodating record numbers of asylum seekers in the last two years, leading to national protests against the acceptance of refugees.

→President Trump pulled Secret Service protection from former President Joe Biden’s children, Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden, on Monday. Trump was said to have made the decision after learning from a Sunday New York Post article that Hunter was vacationing in South Africa with full Secret Service protection, The Hill reports.

→Harvard University announced plans yesterday to make tuition free for students whose families make $200,ooo a year or less, despite its recent proclamations of revenue concerns, according to CBS News. Students whose families make less than $100,000 a year will also have all other expenses covered, such as food, housing, health care and travel. The policy will go into effect for the 2025-26 school year. Previously, financial aid was only available to students whose families made less than $85,000. Harvard President Alan Gerber said he wants to put Harvard “within financial reach” to a broader range of backgrounds than those currently represented in the school’s community. Harvard’s endowment currently stands at $53.2 billion, an increase of $2.5 billion from 2023.

→The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights determined yesterday that the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals’ Association, and Greely High School are each in violation of Title IX by allowing a male to female transgender student to participate in a girls’ pole vaulting match. The investigation into Maine’s practice of allowing biological males to compete with girls on the basis of gender identity was spurred by Maine’s flat refusal to comply with Trump’s Feb. 5 executive order on the issue as well as the heated exchange between Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills later that month on whether or not Maine would comply with the order, according to Just the News. Maine will have 10 days to adjust its policy and if Maine officials fail to do so they will face cuts to federal funding and possibly referral to the Justice Department.

→The United States Institute of Peace’s now-former CEO George Moose told reporters yesterday that members of the Department of Government Efficiency broke into its headquarters Monday, according to the Washington Examiner. Earlier that day, the Trump administration fired most of USIP’s board members. The three remaining members of the board, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and National Defense University President Peter Garvin, fired Moose last Friday. USIP was one of the agencies targeted in a Feb. 19 executive order aiming to shrink the federal government. Despite protestations from USIP employees who insisted that the agency is not part of the executive branch, DOGE members entered the building anyway, three days after they attempted to do the same thing unsuccessfully. Moose vowed legal action, calling DOGE’s actions an “illegal takeover” by the executive branch of a private nonprofit, according to Politico. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly cited USIP’s noncompliance with Trump’s executive order to justify DOGE’s entrance into its headquarters. “Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold these agencies hostage,” she added.

→Chart of the Day

U.S. birth rates fell to their lowest level since 1979 in 2023, according to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Only 3.5 million births were recorded in 2023. The total fertility rate, a rough estimate of the number of children an average woman would give birth to during her lifetime, also fell, to 1.6 births per woman. This follows the trend of a general decrease by 2% each year since 2007, according to the Washington Examiner. The downward trend is generally seen as reflective of women deciding to have children later in life or forgoing motherhood altogether.

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