REUTERS
Israel determined to take Rafah despite ‘potential breach’ with U.S.
Dan Williams
March 21, 2024

Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official [Ron Dermer] said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the terror group’s fighters. The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington, which says Israel must have a plan to move more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war…Dermer, a former ambassador to the United States, said Israel would hear out American ideas for Rafah, but that the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt would be taken whether or not the allies reach agreement  READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL IDF: ‘Very significant’ Hamas commanders among 650 nabbed at Gaza’s Shifa hospital Troops have captured some 650 terror suspects, including several “very significant” senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders, during an ongoing operation at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency said Thursday, as talks continued in Qatar to secure an extended truce and hostage deal. According to the IDF, at least 358 of the detainees were confirmed to be members of terror groups. The IDF said that Islamic Jihad operatives holed up at the medical center surrendered to troops, including Hussam Salameh, the commander of PIJ’s observation and intelligence unit in Gaza City, and his brother, Wissam Salameh, head of the terror group’s propaganda unit in Gaza City. READ MORE