The leak of a pair of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents describing recent satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike on Iran offers a window into the intense American concerns about Israel’s plans. It also has U.S. officials working to understand the size of the improper disclosure. …
Read More »Drone Hits Building Near Netanyahu’s Home in Coastal Israel
A drone from Lebanon struck a building near the private residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Saturday, his office said, highlighting the continuing challenge posed to Israel’s air defense by unmanned vehicles. Mr. Netanyahu and his wife were not home at the time of the strike, according …
Read More »Families of Israeli Hostages Call on Netanyahu to Reach Gaza Cease-Fire Deal
The families of several Israeli hostages held in Gaza issued a sharply worded televised statement on Saturday in which they called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to seize the moment after this week’s killing of the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, to reach a hostage and cease-fire deal to …
Read More »Opinion | In Gaza, Sinwar’s Death Alone Won’t Secure the Peace
The question now is: Can Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel be pressured to declare victory and end the war in Gaza? Netanyahu now can take the best kind of offramp. He can savor the killing of Yahya Sinwar — a terrorist with so much Israeli and Palestinian blood on …
Read More »Despite Sinwar’s Death, Mideast Peace May Still Be Elusive
The killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader whose decision to attack Israel more than a year ago set off the ever-widening war tearing up the Middle East, could be the key to ending the bloodshed. Now that Israel has decapitated Hamas in Gaza, the thinking goes, it might be …
Read More »Despite Israeli Bombs and Assassinations, Hezbollah Keeps Fighting
Israeli bombs have blown up its munitions stores and killed thousands of its fighters, including many seasoned commanders. And yet, Hezbollah keeps fighting. Since Israel invaded southern Lebanon nearly three weeks ago, its forces have confronted a flexible enemy that uses the environment to launch complex and sometimes deadly operations. …
Read More »U.S. Defense Secretary Urges Israel to Scale Back Attacks in Beirut Area
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said on Saturday that the number of civilian casualties in Lebanon was “far too high” and that he would “like to see Israel scale back some of the strikes it’s taking, especially in and around Beirut.” Mr. Austin is the most senior U.S. official …
Read More »Sinwar’s Death Highlights Israel’s Long Quest for Deterrence
A quarter-century before Israel was founded, the Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky articulated an idea that has come to define the way Israelis protect their country. A Jewish state, he wrote in 1923, would succeed only by projecting enough strength to force its enemies to accept it as a permanent reality. …
Read More »Opinion | Yahya Sinwar’s Death Is a Tricky Opportunity
Reading the news that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s pitiless leader, had been killed on Wednesday by Israeli forces in southern Gaza, I had the same sense of elation so many people felt when Osama bin Laden was killed. To take satisfaction in the violent end of another human being, even an …
Read More »Sinwar’s Final Moments: On the Run, Hurt, Alone, but Still Defiant
At the end, the fearsome militant leader who had helped unleash a vicious war seemed barely a threat. In video captured by an Israeli drone, a man sat alone, badly wounded and caked in dust amid the ruins of a building in the Gaza Strip, wrapped in a kaffiyeh and …
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