Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said representatives from the Mossad intelligence agency and the military would attend the meeting, but did not provide further details. Hamas had no immediate comment.
advertisementIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said a delegation had been approved to resume ceasefire talks in Qatar.
U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators have spent nearly a year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas, but those efforts have repeatedly stalled as both sides blame the other for failures.
At one point last year, Qatar suspended mediation efforts out of frustration with the lack of progress.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office said representatives from the Mossad intelligence agency and the military would attend the meeting, but did not provide further details.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas on its bid to end the nearly 15-month war in Gaza.
It began after Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages to the Gaza Strip.
About 100 people remain captive on the Strip, but Israeli officials believe at least a third of them are dead.
Fierce fighting across Gaza has destroyed much of the Strip’s infrastructure and the Hamas-run health ministry says more than 45,500 Palestinians have been killed. But officials do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their tallies.
Syrian airstrikes
Meanwhile, the IDF claimed responsibility for a nighttime airstrike in Syria last September in which dozens of commandos destroyed a top-secret Iranian-led missile factory.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Iran plans to work with its Syrian and Hezbollah allies to build hundreds of precision-guided missiles each year at the plant and transfer them to Lebanon.
He said the facility is located around the town of Masyaf near the border with Lebanon in western Syria.
He said Israel had been monitoring the underground facility for years but decided to strike when Israel was at war with Hezbollah and the plant was operating.
“This facility poses a clear threat to the State of Israel and that is why we had to take action,” he said.
Shoshani said more than 100 special forces soldiers took part in the September 8 raid, supported by dozens of aircraft.
He called the operation one of Israel’s most complex in years and said soldiers arrived by helicopter and entered the facility dug deep into the mountainside.
advertisementYemen attack
But although Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah reached a ceasefire in late November, Israel continues to come under attack from Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The IDF said in a statement Friday morning that sirens were blaring across Israel due to a “projectile launch” from Yemen, but did not specify what it was or where it landed.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels have stepped up missile attacks on Israel, forcing hundreds of thousands of Israelis to flee shelters in the dead of night, scaring off foreign airlines and holding on to what could be the last major front in the Middle East war.
The attacks did not cause significant physical damage because most missiles were intercepted and fires were typically one missile at a time, but several attacks have been fatal as Houthi rebels have attacked in solidarity with Hamas during the 15-month war in Gaza. .
advertisementShortly after the war in Gaza began, Houthi rebels began targeting Red Sea ships known to have commercial links with Israel. But while only a small number of the ships attacked were connected to Israel, the missile launches caused a sharp drop in traffic on the key maritime waterway.
Israel has repeatedly bombed the port, oil infrastructure and airport of the capital Sanaa, which is controlled by Houthi rebels about 2,000 kilometers from Israel.
