[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Channel 4 News aired an investigation, providing details into the case of the two journalists, Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya, who were killed in an Israeli air strike.

Recent documents published by the Israeli military have been refuted by the families of the journalists and colleagues. Al Jazeera, the news network one of the journalists worked for, criticised what it called “false and misleading attempts to justify the killing of our colleagues.”

Shuruq al-Assad, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, expressed skepticism about the claim, stating to Channel 4 News, “For us as a syndicate, we say this is a fabricated document. Hamas or Jihad or anybody, they're not that stupid to write this document.”

Israel officials said Friday that they’ve reached a deal with Qatar negotiators to move medicine into Gaza for hostages held by militant group Hamas amid the ongoing war in the region, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

The remaining hostages could receive the medicine in the next few days, Reuters reported.

Released hostages have described torture, sexual assault and the lack of necessary medicine for many people, as a large amount of hostages taken were elderly or have chronic illnesses, Reuters reported.

Families of the hostages have asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to deliver medicine and inspect the condition of the hostages, which the organization said Hamas blocked access, per the news wire.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum also said it would demand visual proof that the medications reached the hostages. In a statement, the group warned that all of the hostages face mortal danger and need life-saving medicine and many require extensive medical treatment.

The brutal attack by Hamas on October 7 and the ensuing war have been traumatic for all Israelis. However, professionals who work with autistic children and teenagers report that they are experiencing more stress than their typically developing counterparts.

This appears to be largely related to the loss of familiar routine for many families with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have been internally displaced, lost a family member, or have family members or key supporters such as teachers and therapists fighting in the war.

“We know that autistic children depend a lot on routine and predictability, and on the ability to know that whatever their world looks like today, it will look the same way tomorrow. For all of us, that foundational assumption has been shaken,” said clinical psychologist Dr. Judah Koller, director of the Autism Child and Family Lab at the Hebrew University’s Seymour Fox School of Education.

Koller and his team diagnose, study, and work with autistic children and their parents to find the best ways to support them as family units. For this reason, Koller is keeping a close eye on how both these kids and their parents are faring.

“We’re all experiencing somewhat of a mental health crisis right now, whether we realize it or not. But for autistic children who rely on that ability to know that things will remain constant, the challenges that they’re experiencing are just going to be much more pronounced. That obviously will then have a ripple effect on their parents and their families and the systems that they’re in,” Koller said.

Withdrawing into oneself because of war trauma
Dr. Naomi Ferziger, senior lecturer in the department of occupational therapy at Ono Academic College, has been commuting weekly to Eilat from Jerusalem since the beginning of November. She was asked by OTI – The Israeli Autism Association to work with children with ASD who have been evacuated from their homes in areas close to the Gaza border. They are living in hotels and attending unfamiliar schools and afternoon activities held in tents.

She told The Times of Israel that she has found that the events of October 7 and the war have caused autistic children to pull more into themselves and regress in their abilities to communicate.

“In general, a lot of work with these kids is to get them to communicate, to express themselves and interact with other people. Something like this pulls them back into their own world and makes them want to be more on their own. Of course, each child is unique, but in a broad way we are seeing more of this detachment,” Ferziger said.

“If it’s an extreme case, a child who has severe autism, there might be self-harm because they have no way of communicating their feelings so they might express them by banging or throwing things, even at themselves,” she said.

Ferziger and the other specialists who are either from Eilat or who have gone down there especially to work with these children are using various approaches to help them incrementally open up.

“I have done long intake sessions with parents and I contact the children’s teachers and therapists from their home communities. I learn about the child’s strengths and the best medium for communicating with them — music, sensory experiences, art, whatever — and use that,” Ferziger said.

Studying wartime trauma of ASD kids and their parents
When the war broke out, the Autism Child and Family Lab uploaded to its website videos and other information for parents on how to help their children during times of war. However, Koller and his team felt that as part of their research mandate, they should conduct studies that could shed light on how to further help families.

The first is a yearlong longitudinal study that is underway and will continue until October 7, 2024. Working with his graduate students and partners at ALUT, the Azrieli National Centre for Autism and Neurodevelopment Research of Ben Gurion University, Bar-Ilan University, Koller is studying a cohort that includes 57 families with autistic children and 35 control families with neurotypical children. The children and teens involved in the study range from age 3 to 17.

The parents are being asked to provide updates online every two months by answering questions about levels of child trauma and parent well-being in terms of negative emotional states such as anxiety, stress, and depression.

The second study will be cross-sectional and look at a single point in time. It will involve many more children (autistic and not) and their parents. All will have been uprooted from their homes and sent to live in temporary or new locations. The study will look at what services for children with autism and their families got off the ground, how quickly, and how beneficial they were.

According to Koller, he and others in Israel are in an exceptional situation in that they can conduct serious, high-level research during an ongoing war. The downside has been that there is no relevant literature for him to look to.

Changing routines and locations pose ongoing challenges
Ferziger believes that the fact that she and other therapists have temporarily moved to Eilat or other locations where evacuee families have been placed has been important for ASD kids and teens.

Some families are now moving out of Eilat hotels to communities where they can be more settled. Ferziger said some of the teenagers she worked with were moving to Ofakim, and that they expressed their worry about going to yet another place.

“Parents are telling me the same thing. The challenge of having a child with special needs is compounded while living in a hotel, but now they are also worried about uprooting their kids again. It’s hard for everyone, but especially for these children and families,” Ferziger said.

President Biden and other senior U.S. officials are becoming increasingly frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rejection of most of the administration's recent requests related to the war in Gaza, four U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the issue told Axios.

Why it matters: Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack 100 days ago, Biden has given Israel his full backing, with unprecedented military and diplomatic support, even while taking a political hit from part of his base in an election year. That support has largely continued publicly, but behind the scenes, there are growing signs that Biden is losing his patience, the U.S. officials said.

"The situation sucks and we are stuck. The president's patience is running out," one U.S. official told Axios.

"At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger," Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has been in close contact with U.S. officials about the war, told Axios. "They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again

Behind the scenes: Biden hasn't spoken to Netanyahu in the 20 days since a tense Dec. 23 call, which a frustrated Biden ended with the words: "This conversation is over." They had spoken almost every other day in the first two months of the war.

Before Biden hung up, Netanyahu had rejected his request that Israel release the Palestinian tax revenues it's withholding.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby tried to downplay the decrease in communication, telling reporters on Wednesday that "it doesn't say anything" about the state of the relationship.

But more and more signs of irritation are emerging. "There is immense frustration," a U.S. official said.

State of play: The main driver of Biden's frustration is Netanyahu's resistance to moving on requests that are U.S. priorities.

In addition to the tax revenue issue, Biden and his advisers believe Israel isn't doing enough to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

They're also frustrated by Netanyahu's unwillingness to seriously discuss plans for the day after the war and his rejection of the U.S. plan for a reformed Palestinian Authority to have a role in post-Hamas Gaza.

U.S. officials are now growing increasingly concerned that Israel won't meet its timetable to transition to low-intensity operations in Gaza by the end of January, based on where things stand in Gaza, particularly in the southern city of Khan Younis.

If Israel doesn't significantly scale down its operations in Gaza — which U.S. officials have been pressing for in hopes of reducing Palestinian casualties — it will likely become increasingly difficult for Biden to maintain the same level of support for Israel's military campaign.

The big picture: Secretary of State Tony Blinken's visit to Israel last week only exacerbated the frustrations within the White House and the State Department, the U.S. officials who spoke to Axios said.

Netanyahu did agree to allow a UN mission to enter northern Gaza to assess the needs for the future return of Palestinian civilians to the area, but that was about all he was willing to give Blinken.

Blinken was very blunt with Netanyahu and his War Cabinet, stressing that the Israeli government's plan for the day after the war is "pie in the sky," a U.S. official said.

Blinken, who pointedly visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar before heading to Israel, also told Israeli leaders that "no Arab country is going to bail them out" on the rebuilding and governance of Gaza if Israel doesn't allow the PA to have a role and doesn't allow for a political horizon for the Palestinians, the official said.

What to watchThe Biden administration is trying to change Netanyahu's calculus by reviving efforts to reach a mega-deal with Saudi Arabia that would include a historic peace deal with Israel.

Meanwhile the Biden administration is also thinking long term and keeping the channels open with other political players in Israel.

For now, Netanyahu appears "more willing to listen" to the ultranationalist ministers in his government — namely Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — than to "what the president of the United States says," Sen. Van Hollen told Axios.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told local council chiefs from communities near Gaza on Tuesday that he anticipates the war against Hamas extending into 2025.

According to an unsourced Channel 12 report on the meeting, which was held at the IDF’s southern command headquarters in Beersheba and attended by other security cabinet ministers, Netanyahu told the council chiefs that, according to the current assessment, the war may continue into next year.

Qatar and France have brokered a deal with Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to deliver urgent medication to some 45 Israeli hostages held by the group in Gaza in return for humanitarian and medical aid for the most vulnerable civilians.

The two countries said the aid would leave Qatar for Egypt on Wednesday before being taken across the Rafah border crossing.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said in a statement the deal would mean "medicine along with other humanitarian aid is to be delivered to civilians in the Gaza Strip, in the most affected and vulnerable areas, in exchange for delivering medication needed for Israeli captives in Gaza."

He did not give details on how much aid or what aid would be delivered to civilians.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said two Qatari Air Force planes were to land on Wednesday in Egypt with medicines purchased in France based on an Israeli list.
Earlier, Philippe Lalliot, head of France's foreign ministry crisis centre which organises aid efforts, said negotiations had been going on for weeks and the initial idea had come from the families of some of the Israeli hostages.

Specific medical packages for several months, which were put together in France, would be delivered to each of the 45 hostages. The International Committee of the Red Cross will coordinate on the ground.

The U.S. conducted its fourth round of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in just under a week on Wednesday after the Houthis continued targeting commercial vessels, a U.S. official confirmed to CBS News. The strikes targeted several sites that were prepared to launch attacks, according to the official.

Initial reports of the strikes appeared in local sources on social media.

The strikes targeted "14 Iran-backed Houthi missiles that were loaded to be fired in Houthi controlled areas in Yemen," U.S. Central Command said in a statement Wednesday night. "These missiles on launch rails presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and U.S. Navy ships in the region and could have been fired at any time," CENTCOM added.

The Houthis hit a U.S. owned and operated commercial vessel Wednesday, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. There was some damage reported but no injuries.

Eleven days ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham arrived for a private meeting in a lavish tent with ruby red rugs and low burgundy cushions in the western Saudi Arabian oasis town of Al Ula, home to ancient Nabatean ruins. The tent is guarded by layers of Saudi security that protect the nearby winter camp of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was a participant in a series of high-stakes meetings with the crown prince in recent weeks involving American lawmakers and diplomats hoping to rekindle a potential treaty between Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States. Their ambitious goal is to hammer out a framework for concluding the Israel-Hamas war, stabilizing the Middle East and paving the way for some form of Palestinian self-governance in the Gaza Strip.

The big question is: Will the Israeli government — and the Israeli public — accept a path to Palestinian state in exchange for an American-backed peace treaty with Saudi Arabia?

Despite months of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hard-line members of his right-wing coalition publicly dismissing the idea of a Palestinian state after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia that ends the Israel-Hamas war is seen as a potential political win for Netanyahu, according to six people familiar with the talks.

“Any deal for normalization with Saudi Arabia right now would be a major win politically speaking for Netanyahu and an exit strategy,” said Nadav Eyal, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Yediyot Ahronot.

The plans being discussed by Saudi, U.S. and Israeli officials provide a framework for rebuilding Gaza with significant support from neighboring Arab countries; establishing moderate Palestinian leadership for Gaza; as well as ratifying a defense treaty between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that will provide an alliance against their mutual foe Iran, according to people familiar with the talks. Saudi Arabia has insisted that any plan include a realistic pathway to a Palestinian state.

An adviser for a member of Israel’s war Cabinet who asked not to be named said that “if the Saudis come with a deal that is good for Israel, of course we will vote for it.” The adviser, and other Israeli officials, cautioned that the American push is premature because the Israeli public is not ready to discuss Palestinian state in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history.

“The subject of a Palestinian state is too hot to touch in Israel right now,” said a second senior Israeli government official. “People are talking about the war and the hostages, not rewarding the Palestinians. It’s also unclear when and how the war will even end.”

The political obstacles in all three countries are significant. While Saudi Arabia is seen as a potential leader in the effort to create stability in Gaza, the Gulf state is reportedly hoping to secure civilian nuclear technology agreements that would need the approval of the U.S. Congress, according to a former U.S. national security official. Moreover, Saudi Arabia’s insistence that any deal bring with it a realistic pathway to a Palestinian state, echoed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, would be contentious in Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition.

Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

American Visitors
The American push for the deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel aims to build on the Abraham Accords, which established relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020.

“The Abraham Accords were a great first step, but Saudi-Israel normalization is really the brass ring,” said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council. “Saudi Arabia is the most influential nation in the Muslim world, and it’s an incredibly important state in the Middle East because of its size and its wealth.”

Central to this push has been Graham, who has visited Saudi Arabia three times in the last 12 months. Israeli and American officials familiar with the deal said there is a push to get it done while President Joe Biden is in office to secure Democratic votes for a U.S.-Saudi security treaty, while Graham can deliver the Republican votes to reach the 67 needed for ratification in the Senate.

Graham first traveled to Israel to discuss the deal with Israeli leaders, and held a closed-door meeting with Netanyahu on Jan. 4.

Several days after Graham’s visit, Blinken traveled to Al Ula to meet with Prince Mohammed as part of his regional trip that included meetings with Netanyahu and the leaders of other Arab nations.

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee delegation led by Committee Chair Mark Warner, D-Va. that included six senators also visited the crown prince's tent in January. They also met with senior security officials in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, according to a person familiar with the delegation’s trip.

In the wake of the meetings with the Americans, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Prince Khalid bin Bandar, said publicly that the possibility of Saudi normalization with Israel remains alive if the conclusion of the Israel-Hamas war brings with it a realistic path to the creation of a Palestinian state.

“We were close to normalization, therefore close to a Palestinian state,” Bandar told the BBC, referring to the momentum that was building toward normalization of Saudi-Israel relations before the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. “One doesn’t come without the other. The sequencing, how it is managed, that is what was being discussed.”

The normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been years in the making.

“I was in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office four years ago and there was a note from the King of Saudi Arabia,” recounted Israeli broadcast journalist Amit Segal in Jerusalem. “When he made the speech to U.S. Congress about the dangers of Iranian nuclear proliferation, the Saudis saw it and said, ‘I think we can be partners.’”

Israel’s vision for ‘the day after’
Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has so far taken a hard line publicly regarding the war. After his meeting with Graham, he repeated Israel’s war aims of destroying Hamas, freeing the hostages and ensuring that “Gaza does not become a threat again.” Netanyahu did not mention what post-war Gaza’s political status might be.

But the tone adopted by Israel’s war Cabinet officials about “the day after” the war has become more nuanced since mid-December, particularly in the Arabic and English language press. Israeli's national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, in an op-ed published on Dec. 20 in the Saudi-owned Arabic language newspaper Elaph, wrote about partnering with moderate Palestinians and said Israel has no interest in controlling the civil affairs of the Gaza Strip.

“This will require a moderate Palestinian governing body that enjoys broad popular support and legitimacy,” Hanegbi wrote. “It is not for us to determine who this body will be.” Hanegbi and other Israeli officials have not been clear about what role, if any, the Palestinian Authority, which governs the occupied West Bank, can play in governing Gaza.

Five days later, on Christmas Day, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Netanyahu introducing the idea that once Palestinian society begins a “deradicalization process,” Gaza can be rebuilt.

“I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistakes of Oslo”
Despite his comments in the English language press, Netanyahu has not shied away from hard-line statements in Israel to reassure his political base. In a closed meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in early December, he said that “the mother of all sins was Oslo — not the deal itself, but the fact that they took the most anti-Zionist element and brought it here,” according to Israeli press reports of the meeting.

Netanyahu doubled down two days later, saying that he had “disagreement” with the Biden administration about “the day after Hamas.”

“I wanted to clarify my position,” he said. “I will not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo.”

Daniel Silverberg, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security who served as national security adviser to then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., expressed frustration with Netanyahu. “From an American perspective Bibi’s posture is really frustrating,” he said. “Bibi publicly, and I think privately, keeps saying ‘my hands are tied and my coalition would implode if I do anything that’s pro Palestinian Authority or tightens the reins on settlers.’”

The right-wing faction of Netanyahu’s coalition government remains steadfastly opposed to any discussion of a Palestinian state. Numerous Likud members have gone further than Netanyahu’s rhetoric against Oslo, directly rejecting the possibility of a two-state solution.

Silverberg also questioned how realistic it is to expect Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to participate in the rebuilding of Gaza.

Despite all of the challenges, a U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal could be part of an exit strategy from the war and a win for a politically beleaguered Netanyahu.

“It’s the only exit strategy with political appeal for Bibi,” said a former Israeli security official. “It’s just not clear if it’s possible.

Hamas has set a trap in Rafah for the IDF.

Despite reports that the military has an updated operational plan for entering Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, or for at least securing the Egypt/Gaza border, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, there is, at the current time, no immediate decision to move forward

So, why hasn’t the IDF gone into Rafah to date? The reasons evolved, but paradoxically, there are even more problems today with an operation, but it is also more critical than ever.
Initially, the IDF decided to mostly focus its initial invasion on northern Gaza, leaving not only Rafah but also most of Khan Yunis and the rest of southern Gaza untouched.

When Hamas broke the hostage deal in early December, the IDF decided to go after Khan Yunis, moving most of the Palestinian civilians in Khan Yunis even further south – to Rafah. Again, the civilians needed somewhere to go after Israel’s strikes made living there impossible.

But an additional reason the IDF did not want to attack Rafah was that it borders Egypt.
Publicly, Egypt has been highly critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. Yet at the same time, Cairo is a crucial part of negotiations for the hostages and will be essential to the day-after plans for rule in Gaza.

This means that Jerusalem cannot afford to alienate Egypt over tensions regarding its actions in Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor.

Without Egyptian support, the likelihood of a hostage deal drops dramatically, while the likelihood that Israel gets stuck owning and running Gaza against its will rises dramatically.

Egypt not only wants to avoid border clashes, it wants to prevent even the possibility of a rush of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into Egyptian territory.

The Egyptians also do not want to be accused of facilitating and endorsing Israeli control of Gaza, which could lead to them being seen as traitors to the Palestinians.

All of this means that the IDF cannot take significant action in Rafah, or take control of the Philadelphi Corridor, without very careful negotiations with Cairo.

And this was always a problem, as it meant that Rafah could serve as a sanctuary for firing rockets on Israel even as the IDF started to reduce Hamas’s ability to fire rockets from northern Gaza, central Gaza, and Khan Yunis.

But as long as Israel was more confident that Hamas’s leaders and Israeli hostages were in Khan Yunis, there were months to play with in December and January to try to end the war by surrounding the Hamas leadership in its southern capital.

As time has dragged on, with no sign of catching Hamas’s leadership in Khan Yunis after seven weeks of trying, there are greater suspicions that aspects of Hamas’s leadership could be in Rafah, something which was always a concern.

If this is true, Israel may not even have started putting the immediate close-up pressure on Hamas’s leadership necessary to topple it and get a favorable deal for the hostages.

In other words, if Hamas’s leadership is not considering a deal until the IDF is close enough to “knock on its door” – and if some of them are in Rafah, which has gone mostly untouched – then all of the power and pressure thrown at Khan Yunis will not achieve a decisive turning point any more than taking control of northern Gaza did.

Will Hamas Fold?
There are top defense officials who believe now that Rafah’s population has shot up from around 200,000 to over a million, the suffering and poverty of the population will pressure Hamas into folding.

But why would the religiously fanatical Hamas leadership care more about “mere” starvation and poverty for its population when it has not blinked from around 24,000 of them dying, including at least 9,000 of its fighters?

Many observers believe the opposite is true: that Hamas is cynically thrilled when its population is in desperate straits, because this wins more global sympathy and brings more pressure on Israel to end the war.

So let’s say Israel finally realizes it needs to act in Rafah, or at least secure the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent Hamas from escaping and stop a smuggling and rearming process.

To do that, the government will need to: a) end its delay and decide what day-after policy it will pursue, since Egypt will not cooperate without a satisfactory long-term vision; 2) figure out how to act without killing Palestinian civilians within the most crowded Gaza situation it has yet confronted, with little evacuation options; and c) decide what it will do if and when it finds any of Hamas’s leadership surrounded by hostages.

This is the trap that Hamas has set for the IDF.

Inside the effort to create a far-reaching U.S.-Saudi-Israeli pact to end the war

While the article notes the Israeli public not being in the mood to accept a Palestinian state after 10/7 will the Palestinians after tens of thousands of deaths and everything leveled be willing to accept anything less then from the River to the Sea never mind a Saudi/American imposed “moderate” government? Iran and its proxies are still be doing everything they can to scuttle any deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state once the conflict in Gaza comes to an end.

In a news conference, a defiant Mr Netanyahu vowed to press on with the offensive in Gaza "until complete victory": the destruction of Hamas and return of the remaining Israeli hostages, adding that it could take "many more months".

During Thursday's news conference, he said Israel must have security control over all land west of the River Jordan, which would include the territory of any future Palestinian state.
"This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty. What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel's security," he said.

Mr Netanyahu has spent much of his political career opposing Palestinian statehood, boasting just last month that he was proud to have prevented its establishment, so his latest remarks come as no surprise.

But the very public rebuttal of Washington's diplomatic push, and determination to stay the current military course, show the chasm widening with Israel's western allies.

Responding to Mr Netanyahu's latest comments, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his government would not stop working towards a two-state solution, adding there would be "no reoccupation of Gaza."

Israel's prime minister's comments will please his dwindling support base and the far-right ministers who prop up his government.

But they will dismay those at home and abroad who are increasingly horrified by the human cost of this war. Recent polls show most Israelis want him to prioritise bringing the remaining hostages home over the potentially impossible aim of destroying Hamas.

This article seems misleading to me ..! that i clicked on from above post ??.?
About a trap being set . concerning Hamas tricking IDF into having to control Gaza
.......................................................
" Without Egyptian support, the likelihood of a hostage deal drops dramatically and the likelihood that the Jewish state gets stuck owning and running Gaza against its will rises dramatically."

This seems to be obvious propaganda to me by supposably some Israeli source IMHO .....
Israel , wants , and feels need to take over Gaza for its real estate value ! ! ! !, When you calculate all the facts and figures this appears to be the intended net result of this activity . Decorated up to be a bad guy/ Good guy Act .
In it outward appearances .To Me. ( IMHO )