Latest news with #Unit8200
NDTV
4 days ago
- Politics
- NDTV
Hamas Struck Wrong Army Base In October 7 Attack After Navigation Error: Report
Tel Aviv: Hamas terrorists who infiltrated southern Israel during the October 7, 2023 massacre intended to capture a sensitive military intelligence base but made a critical navigation error that led them to attack the wrong target, according to an Israel Defense Forces investigation published Friday. The probe revealed that 10 Hamas infiltrators on five motorcycles were attempting to reach an intelligence facility located 16 kilometres from the Gaza border when they made a wrong turn at Urim Junction. Instead, they attacked an adjacent Home Front Command base, where eight Israeli soldiers were ultimately killed and several others wounded during a three-hour battle. "As a result, the terrorists carried out a killing spree inside the base until they were eliminated by IDF troops," the investigation stated. The probe concluded that while the defensive actions of soldiers and commanders ultimately foiled Hamas's original plans, "the base's defensive array was not properly prepared to handle such a broad infiltration and attack scenario." The Urim Base complex houses three separate units: the Home Front Command's Southern District headquarters, the 414th Combat Intelligence Collection Unit, and Unit 8200 of the Military Intelligence Directorate, known as Yarkon Base. Unit 8200 functions primarily as Israel's signals intelligence (SIGINT) and cyber intelligence division. Hamas had specifically targeted the intelligence facility, but the terrorists' navigational mistake redirected their assault to the Home Front Command installation. The attack began at 7:26 am when the terrorists detonated an explosive device on the base's eastern fence and breached the perimeter. At the time, only seven soldiers were on guard duty, though protocols called for 12, as it was a holiday weekend with minimal staffing. Two female soldiers who were conducting a shift change immediately took shelter following rocket alerts and remained hidden until the fighting concluded in the afternoon. Meanwhile, the terrorists quickly began their deadly assault, first killing Corporals Lior Levy and Ofir Davidian as they ran toward the command center, followed by Sergeant Itamar Ayash at the armory. The terrorists then methodically advanced toward the command center. At 8:02 am, the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the command center building, hitting a conference room window. They subsequently breached multiple steel doors protecting the facility's nerve center, killing Sergeant Major Aharon Farash, Captain Alina Pravosudova, Sergeant Shir Shlomo, and Sergeant Danit Cohen during intense close-quarters combat. The terrorists spent approximately 10 minutes searching the command center for classified information before departing, unaware they were in the wrong facility entirely. Reinforcements from the neighboring 414th Unit began arriving at 8:15 am, splitting into three teams to engage the attackers. The battle continued for over two hours, with additional forces from elite Unit 5515 and Tzeelim Training Base joining the fight. The last two terrorists were eliminated at 10:40 am while hiding in a bomb shelter near the district commander's office, ending the prolonged engagement. Colonel Asher Benishti, who conducted the year-and-a-half investigation, noted that the probe examined every available source of information, including footage taken by the terrorists themselves, soldiers' text messages, surveillance videos, and radio communications. Friday's report is the latest in a series of detailed army probes -- summaries of which have been released in recent weeks -- of how some 5,000 terrorists from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad managed to attack numerous Israeli communities and overrun the army's border positions. The army's chain of command broke amid the chaos and soldiers were outnumbered. The investigations found that the army misunderstood Hamas's intentions for years, and as October 7 approached, intelligence about the looming attack was misinterpreted. The military was also more focused on threats from Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon. The IDF probes only deal with issues of operations, intelligence and command, not decisions made by the political echelon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted calls for an inquiry, saying he opposes a "politically biased" probe. Critics accuse Netanyahu of delaying the inquiry and trying to water down its mandate. At least 1,180 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas's attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 59 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.
Days of Palestine
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Days of Palestine
Israel Fuels Chaos, Theft in Gaza to Deepen Famine
DaysofPalestine- Influencers, journalists, and cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm over what they describe as a calculated Israeli scheme to destabilize Gaza through orchestrated theft and lawlessness amid the worsening famine. A wave of organized looting targeting food stalls, warehouses, markets, and community kitchens has sparked outrage among residents and observers, who believe the chaos is being weaponized to break Gaza's social fabric under the strain of hunger and siege. While some groups have justified these thefts as acts driven by starvation, many activists insist the operations are far from spontaneous. They point to the use of expensive weapons and coordinated tactics—suggesting a deeper agenda supported or enabled by the Israeli occupation. 'These are not hungry civilians,' said activist Ahmad Al-Homs. 'People truly starving don't carry weapons worth thousands of dollars. This is a planned assault on what little food remains in Gaza.' The alleged looting comes as Gaza faces a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. The Israeli total blockade, paired with ongoing military assaults since March 18, has plunged the strip into what aid agencies describe as near-famine conditions. The blockade was reinstated after Israeli occupation abandoned a two-month ceasefire agreement on January 19. Community Resistance and Warnings of Deeper Plots Digital content creator Mohammed Haniya labeled the thefts 'a calculated attack designed to plunge Gaza into collapse.' He warned that the raids coincide with Israeli escalations, possibly paving the way for a total cut-off of food supplies. Activist Abdullah Salem, whose family has lost 183 members to Israeli attacks, fiercely condemned those he sees as collaborating with the Israeli occupation. 'This isn't hunger. This is betrayal,' he said, accusing some social media pages of promoting theft under false pretenses of humanitarian desperation. Others, like content creators Ahmad Nasser and Mohammed Tartouri, echoed these concerns, identifying repeat offenders at multiple crime scenes and urging communities to form local patrols to defend their neighborhoods. They also called for a coordinated effort by tribal leaders to enforce price controls and take action against profiteering merchants. Cyber Manipulation and Social Engineering Cybersecurity engineer Abdel-Fattah Obeid warned of online disinformation campaigns allegedly operated by Israeli intelligence units like Unit 8200. He claimed that operatives use fake identities and anonymous accounts to sow division, justify theft, and erode Gaza's societal resilience. 'These accounts bear names like 'Martyred Citizen' or 'Oppressed Patriot', but their goal is to manipulate public opinion and create chaos,' Obeid said. 'They cheer when people echo their narratives, believing the disintegration of Gaza can happen from within.' Call to Action: Organize, Protect, Resist Activists are urging families and resistance groups to step up. 'This is not just theft—it's part of a broader plot to spark civil unrest and dismantle community cohesion,' said one local organizer. 'The people of Gaza must act fast to safeguard their homes, families, and the little they have left.' Residents are also being advised to report suspicious behavior to local protection committees and avoid spreading unverified rumors that could deepen mistrust between neighbors. 'This famine is real, but the exploitation of it by infiltrators is equally dangerous,' said community member Abu Muadh Al-Kafarna. 'The starving do not loot computers or steal vehicles. These are saboteurs.' As the siege tightens and humanitarian aid remains blocked, Gazans brace not only for hunger but for a new front in the war—one that targets their unity from within. Shortlink for this post:
Time of India
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Israel's AI experiments in the war in Gaza raise ethical concerns
In late 2023, Israel was aiming to assassinate Ibrahim Biari , a top Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip who had helped plan the October 7 massacres. But Israeli intelligence could not find Biari, who they believed was hidden in the network of tunnels underneath Gaza. #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack India stares at a 'water bomb' threat as it freezes Indus Treaty India readies short, mid & long-term Indus River plans Shehbaz Sharif calls India's stand "worn-out narrative" So Israeli officers turned to a new military technology infused with artificial intelligence, three Israeli and American officials briefed on the events said. The technology was developed a decade earlier but had not been used in battle. Finding Biari provided new incentive to improve the tool, so engineers in Israel's Unit 8200, the country's equivalent of the National Security Agency, soon integrated AI into it, the people said. Shortly thereafter, Israel listened to Biari's calls and tested the AI audio tool, which gave an approximate location for where he was making his calls. Using that information, Israel ordered airstrikes to target the area on October 31, 2023, killing Biari. More than 125 civilians also died in the attack, according to Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like The Top 25 Most Beautiful Women In The World Car Novels Undo The audio tool was just one example of how Israel has used the war in Gaza to rapidly test and deploy AI-backed military technologies to a degree that had not been seen before, according to interviews with nine American and Israeli defence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the work is confidential. In the past 18 months, Israel has also combined AI with facial recognition software to match partly obscured or injured faces to real identities, turned to AI to compile potential airstrike targets, and created an Arabic-language AI model to power a chatbot that could scan and analyse text messages, social media posts and other Arabic-language data, two people with knowledge of the programs said. Live Events Many of these efforts were a partnership between enlisted soldiers in Unit 8200 and reserve soldiers who work at tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta , three people with knowledge of the technologies said. Unit 8200 set up what became known as "The Studio," an innovation hub and place to match experts with AI projects, the people said. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Yet even as Israel raced to develop the AI arsenal, deployment of the technologies sometimes led to mistaken identifications and arrests, as well as civilian deaths, the Israeli and American officials said. Some officials have struggled with the ethical implications of the AI tools, which could result in increased surveillance and other civilian killings. No other nation has been as active as Israel in experimenting with AI tools in real-time battles, European and American defence officials said, giving a preview of how such technologies may be used in future wars -- and how they might also go awry. "The urgent need to cope with the crisis accelerated innovation, much of it AI-powered," said Hadas Lorber, the head of the Institute for Applied Research in Responsible AI at Israel's Holon Institute of Technology and a former senior director at the Israeli National Security Council . "It led to game-changing technologies on the battlefield and advantages that proved critical in combat." But the technologies "also raise serious ethical questions," Lorber said. She warned that AI needs checks and balances, adding that humans should make the final decisions. A spokesperson for Israel's military said she could not comment on specific technologies because of their "confidential nature." Israel "is committed to the lawful and responsible use of data technology tools," she said, adding that the military was investigating the strike on Biari and was "unable to provide any further information until the investigation is complete." Meta and Microsoft declined to comment. Google said it has "employees who do reserve duty in various countries around the world. The work those employees do as reservists is not connected to Google." Israel previously used conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon to experiment with and advance tech tools for its military, such as drones, phone hacking tools and the Iron Dome defence system, which can help intercept short-range ballistic missiles. After Hamas launched cross-border attacks into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, AI technologies were quickly cleared for deployment, four Israeli officials said. That led to the cooperation between Unit 8200 and reserve soldiers in "The Studio" to swiftly develop new AI capabilities, they said. Avi Hasson, the CEO of Startup Nation Central , an Israeli non-profit that connects investors with companies, said reservists from Meta, Google and Microsoft had become crucial in driving innovation in drones and data integration. "Reservists brought know-how and access to key technologies that weren't available in the military," he said. Israel's military soon used AI to enhance its drone fleet. Aviv Shapira , founder and CEO of XTEND, a software and drone company that works with the Israeli military, said AI-powered algorithms were used to build drones to lock on and track targets from a distance. "In the past, homing capabilities relied on zeroing in on to an image of the target," he said. "Now AI can recognize and track the object itself -- may it be a moving car, or a person -- with deadly precision." Shapira said his main clients, the Israeli military and the U.S. Department of Defence, were aware of AI's ethical implications in warfare and discussed responsible use of the technology. One tool developed by "The Studio" was an Arabic-language AI model known as a large language model, three Israeli officers familiar with the program said. (The large language model was earlier reported by Plus 972, an Israeli-Palestinian news site.) Developers previously struggled to create such a model because of a dearth of Arabic-language data to train the technology. When such data was available, it was mostly in standard written Arabic, which is more formal than the dozens of dialects used in spoken Arabic. The Israeli military did not have that problem, the three officers said. The country had decades of intercepted text messages, transcribed phone calls and posts scraped from social media in spoken Arabic dialects. So Israeli officers created the large language model in the first few months of the war and built a chatbot to run queries in Arabic. They merged the tool with multimedia databases, allowing analysts to run complex searches across images and videos, four Israeli officials said. When Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September, the chatbot analysed the responses across the Arabic-speaking world, three Israeli officers said. The technology differentiated among different dialects in Lebanon to gauge public reaction, helping Israel to assess if there was public pressure for a counterstrike. At times, the chatbot could not identify some modern slang terms and words that were transliterated from English to Arabic, two officers said. That required Israeli intelligence officers with expertise in different dialects to review and correct its work, one of the officers said. The chatbot also sometimes provided wrong answers -- for instance, returning photos of pipes instead of guns -- two Israeli intelligence officers said. Even so, the AI tool significantly accelerated research and analysis, they said. At temporary checkpoints set up between the northern and southern Gaza Strip, Israel also began equipping cameras after the Oct. 7 attacks with the ability to scan and send high-resolution images of Palestinians to an AI-backed facial recognition program. This system, too, sometimes had trouble identifying people whose faces were obscured. That led to arrests and interrogations of Palestinians who were mistakenly flagged by the facial recognition system, two Israeli intelligence officers said. Israel also used AI to sift through data amassed by intelligence officials on Hamas members. Before the war, Israel built a machine-learning algorithm -- code-named "Lavender" -- that could quickly sort data to hunt for low-level militants. It was trained on a database of confirmed Hamas members and meant to predict who else might be part of the group. Though the system's predictions were imperfect, Israel used it at the start of the war in Gaza to help choose attack targets. Few goals loomed larger than finding and eliminating Hamas' senior leadership. Near the top of the list was Biari, the Hamas commander who Israeli officials believed played a central role in planning the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel's military intelligence quickly intercepted Biari's calls with other Hamas members but could not pinpoint his location. So they turned to the AI-backed audio tool, which analysed different sounds, such as sonic bombs and airstrikes. After deducing an approximate location for where Biari was placing his calls, Israeli military officials were warned that the area, which included several apartment complexes, was densely populated, two intelligence officers said. An airstrike would need to target several buildings to ensure Biari was assassinated, they said. The operation was greenlit. Since then, Israeli intelligence has also used the audio tool alongside maps and photos of Gaza's underground tunnel maze to locate hostages. Over time, the tool was refined to more precisely find individuals, two Israeli officers said.
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
How the War in Gaza Drove Israel's A.I. Experiments
In late 2023, Israel was aiming to assassinate Ibrahim Biari, a top Hamas commander in the northern Gaza Strip who had helped plan the Oct. 7 massacres. But Israeli intelligence could not find Mr. Biari, who they believed was hidden in the network of tunnels underneath Gaza. So Israeli officers turned to a new military technology infused with artificial intelligence, three Israeli and American officials briefed on the events said. The technology was developed a decade earlier but had not been used in battle. Finding Mr. Biari provided new incentive to improve the tool, so engineers in Israel's Unit 8200, the country's equivalent of the National Security Agency, soon integrated A.I. into it, the people said. Shortly thereafter, Israel listened to Mr. Biari's calls and tested the A.I. audio tool, which gave an approximate location for where he was making his calls. Using that information, Israel ordered airstrikes to target the area on Oct. 31, 2023, killing Mr. Biari. More than 125 civilians also died in the attack, according to Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor. The audio tool was just one example of how Israel has used the war in Gaza to rapidly test and deploy A.I.-backed military technologies to a degree that had not been seen before, according to interviews with nine American and Israeli defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the work is confidential. In the past 18 months, Israel has also combined A.I. with facial recognition software to match partly obscured or injured faces to real identities, turned to A.I. to compile potential airstrike targets, and created an Arabic-language A.I. model to power a chatbot that could scan and analyze text messages, social media posts and other Arabic-language data, two people with knowledge of the programs said. Many of these efforts were a partnership between enlisted soldiers in Unit 8200 and reserve soldiers who work at tech companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta, three people with knowledge of the technologies said. Unit 8200 set up what became known as 'The Studio,' an innovation hub and place to match experts with A.I. projects, the people said. Yet even as Israel raced to develop the A.I. arsenal, deployment of the technologies sometimes led to mistaken identifications and arrests, as well as civilian deaths, the Israeli and American officials said. Some officials have struggled with the ethical implications of the A.I. tools, which could result in increased surveillance and other civilian killings. No other nation has been as active as Israel in experimenting with A.I. tools in real-time battles, European and American defense officials said, giving a preview of how such technologies may be used in future wars — and how they might also go awry. 'The urgent need to cope with the crisis accelerated innovation, much of it A.I.-powered,' said Hadas Lorber, the head of the Institute for Applied Research in Responsible A.I. at Israel's Holon Institute of Technology and a former senior director at the Israeli National Security Council. 'It led to game-changing technologies on the battlefield and advantages that proved critical in combat.' But the technologies 'also raise serious ethical questions,' Ms. Lorber said. She warned that A.I. needs checks and balances, adding that humans should make the final decisions. A spokeswoman for Israel's military said she could not comment on specific technologies because of their 'confidential nature.' Israel 'is committed to the lawful and responsible use of data technology tools,' she said, adding that the military was investigating the strike on Mr. Biari and was 'unable to provide any further information until the investigation is complete.' Meta and Microsoft declined to comment. Google said it has 'employees who do reserve duty in various countries around the world. The work those employees do as reservists is not connected to Google.' Israel previously used conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon to experiment with and advance tech tools for its military, such as drones, phone hacking tools and the Iron Dome defense system, which can help intercept short-range ballistic missiles. After Hamas launched cross-border attacks into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages, A.I. technologies were quickly cleared for deployment, four Israeli officials said. That led to the cooperation between Unit 8200 and reserve soldiers in 'The Studio' to swiftly develop new A.I. capabilities, they said. Avi Hasson, the chief executive of Startup Nation Central, an Israeli nonprofit that connects investors with companies, said reservists from Meta, Google and Microsoft had become crucial in driving innovation in drones and data integration. 'Reservists brought know-how and access to key technologies that weren't available in the military,' he said. Israel's military soon used A.I. to enhance its drone fleet. Aviv Shapira, founder and chief executive of XTEND, a software and drone company that works with the Israeli military, said A.I.-powered algorithms were used to build drones to lock on and track targets from a distance. 'In the past, homing capabilities relied on zeroing in on to an image of the target,' he said. 'Now A.I. can recognize and track the object itself — may it be a moving car, or a person — with deadly precision.' Mr. Shapira said his main clients, the Israeli military and the U.S. Department of Defense, were aware of A.I.'s ethical implications in warfare and discussed responsible use of the technology. One tool developed by 'The Studio' was an Arabic-language A.I. model known as a large language model, three Israeli officers familiar with the program said. (The large language model was earlier reported by Plus 972, an Israeli-Palestinian news site.) Developers previously struggled to create such a model because of a dearth of Arabic-language data to train the technology. When such data was available, it was mostly in standard written Arabic, which is more formal than the dozens of dialects used in spoken Arabic. The Israeli military did not have that problem, the three officers said. The country had decades of intercepted text messages, transcribed phone calls and posts scraped from social media in spoken Arabic dialects. So Israeli officers created the large language model in the first few months of the war and built a chatbot to run queries in Arabic. They merged the tool with multimedia databases, allowing analysts to run complex searches across images and videos, four Israeli officials said. When Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September, the chatbot analyzed the responses across the Arabic-speaking world, three Israeli officers said. The technology differentiated among different dialects in Lebanon to gauge public reaction, helping Israel to assess if there was public pressure for a counterstrike. At times, the chatbot could not identify some modern slang terms and words that were transliterated from English to Arabic, two officers said. That required Israeli intelligence officers with expertise in different dialects to review and correct its work, one of the officers said. The chatbot also sometimes provided wrong answers — for instance, returning photos of pipes instead of guns — two Israeli intelligence officers said. Even so, the A.I. tool significantly accelerated research and analysis, they said. At temporary checkpoints set up between the northern and southern Gaza Strip, Israel also began equipping cameras after the Oct. 7 attacks with the ability to scan and send high-resolution images of Palestinians to an A.I.-backed facial recognition program. This system, too, sometimes had trouble identifying people whose faces were obscured. That led to arrests and interrogations of Palestinians who were mistakenly flagged by the facial recognition system, two Israeli intelligence officers said. Israel also used A.I. to sift through data amassed by intelligence officials on Hamas members. Before the war, Israel built a machine-learning algorithm — code-named 'Lavender' — that could quickly sort data to hunt for low-level militants. It was trained on a database of confirmed Hamas members and meant to predict who else might be part of the group. Though the system's predictions were imperfect, Israel used it at the start of the war in Gaza to help choose attack targets. Few goals loomed larger than finding and eliminating Hamas's senior leadership. Near the top of the list was Mr. Biari, the Hamas commander who Israeli officials believed played a central role in planning the Oct. 7 attacks. Israel's military intelligence quickly intercepted Mr. Biari's calls with other Hamas members but could not pinpoint his location. So they turned to the A.I.-backed audio tool, which analyzed different sounds, such as sonic bombs and airstrikes. After deducing an approximate location for where Mr. Biari was placing his calls, Israeli military officials were warned that the area, which included several apartment complexes, was densely populated, two intelligence officers said. An airstrike would need to target several buildings to ensure Mr. Biari was assassinated, they said. The operation was greenlit. Since then, Israeli intelligence has also used the audio tool alongside maps and photos of Gaza's underground tunnel maze to locate hostages. Over time, the tool was refined to more precisely find individuals, two Israeli officers said.
Express Tribune
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Nearly 140,000 Israelis sign petition urging hostage deal to end Gaza war
Listen to article Israeli signers of petitions demanding captives' return in exchange for ending war on Gaza jump to 140,000 Signatories include thousands of former soldiers, senior military officials, and civilians demanding a hostage deal over continued fighting The number of Israelis who signed petitions demanding the return of captives from Gaza even at the cost of halting the war climbed to nearly 140,000 as of Saturday, according to the campaign, which is gaining momentum across Israeli society. The movement, coordinated through the website Restored Israel, reflects growing frustration over the government's military strategy and its failure to secure the release of captives. In the past 24 hours alone, over 10,000 new signatories joined the campaign. As of early Saturday, the total number of signatures had reached 138,434, up from 128,114 on Friday. The number is expected to continue rising. According to the platform, the number of petitions available for public signature rose from 47 on Friday to 50 by Saturday, including 21 launched by former or reserve members of the Israeli military. Despite warnings from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, more active and former military personnel are joining the initiative. Netanyahu had previously threatened to dismiss soldiers who speak out against the war or publicly support petitions aimed at halting the conflict. While the majority of signatories are civilians – 127,255, according to the latest data – 11,179 military figures have also signed. Among the civilian signatories are 73,599 Israeli citizens, 1,500 parents of active-duty soldiers, and 1,300 relatives of soldiers killed in combat. The campaign has also attracted widespread support across society, including teachers, academics, doctors, artists, lawyers, and tech professionals. Among military reservists and retirees, paratroopers are the largest group to sign the petitions, with 2,151 signatures, followed by 1,700 former members of the Armored Corps, 1,600 from the military intelligence's Unit 8200, 791 from special forces, 612 from the artillery division, 553 from the elite Golani Brigade, and 312 from the naval commando unit Shayetet 13. Several prominent former military leaders have also signed the petitions, including former Prime Minister and Chief of General Staff Ehud Barak, former Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, former Southern Command head Amram Mitzna, former Central Command head Avi Mizrahi, and former military intelligence chief Amos Malka. On Friday, Israeli media reported that the government had begun taking disciplinary action against military doctors who had signed the petitions. The move follows Netanyahu's recent claim that the signatories are engaging in insubordination with the support of foreign-funded organizations aiming to topple his government, which has been in power since late 2022. Israel currently believes that 24 of the 59 remaining hostages in Gaza are still alive. At the same time, more than 9,500 Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli jails, with numerous reports of torture, starvation, and medical neglect leading to the deaths of detainees. An initial ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement between Hamas and Israel, brokered by Egypt and Qatar with American backing, began on Jan. 19 and was violated by Israel in mid March. More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in a brutal Israeli onslaught since October 2023, most of them women and children. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.
