• An Arab diplomatic source told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that “countries in the region and Israel agree to apply additional pressure on Hamas … to push it to agree to essential concessions.” Hamas leadership reportedly rejected a proposal for a cease-fire in exchange for exiling senior officials from Gaza. Later on Wednesday, Hamas said that cease-fire talks are ongoing and that it is open to discussing any proposal.
• Hamas official Basem Naim said that “no one will accept a situation in which the agreement will only be a temporary period of calm, in which the hostages… will be released in exchange for food and drink, and after that the fighting will resume along with plans for expulsion.”
• PM Netanyahu said at the Knesset that “the more Hamas persists in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the pressure against them will be. And I say this to Hamas – that includes seizing territory, and other things that I will not detail here.”
• Ilana Gritzewsky, released from Hamas captivity during the November 2023 cease-fire, told the New York Times that she had fainted before being taken across the Israel-Gaza border, only to awake lying on the floor in a dilapidated building, with her shirt lifted and her pants unbuttoned, surrounded by armed terrorists standing above her.
• Yizhar Lifshitz, the son of slain hostage Oded Lifshitz, spoke at a pro-hostage deal rally at Hostage Square and accused the media of significantly reducing its coverage of the hostage crisis: “Does this reflect the people’s sense of concern, pain, and frustration that 59 of our brothers are languishing in the Hamas tunnels?”
• Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told Sweden’s foreign minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard, during a meeting on Tuesday that Israel is allowing truce negotiations “to reach their limits” to come to an agreement on extending the cease-fire and releasing hostages, “however, we will not wait indefinitely.” He also said that by insisting on holding the hostages and refusing to demilitarize Gaza, Hamas is the one pushing to resume the war.

“Everyone in Netanyahu’s coalition thinks that he will continue the fighting in Gaza and that the only chance of bringing the hostages home is if the Hamas leadership agrees to go into exile. The plain meaning of this is that the abandonment of the hostages and the abuse of their families will continue” – Ravit Hecht

■ GAZA: The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry said 38 people were killed and 124 injured in the past 24 hours. According to the ministry, 50,183 people have been killed and 113,828 wounded in Gaza since the war began.

• The IDF said that two rockets were fired from Gaza toward Israel, triggering sirens in border communities. One was intercepted, and one fell in an open area. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the launch.
• Following the launch, the IDF’s Arabic spokesman called on residents of several Gaza City neighborhoods to evacuate south: “This is a preliminary and final warning before the strikes. Terror organizations are once again firing their rockets from within civilian areas.” The IDF later said it killed “a terrorist responsible for launching rockets.”
• Hundreds of Gazans demonstrated against the war and Hamas in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia on Tuesday. A protester in northern Gaza told Haaretz that the demonstration began spontaneously, out of what he said was a “sense of despair, due to their inability to endure the continuation of the war.”
• The resident added that the protest “can’t succeed without a horizon – and this horizon doesn’t depend just on Hamas, but also on Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the world, including the Arab world.” He also said that “Israel offers nothing but killing, shelling, and a blockade,” noting that protests against Hamas do not indicate any support for Israel.
• A tribal leader who participated in the demonstration said that the people of Gaza would prefer any government over Hamas – even an international regime that bears no connection to the region, adding that Gazans “want to live like all other people in the world live.”
• In a statement, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Gazans that the IDF’s operations will expand to more areas in the Strip, saying they “will be required to evacuate and lose more and more territory. The plans are already prepared and approved.” Katz suggested that Gazans “demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza” and the immediate release of all the hostages, as “this is the only way to stop the war.”

■ ISRAEL: Netanyahu’s office said that the PM was informed by Israel’s security establishment that in March of 2022, Hamas diverted $4 million in Qatari funding to its military wing. Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office added that Netanyahu had never been presented with an intelligence document stating that funding transferred to Gaza by Qatar was directed to terrorism.

• The IDF said it will present the findings of its probe into the massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, to survivors, the families of the victims and those taken hostage from the festival next week.
• The IDF presented residents of Kibbutz Nirim with the findings of its probe into Hamas’ October 7 attack on the kibbutz and the fighting that took place there. One of the kibbutz’s residents said that the investigation found that the first wave of terrorists invaded the kibbutz at 6:42 A.M. and that army forces only reached it at 1:24 P.M.

“The day after? Now it is ‘the day after,’ and the war’s only goal is to pay the political bribe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the criminal gang that provides protection for his continuance in power. They demanded it because only this would wipe out the ‘disaster’ of the 2005 pullout from Gaza, return the land thieves to the smoldering lots of Rafah, Khan Yunis and Jabalya and fulfill the dream of the entire land of Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” – Zvi Bar’el

■ U.S.-ISRAEL: The U.S. intelligence community’s annual 2025 report warned that it anticipates “the situation in Gaza, as well as Israel-[Hezbollah] and Israel–Iran dynamics, to remain volatile,” warning that Hamas will continue to pose a threat to Israel’s security “even in degraded form.”

• Flagging Hamas’ retention of its thousands-deep fighting force and much of its underground infrastructure, the report said that Hamas probably used the cease-fire to “reinforce and resupply its military and munitions stock so that it can fight again… Hamas is capable of resuming a low-level guerilla resistance and to remain the dominant political action in Gaza for the foreseeable future.”
• The report added that “low expectations on all sides that a cease-fire will endure and the absence of a credible post-fighting political and reconstruction plan, portend years of instability.”
• On Lebanon, the report said a resumption of protracted Israeli operations in in the country “could trigger a sharp rise in sectarian tension, undermine Lebanese security forces, and dramatically worsen humanitarian conditions.” It further said that “although weakened, [Hezbollah] maintains the capability to target U.S. persons and interests in the region, worldwide, and to a lesser extent – in the United States.”

■ HOUTHIS: The Iran-backed Houthis said that they attacked the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, currently deployed in the Red Sea. According to reports from Al Jazeera, the U.S. military said it attacked dozens of targets across Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen.

The war erupted after 10 months of an intense domestic political and social crisis, due to legislation promoted by the Netanyahu government aimed at dramatically weakening Israel’s judiciary and the prime minister’s corruption trial, amid an escalation of violence between West Bank Palestinians and Israeli settlers, the latter empowered by Israel’s most right-wing government ever.