Orientul Mijlociu

On the day after Abu ‘Obaidah, the spokesperson for Hamas’ Al-Qassam Islamic Brigade, mentioned the death of the 19-year-old Israeli soldier, “originally from Morocco” as she had described herself in an earlier video clip, I was chatting with my sister, who happened to be in Morocco, and naturally asked her what the news outlets there were saying about Abu ‘Obaidah’s broadcast. She had just been reading the local newspaper (Al Akhbar) and told me with consternation that news about the war on Gaza was buried on page 12 of the newspaper.

On November 17, 2023, Palestinian sources reported that Hamas official Ahmad Bahr was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.[1] Bahr, 76, was a member of Hamas’s political bureau and former deputy chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Khaled Abu Hilal, the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Freedom Movement, was separately reportedly killed in an airstrike.[2]

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah had fired 1,000 munitions at Israel since October 7 when the Israel-Hamas war broke out in Gaza, and warned that Tehran was increasing its attacks against Israel.

Un grand nombre de soldats israéliens ont été tués à Beit Hanoun alors que plus loin, à Sdérot les sirènes d’alarme ont retenti suite à l’explosion d’un drone israélien abattu par le Hezbollah.

Ce samedi 18 novembre, les combattants de la Résistance palestinienne ont tué de nombreux soldats israéliens dans la ville de Beit Hanoun, a rapporté le correspondant de la chaîne Al-Mayadeen à Gaza.

While the southern port city of Eilat has largely been quiet since the beginning of the war, being 175 miles away from the Gaza strip, events in recent days seemed to have disturbed the serene and laid back nature of Israel’s most prominent vacation spot, courtesy of none other than Yemen’s Islamist political and armed organization that emerged from the Yemeni governorate of Saada in the 1990s, called Ansar Allah, also knows as the Houthis.

Michael Rose, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, calls for the U.S. to deploy one or both U.S. Navy hospital ships to the coast of Gaza to treat Palestinian children ages 15 and under. I always welcome any attempt at a constructive solution, and this proposal would likely do some good — helping save lives among the indisputably genuinely innocent Palestinians, with certain precautions in place to ensure Hamas doesn’t attempt to get care for its injured combatants.

On November 11, 2023, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Amal Movement announced that one of its operatives, ‘Ali Jamil Al-Hajj Dawoud, had been targeted in an act of “direct aggression by the oppressive Israeli enemy” in the Rab El Thalathine village of southern Lebanon, leading to his “martyrdom” and the injury of two other “mujahideen.” The announcement stated that Dawoud was born in 1988 in the village of Mlikh, Jezzine district.[1]

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s close relations with Hamas, the public record of which goes back nearly 20 years, appear to have been largely unaffected by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. While there are rumors that Isma’il Haniyeh, who has since 2017 been chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, was in Istanbul on October 7, and reports that Erdoğan thereafter asked him and the rest of Hamas to leave Turkey, the veracity of these claims remains unclear.

The party may escalate on the southern border with Israel, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will reach the level of bombing cities.

The speech last week of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah left many in Lebanon and beyond relieved, as he defended his organization’s limited engagement in the Gaza war and called the Lebanese front against Israel a “solidarity and support” front. Nasrallah did so mostly to underline the party’s secondary role in the conflict, in which Palestinian fighters are taking the lead.