for News' ongoing coverage of Israel at war. I'm Ariel Liding, continuing in Southern Gaza, concentrating on Hamas' main stronghold of Khan Yunus. The IDF says it hit 30 significant Hamas targets, consisting of underground facilities as well as weapons depots. This combined with tactical strikes against real-time battlefield targets, forces from the Maglan unit directing a drone strike on 10 Hamas terrorists operating in rocket launchers. Our troopers directed another strike on Hamas members in a nearby building during an ongoing gun battle. But complicating these matters is Hamas' growing arsenal of more advanced weapons. New evidence shows North Korean-made weapons in the hands of Hamas in Gaza, including military-grade high explosives and RPGs, all of which is far higher quality than Hamas' traditional stock. Other raids have exposed countless stockpiles of Chinese manufactured weapons, ammunitions and communications equipment. It is unknown if they were supplied directly by China or resupplied via Iran. Just yesterday as well, the IDF exposed and destroyed Hamas' cruise missile development program as the group's early displays of long-range precision weapons, as well as a potential strategic game changer. The battle for the North continues to escalate as well amid cross-border fire from the Hezbollah terror group that damaged an air traffic control base in the North. Here in the day, the Hezbollah anti-tank missile hit the northern city of Kiryat-Shmona, the IDF-strucked series of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon this morning, including a military base there. Defense Minister Yoham Galant has warned Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah that the destruction of Gaza can easily be copied in Beirut. And joining us now from Israel's southern border is our I-24 News correspondent Pierre Kloschenler. Pierre, walk us through what the latest developments in Gaza are. Okay, we're just between Kibbutz, Kfar-Aza, and Kibbutz-Nachal-Oz, which were really hard hit during the October 7th massacre. But the area is calm now. It's under full IDF operational control in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip. And you can see a farmer from either Nachal-Oz or Kfar-Aza, who's spraying water on this man-cured wheat field, which will serve as fodder for the beasts. Now it's a wheat field with no irrigation. But because of the drought here in this area, it has to spray water. And you can see behind him the destruction in the northern sector of the Gaza Strip, the area of the Hezbollah refugee camp, Shejaia for the left to your monitor. And you hear from time to time the sound of an outgoing artillery fire. And yet the IDF is trimming its forces here and operating in a mode of raids on presumed terror targets, on identified terror targets, which means that they're not operating at the division level as they used to, but only at the brigade level, 12 battalions of Hamas have been decimated here. 8,500 terrorists killed, amongst 14,000. Some have surrendered. Others are still acting as isolated cells in this area. But many of them also went south for support to the central and southern sector, where there are 12 battalions spread in the central sector of the refugee camps of Direl Balach, Nusserat, Elborej, Almurazi. And then to the southern city of Hanyunas, where they're operating at the division level. And then at the border town of Rafah, there's also four brigades of Hamas. But that town has been only hit with aerial strikes because of the sensitivity of the location of Rafah on the Egyptian border. And that means that there need to be some sort of diplomatic agreement between Israel, Egypt, the U.S. in order to act on Rafah. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for that report from the front. We are going to continue our discussion of Gaza, and that is because Defense Minister Joav Galant has said today that Israel will soon end high-intensity operations in the northern part of the Gaza Strip and move to another longer-form kind of warfare. The Chief of Staff giving his estimate as to how long that stage could take. Well, I-24 News Senior Defense correspondent Jonathan Rega gives us the details. On the ground, it may look the same. Those operating on the ground clearly sound the same. We're fighting here together with the Armored Corps and the Engineering Corps, and we are ready for every mission. But there is an understanding that the current phase of the fighting in Gaza may be ending and a different kind of fighting may be kicking in. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Israeli Minister of Defense Joav Galant said that in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Israel will soon be shifting from an intensive maneuver to various kinds of special operations. It's expected to be a long process of constant operations in the Strip. The IDF Chief of Staff has no illusions about it ending any time soon. 2024 will be a challenging year. We will certainly be fighting in Gaza during the entire year. There was no formal announcement at the beginning of the ground operation. Don't expect one to announce the move to the next stage of the war. And without that formality, Israel seems to understand the current phase reached its peak, and it may be time to carry out a different approach. And we're going to discuss the war in Gaza so much more with Yaakov Lapin, Military and Strategic Affairs Analyst at the Jewish News Syndicate. Thank you so much for being with us. We're going to discuss a couple of interesting reports that have come out over the course of today, not least of which being only about an hour ago, that Israel knows exactly where Yahya Sinwar is, but can't take the shot because he's surrounding himself with a large number of living hostages. I think that that makes sense. Can't corroborate it, but it makes sense that after this amount of time in which we have special forces and intelligence units operating in Khan Yunus and under Khan Yunus, we know that for weeks the IDF has already been operating in the tunnels, in the strategic tunnels of Hamas, in southern Gaza where the leadership is thought to be hiding. It makes sense that they've built a detailed intelligence picture. So that report adds up. I don't know if they know the exact area or the approximate area. He's probably also moving even if it's locally within southern Gaza. But I think that Israel's intelligence grip on the movements of Hamas's senior leadership is far tighter than what is being released to the public. Is there any means of taking a strike without using an air strike or something? Is there a means they could potentially hit him and not compromise too many hostages? As of now, if it hasn't happened and the location is generally known, I would assume that the answer is no. The use of human shields, the use of the hostages as human shields is actually one of the main reasons why this many hostages were taken in the first place to act as an insurance policy for the Hamas leadership. And that is exactly how they appear to unfortunately be used tragically at this stage in the war. Is there a point where Israeli military leadership just makes a grim calculus and decides to take the shot anyway? I don't think so. Not when there is a high chance of injuring a high number of Israeli civilians who are hostages. One of the main goals of this war is to secure their release. And I don't think that Israel will achieve any kind of victory picture if it ends up taking out both the leadership and too many hostages. That would not be any kind of victory picture. That would be a day of mourning and tragedy. And I think that the Israeli leadership will do everything to avoid that kind of situation. Let's talk about Hamas and their ability that they've been growing stronger ever since the, well, lead up to the war, we should say, showing evidence now of North Korean and Chinese made weapons inside their arsenals, a cruise missile development program exposed just yesterday. These are capabilities nobody thought they had. These are advanced weapons nobody believed they had. And they are showing they have far more power than anybody gave them credit for. Hamas was working on developing precision strike capabilities. These were intelligence assessments in the months leading up to the war. They see Hezbollah in that sense as their older brother. Just like they copied the mass murder raid on October 7th, this was a copy paste of Hezbollah's plan for the Galilee in northern Israel. So too was Hamas inspired by Hezbollah's precision guided missile program. And it doesn't surprise me at all that these capabilities, which were in an early stage of development, are now being discovered as the IDF is scanning through Hamas' workshops and weapons building sites. I mean, from the looks of things, Hamas was building to be a large enough threat to be almost on par with Hezbollah with precision strike capabilities and a large scale arsenal of tools. With the war in Gaza, has that threat been, if not entirely neutralized, at least broken enough to focus more on the northern front now? It's been degraded majorly. We heard the figures. I would estimate that at least half of Hamas' fighting force is now off the battlefield, whether they've been killed or seriously injured or captured. The leadership, even if it wants to give instructions in northern Gaza, they doesn't have the battalion or brigade commanders to receive those instructions and turn them into attacks. So it's lost organized control of northern Gaza. And now we're seeing the battles focus on southern Gaza. But there's no question in my mind that Hamas' capabilities have been severely degraded at this stage. And their ability to build up force is in major doubt right now. As long as the idea remains persistent, as long as it takes control of the Philadelphia Corridor, linking Sinai and Gaza, and as long as it continues security operations as it will do, I'm sure, then Hezbollah will not be able to rebuild those kinds of capabilities going forward. Then that means we have to turn our attention to the north. I'm going to discuss this with you in a brief moment. We have a video report from one of our correspondents on that. The majority of casualties in this war have occurred in and around Gaza. But in recent days, the focus of Israel's conflict has been the northern front. Tensions there are spiking. Following the assassination of Hamas' deputy political leader Salah al-Arouri in Beirut, Hezbollah has sharpened its rhetoric and escalated its cross-border fire. While our correspondent, Robert Swift, breaks this down for us. The United States is clearly worried that the skirmishes on Israel's northern border will tip over into all-out war. We want to do everything possible to make sure that we don't see escalation there. We know that this is not what Israel wants or seeks. It's not what we want or seek. So the question is, in large part, Hezbollah. In the early hours of Monday, Israel conducted extensive air strikes against Hezbollah positions and hardware. This followed the admission by the IDF that the large salvo of rockets and anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah on Saturday had hit home. Hezbollah fired at IDF bases in the north, including the Northern Air Control Unit on Mount Meron. The damage caused will be repaired, and the unit continues to function as its systems were backed up. Hezbollah's strikes were likely a response to the assassination of Hamas' figure Salah al-Arouri, widely blamed on Israel. Both incidents represent an escalation by the warring parties, but so far one that remains under the threshold of full war. While around 80,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes in northern Israel, Jerusalem is determined to push Hezbollah away from its border. I'm suggesting to Hezbollah to learn what Hamas already learned. No terrorist is immune, and we are determined to defend our citizens and return the people of the north to their homes. I am saying this to our enemies and to our friends. Sympathetic to this goal, the US is urging Israel to achieve it through diplomatic means and pressure. A strategy which Israeli leaders say they are willing to try, but not indefinitely. Washington is also concerned about Israel's willingness to rely upon force. With a US intelligence report cited by the Washington Post noting that Israel may struggle to prosecute another front after depleting much of its war resources fighting in Gaza. And we return to Yaakov Lapin in the studio. Yaakov, we just heard Blinken say in that report, it's not in Israel's interest. But Israel's war standing is the highest it's been in a very long time. Israel's north is completely evacuated of people. And leaving Hezbollah on the border is absolutely not in Israel's interest, which means that war kind of is. Look, Israel is a democracy and by nature it seeks peace, always has done and it never actively seeks war. Having said that, we have an intolerable threat to our northern border as you've just pointed out in your question. And the question is what needs to be done to remove that threat? Now, the problem is that this diplomatic so-called arrangement that's being floating around is very deceptive because if it would be implemented, what would happen is that Israel would be put to sleep. It would gain very little because Hezbollah would remain very much on the border. The idea that the RAD-1 unit could actually go back by five kilometers is largely meaningless because it could come right back to the border within a day or two. And meanwhile, southern Lebanon and these 200 Shiite villages, that's the core of Hezbollah's capabilities. That's where the rockets are and the anti-tank units. And Hezbollah's entire civilian military terrorist apparatus is all embedded in southern Lebanon. That's not going anywhere. Hezbollah's not going to be pushing that anywhere. That's their heartland. It's almost a shadow state. So what are these negotiations really about? It's not clear to me, but it's clear to me that Hezbollah would want to put Israel to sleep so that it can probably strike at another time. And that's the situation as far as I can tell. That means Israel has to take the shot, doesn't it? Well, look, there is a complexity here. Israel has to take American pressure into consideration. And what that means at the very minimum is that it has to demonstrate, I think, to the United States that it is not the side that is initiating war, that if it does go to war against Hezbollah, it's because there really was no other choice. And that's one of the reasons, I think, that we're seeing Israel give these diplomatic efforts as unlikely as they seem a chance. And another reason is, I think, tactical. The more units that free up from the Gaza Strip, the IDF units, the more military ground forces will be available for potential northern escalation. That's a tactical consideration. So when we look at the wider picture, it does make sense for Israel to hold off right now. But the question of how long it can continue to hold off is very unclear. And this is probably very time limited. But does that also mean that as long as Hezbollah maintains a lower intensity rate of fire, the United States will never see Israel side as the war with Hezbollah being necessary? Well, I think the United States is almost desperate to avoid this expansion into a regional war. A, because it doesn't want to get sucked into that directly. The US has military bases in Syria and Iraq and naval forces. And it simply does not want to get sucked into this war. It wants to continue to prioritize China and the Far East. And there's an elections coming up, and they're tired of Middle Eastern wars. They have all their reasons. But Israel has a completely different interest and perspective. And that is removing this threat from southern Lebanon. So we do have a divergence of core interests here. And the question of how this divergence is managed is going to require, I think, a real sort of diplomatic skill to avoid a crisis, actually. Because we're seeing a real, I don't see how these two interests can be brought together. Well, almost punctuating our statements, literally as we were speaking, there are some new initial reports that a commander in the Raghwan forces of Hezbollah was just eliminated in an Israeli strike. Which means that regardless of what the United States interests are, things may be escalating. Remember that the Defense Minister here was saying that you'll know that things have gone bad in Lebanon when you start seeing Hezbollah leaders taken out in Beirut. We're pretty close to that from the looks of things. If things begin escalating and it's initiated by Israel, does that mean the United States will not support? I don't know. I honestly don't know how the United States will respond. But I think it will be important for Israel to make it clear to the United States. And it's vital to maintain relations with Israel's superpower ally. There is no major ally alternative. It's only the United States. So it is critical to keep those lines of communications very much open and flowing. And Israel will have to make its case to the United States and make it clear that it does not have the luxury to allow this threat to the north to continue. Regarding Raghwan, I would just point out that most of Hezbollah's casualties until now have not been Raghwan. They appear to have been geographical Hezbollah units that are in any case located in that area. So Raghwan unit is still very much intact. I think that's another thing to keep in mind. I want to just remind our audience that the Raghwan force is Hezbollah's death squads, the equivalent of Hamas's Nukba forces that commit the October 7th massacres and crimes against humanity. I'm going to pass back to you because while we're seeing this develop on the northern front, and the question is, well, how can Israel make that case to the United States, that there was no choice, that it was necessary, you would think the images that we saw in the south of those sadistic crimes would have told the story enough, given that Hezbollah trained for the same thing. But that wasn't enough to convince the United States yet. No. And as a result, we're seeing the United States lead these diplomatic efforts. France is involved as well, and all kinds of things are being floated, none of which really appear to hold up to the test of reality. Who is going to enforce this arrangement? Let's say an arrangement is reached. Let's go with the flow, as they say. Who is going to enforce it? We know that the United Nations can't do it. We know that UNIFIL can't do it. We know that no international force is going to have control of southern Lebanon. We know that every single village in southern Lebanon is a Hezbollah terrorist military base fully embedded into the civilian fabric of life. They control every movement. They know exactly what's going on. How is this going to be enforced? I don't see any answers to those questions, but I'd welcome, you know, anybody who thinks that they do. Absolutely. It is a very difficult battle ahead. I want to return to a statement made by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency yesterday saying that Israel doesn't even have the capability of fighting a war against Hezbollah in Lebanon at the same time as fighting on the fronts in Gaza. When we're talking about 200 terrorist target villages just in southern part of Lebanon as the battlefield, not to mention the leadership hidden in Beirut. Well, is this analysis by the Americans accurate? I don't think so. I think that the idea does have the capability to fight a two-front war. Israel has fought multiple front wars for decades in the 20th century and it's absolutely able to do it now. The question is what kind of military resources will be available to it. So we've already heard Israeli defense officials say that over 50 percent of the Israeli Air Force is currently available and on hold purely for Hezbollah if the order comes in. So that already tells us a lot about air power. It's available and it's an order away from being deployed. And if that were to be activated just that, the level of firepower here I think would be unprecedented in the history of warfare in the Middle East. And ground forces, you know, we do have a number of divisions up north. And I think as time goes by, that readiness will increase as Gaza forces become available. Well, thank you very much for that analysis, Yaakov. Speaking of analysis in the north, the cost of this war has been astronomical, especially for Israel's economy. 350,000 reservists pull out of the workforce. Entire sections of Israel depopulate untold destruction of civilian assets in the north and south. Just how can Israel rebuild itself again after this chaos dies down? Moreover, how can it signal to the global community that the Jewish state is still a safe investment? To answer this, we are joined now by one of Israel's best known investors, Errol Margalit. Thank you for joining us, Errol. I want to start with the big topic. Well, just how is Israel going to rebuild an economy given all the damage it's taken and the international shellacking it's gotten as far as investments goes? Yeah, so it's a big challenge for the high-tech industry in general around Israel. And it's certainly a challenge here in the Galilee. I'm currently in the Futech Climate Tech Center in Kyriachmuna, in a city that's very near the Lebanese border, which is mostly evacuated, Margalit Startup City. And together with the, we're here on a tour today, together with the Kibbutzim, together with the mayor of Kyriachmuna and the head of the Kibbutzim section, because we're in the middle of projects. And we want to make sure that despite of the war, we are continuing to plan the day after with major investments in the Futech category, with major investments in the Climate Tech category. And one of the things that I'm trying to impress upon the government that, yes, it is very important to give a clear answer whether we're engaging in a full-out war, and if we're not, then let's bring this conflict in the North to an end. Let's have a beginning, middle, and end, with a resolution that include both military strength on Israel as part, but also a strong diplomatic maneuver because the people in the North need to come back to their houses within the next amount of weeks, because otherwise the North will be bankrupt, quite frankly. Errol, in addition to everything you've done when it comes out to building our economy in the North, you are a finance guy first and foremost. And you had some interesting ideas on how to also combat the enemies financing and stopping terror groups from getting their hands on cash flows too. Yeah, one of the leading companies that actually originated in Jerusalem, Teter Ray, is actually a company which is identifying drug trafficking, money laundering, but also terror financing. And one of the things that we're impressing upon both Israel but also the U.S. and some of the other banks and the other international community is that terror is not only guns and weapons and missiles and underground tunnels. Terror is also money and organizations that have a lot of money to spend, both in terms of recruiting the terror paying them a monthly salary. It's very mundane, but also building the tunnels and getting the ammunition from different sources. That's what you need to stop. The battle needs to be on the ground with the military, but also a sophisticated battle to stop the financing of terror organization, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Qasbah, or whether it's even Iran itself which is standing behind these proxy military states in Gaza and unfortunately Lebanon as well. And we're going to continue that just a little bit because you've also had some thoughts on the day after the war. What rebuilding is going to look like? And can you even build an economy in Gaza that gives them something to lose while also not letting them build up a military stockpile again? Well, let's talk about Gaza, but let's primarily talk about the Gal, which I'm here for and I'm meeting so many of the people who are leaders in the Gal today and I'm getting quite a bit of inspiration from them and I want to talk about them. But with respect to Gaza, the idea is that in conjunction with the military force that's being operated, Israel needs a diplomatic strategy with the leading Arab states that we have strong cooperation with economically, whether it's Egypt, whether it's the UAE, whether it's Saudi Arabia, whether it's Bahrain. Israel needs to help at the second stage or the day after being built together with the Palestinian Authority. I don't think that we need to play games. There's not another organization among the Palestinians that is used to taking responsibility and cooperating on a security level with Israel, but the Palestinian Authority. So even though they're not perfect and somebody may want to bring new people and new ideas and they want to watch the corruption or you don't want corruption to happen there, they are the organization that can stand with international support in order to start building a process for the day after and Israel needs to be involved because the day after is also that administration that you put in Gaza. Errol, I'm going to have to interrupt you right now because we are about to go on a break, but let's definitely continue this discussion as soon as we come back. So bear with me for about three minutes. That's the length of our break as soon as we get back. This discussion and so much more. Israel is in a state of war. Families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where is she as our soldiers are fighting on the front lines, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. Thank you all for staying with us when we left off. We were in the middle of a discussion with Errol Marguliet, one of Israel's biggest investors, as well as a former member of parliament, discussing the role of the Arab world and Israel's security partners in the region in building a lasting peace in Gaza in the aftermath of this war and helping to manage this crisis in general. I think that you have very powerful countries right around you and you have Egypt, which is probably the most stable country that of course has a border with Gaza and has a lot to say, has very strong security cooperation with Israel and has a strong authority when it comes to Gaza. You also have the UAE. The UAE is Israel's strongest economic partner. We have about 12 companies operating there, both in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and we have broad cooperation, whether it's cybersecurity or fintech or climate tech or food tech. And I think that the UAE, one of the advantages that you have with a country like that is that they're very innovative in the way that they want to support things economically, and they tie between economy and politics. And the thing is that having a moderate organization in Gaza that builds the schools, the hospitals, the places of prayer, everything that you need to build for the citizens and not as a cover for underground military activity is going to be something that the people of Gaza deserve and Israel deserves as a neighbor of Gaza. And so I think that having people like that involved is important. Last but not least is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and Israel behind the scenes, quietly, we have strong economic cooperation that we're beginning to build. We see the Saudis as one of the main or main countries in the region that's leading the region to a region that is looking for prosperity, looking for innovation, looking for blooming the desert and looking for initiating large projects. That's exactly what Israel has in mind. And using that power with Saudi Arabia is mastering to help the region move to the next stage is going to be critical as well. All of that with moderate Palestinians that we are working with in Jerusalem that we're working with in the West Bank, you have to remember, not all Palestinians are extremists. There are many. The majority of the Palestinians want to build their lives and they want to have an administration that helps them do that. Erol, for our last topic, I want to jump back to something that's closer to your heart and your main passion right now. That's the tech sector. One of the things that you've been speaking about is the role that the tech sector has been playing in this conflict itself and in the post-conflict aftermath. Let's talk about just how they're helping manage things. Well, first of all, the fact that a lot of our companies are thriving, are making the international connections, are making the connections in the region itself and are building strong international alliance, that serves as the base for Israel's economy on the day after. And that serves as the base for a lot of Israel's diplomacy. Because what you want is you want an Israel that talks to the countries in Europe, the countries in Asia, the countries in North America, about innovation, about cooperation, about win-win strategies. And the high tech sector is probably the symbol of an Israel that's creative, that's cooperating. And Israel also knows how to fight when you need to, but also build on winning strategies that you could build on for the day after. The day after is the high tech economy that needs to be leading, because you need innovation and you need imagination to envision a little bit of a different reality after we just, we're just having here with us. Well, Errol, thank you very much for helping present a vision for the day after and maybe some hope on the horizon after a few months of nightmares. When you're here in the galley, you are filled with hope. It's beautiful and we're looking forward to doing great things here in the galley. There's amazing people and the young people in Israel need to consider the galley as their next place to live after the war. Absolutely, thank you very much, Errol. That said, the day after the war will only come after the war for so many families in Israel. That's a very far, far distance away, particularly if the families of hostages that were taken on October 7th, the hostages and missing families for them, has arranged an event at the site of one of the worst massacres, the Nova Music Festival and our correspondent, Ariel Osirant, was there speaking to family members, some still hoping, all still praying, for their loved ones return. Others, though, are grieving the deaths of those that died in Gaza, but still doing everything they can to return those still among the living. I'll try to imagine the feeling that I'll have when I'll be here. I thought it would be different, but I thought it would be easier because I feel like I know everything here. I saw so many videos and so many pictures and had so many stories that it almost felt like I know everything, but the second I just stepped into this area felt different. For Mikhael Levi, visiting this beautiful wood outside Kibbutzra'im near the Gaza border is an emotional roller coaster. It's the site of the deadly Nova Music Festival. And on October 7th, his brother Ol and sister-in-law Enav arrived just minutes before it was stormed by dozens of Hamas terrorists. Part of his need to know everything, as he describes it, led him to find a video that depicts Ol and Enav's last moments together. They stood close to the wall inside a bomb shelter. I didn't see what happened inside when those monsters threw their grenades and sprayed bullets into the shelter, but I can imagine. I can understand from the stories. He was, she was in front of him. They saw it. They saw his wife being murdered in front of him. And then taken to Gaza. And then taken to Gaza. Mikhael has not heard a word regarding his brother's condition since that day exactly three months ago. All he knows is that Ol was taken alive and uninjured. The reason Ol and Enav arrived in the morning of the party and not the night before when it began was because they wanted to spend the night with their two-year-old son, Almog, who they left at his grandparents before heading out to Re'im at dawn. Now, Almog is essentially an orphan, not knowing if and when his father will return. He misses them. He calls them all the time. He wants to go home. He starts crying when someone mentioned the words dad or mom. It's as simple as that. He can understand that they are not here. Not sure how much of this he can understand, but he understands that they are not here with him. Mikhael is just one sibling of a kidnapped hostage who came to this now hollowed ground for an event arranged by the Hostage Family Forum. This was the dance floor at the Nova Music Festival, where 364 partygoers were murdered, raped and mutilated by Hamas terrorists and Gaza locals on that dreadful October 7th. The area here is thicker. It's genuinely harder to breathe walking through here now. These are their faces. Most of them are gone for good, but for some, there's still hope to return home. But time is running out. Besides a mock bar, bullet shells on the ground, and the playlist from that day blaring in the background, the event also included a speech by 18-year-old Itaeregib, who was taken hostage with his sister Maya from the festival. Both were freed after more than 50 days in the tunnels of Gaza. Some of his friends, who were taken from the party, remain in captivity. I was in captivity for 45 days, and every day there is like forever. The conditions there are very, very hard to survive, very hard. The hostages cannot stay there for one more second. They all have to return home now. Asaf Pozniak lost two of his relatives at the Nova Festival. His sister-in-law's two sisters, Hodaya and Ta'ir, were initially believed missing following October 7th. Their burnt bodies were found six days later in the nearby woods. Since then, Asaf has been very active in the family's forum. From the first week, I've been working like crazy to try and bring Hodaya and Ta'ir. They were at my wedding in June, and I remember thinking how amazing it would be to attend their weddings. Unfortunately, that dream has died. With negotiations over a second phase of hostage release faltering, both Asaf and Michael remain optimistic that the hostages will return and soon. I'm hopeful I wake up every morning with that hope, even when there are more difficult days, in which we hear the terrible news of another hostage killed in captivity. Close to 20 hostages murdered by Hamas and the brave soldiers who risked their lives to bring back the hostages. We expect from the government to present an Israeli initiative to bring back all of the hostages and not to play by Hamas' dune. It's not hope. I know he will be back. It's just a matter of time. That's it. I know he will be back and like I said on stage, I will do everything to bring him back, even if it means to turn the world upside down. Thank you. And the effects of this war have also been seen in European capitals, with pro-Islamist groups and radical new migrants marching in the streets oftentimes in the hundreds of thousands against Israel and bringing the Middle East conflicts to the streets of the Western world. Even as moderate Muslims say that these movements cannot necessarily be negotiated with and will pose a major threat to the West moving forward. We are joined now by Lo'ai Ahmed, a columnist as well as influencer and presenter at the Builders of the Middle East. Thank you very much, Lo'ai, for being with us. I'm glad we have a good working connection this time. I want to address the religious angle of this conflict first. Can this truly be said to be a conflict only on religious grounds? I don't think you can paint it all as a religious conflict because it is also a political conflict, but religion is at the forefront of this conflict because what many people in the West don't understand is that Islam is the system, it is life, it is the system that indoctrinates and permeates every single understanding of life in the Middle East. So when I studied, when I went to school in Yemen, for example, the vast majority of what I learned in school was about Muhammad, Prophet Muhammad, how Islam teaches us to live, how life in every single way should be dictated by Islamic and Quranic thought. And there is no room for any secular thought. There is no room for adapting to or evolving into the modern civilization that we live in in the West. So it is primarily a religious conflict and religion is at the forefront of every single line in the Middle East. And this is also a part of the life that many Muslims and people who have migrated to the West believe in. So 30 out of 31 mosques in Sweden believe that you should not be able to criticize Islam whatsoever. It should be banned to criticize Islam. And that just comes to show that majority of the people, majority of Muslims who move to the West do not adhere to the values and the belief systems of the West. In fact, they want to change the West. They want the West to become more like the Middle East, to become more Islamic. Many Muslims say that they're not happy in the West and they want the West to become more like the Middle East. And that is a problem that Muslims themselves and Arabs and immigrants have to fight back against. Because many of the people who flee these countries do not understand that the Islamic system is one of the reasons that the Middle East looks the way it is. It is why we run away from the Middle East, so to speak. So it is why moderate Muslim, secular Muslims, ex-Muslims and Muslims who are tired of the destruction and the terrorism in the Middle East run away from it. And they cannot come to the West and have to face the same kind of Islamic dogma in the West. So it is something that the West has to start fighting against because I believe that there is no really major awakening of the threat that lies at the hands of Islamists. We see how Islamists in London, in Stockholm, in Vienna go out on the streets and scream to eradicate Jews. And the fight that the Jews are fighting is not just about the Jews. It's about homosexuals. It's about women.  It's about the secular journalists in the Middle East who get killed for voicing criticism towards regimes. It's about people who oppose Islamism in the Middle East and the West and get eradicated for just voicing their opposition. So people think that Israel is only trying to eradicate Hamas. But what I do believe is that Israel is fighting against an Islamism that affects every single country in the world that deals with Islamic migration or is populated by Muslims. There is not a single Muslim country in the world where there is freedom of speech, rights for gay people, equality for the sexes. And that is because Islam dictates all of these laws and we cannot live in societies where religion is what dictates the law. Islam has managed to continue dominating the political narrative. People talk about politics. There is no such thing as politics in Yemen and Iran and Saudi Arabia. There's only religion. And politics only comes after religion. Religion is the politics. And this is why a lot of people are not integrating in the West and refuse to integrate because they believe that Islam is the key of living. There is no politics. There are no laws that are above Islam. And it is sad to see that Westerners are succumbing to this out of fear. And I'm happy to see that Israel is not succumbing to this. And the fact that many Western countries want Israel to succumb to Islamic terrorism is just disgusting because they're not the ones who have to live in fear. They're not the ones who have neighbors whose main goal is to eradicate every single one of them. Well, the West does now have many terrorists and Islamists who want to eradicate the West, but they're not organized and they're not living in a victimhood, a bubble that is protected by politics. Not yet, anyway. We can definitely note that Hamas is certainly an Islamist group and most of Israel's enemies today fit the exact same descriptor. But historically, much of the Palestinian terrorism has been motivated strictly by nationalism. Yasser Arafat, the offshoot of the Pan-Arabist movement, which was a secular nationalist movement that was still just as dedicated to the total destruction of Israel and all the Jews within. Even if we discount the Islamism, it certainly seems like the region as a whole will be just as destructive and just as violent towards the Jewish state. Well, of course, Islam is not or the Islamic extremism is not the only problem in the Middle East. Islamic extremism has just taken over the narrative because there is no, there is a vacuum because the Middle East and Muslim countries, Arab countries have still not learned the language of democracy and human rights and freedom of speech and freedom of press. So these are languages that have to be learned through an era of enlightenment, an era of critical thinking, an era of scientific advancements. And the Middle East and Muslim and Arab countries are still not there. They're not learning these languages because they're still at the phase of fighting the Jews, of killing the gays, blaming the gays for the destruction of society, blaming the Jews and the West for the wars in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Sudan and Somalia. They're not ready to look in the mirror and say that we have to work on our interests our issues by ourselves. That no matter even if the West and the Jews hate us, for example, we still have to make sure that we live in prosperous and loving and accepting societies that accept freedom of speech, accept diversity, allow people who don't believe in Islam to exist. I think what happened in the past 30, 40 years is a resurgence of Wahhabism. And that's like the most vile and conservative interpretation of Islam. So yes, nationalist movements can be as aggressive as Islamic movements with trying to eradicate the Jews and kill the gays and oppress the women because the region as a whole has still not evolved into believing in freedom of speech and human rights. So whether it's Islam, I mean, if Islam is not in the Middle East, you would still probably have another religion or another ideology that adapts into the regressive ideas in the Middle East. And the problem here lies at the fact that our leaders refuse to teach and educate our masses with the modern ethical norms that the West has learned throughout the past 100 to 100 years. I mean, the West was not as progressive as it is right now, and it had to go through ages of enlightenment, ages of acceptance, but they also had to go through the dark ages and wars and bloodshed. And sadly, the Middle East is still in that phase of bloodshed and war and conservatism, killing atheists, killing gays, killing people who don't know. I mean, the Middle East is literally growing through the dark ages of the Christians. And I do believe that there is a light of hope in the Middle East because you have movements in Iran of brave women speaking out, removing the Hajjab, risking their lives just to fight for basic human rights and freedom of speech. And that is what we need to amplify. We need to amplify the voices of the women in Iran who are fighting against this. We need to expose the dangers that the Iranian government and the Saudi government and the oppressive Islamic governments continue to push for unwaveringly. I mean, in the Middle East, we do not understand that our main issue is our policies and our masks and our schools and what we teach our children and kids. I mean, I grew up in this society and my entire life has just been about Islam and Prophet Muhammad. I wish that I learned the guitar or learned more science or more maths and what was able to evolve in a way that could make me grow as a human being. But the vast majority of my life has just been indoctrinated by Prophet Muhammad and Islam. And we cannot ignore the fact that Islam has taken such a huge seat in the Middle East and that is detrimental and needs to be fought back. So like I said, we need to amplify the voices of the Muslims, the ex-Muslims, the secular Muslims who are fighting against this atrocious culture because in the West, people just say, oh, well, this is their culture and we have to accept it. Absolutely not. We cannot accept a culture that is dominated by homophobia, misogyny, anti-Semitism. There is no way a culture that is permeated with such aggressive dogmatic beliefs are going to thrive or going to leave away war and arrive at peace. The only way that Europe was able to let go of war and dogma and bloodshed is by adapting these humanitarian concepts. And Gaza, the West Bank, the Middle East, Muslim countries, Arab countries will have to adapt to these modern values. There is no question about that. If they do not, if the Arabs and the Muslims continue to say, well, Prophet Muhammad and the Quran are more important than anything else, then they will continue to live in bloodshed. They will continue to face wars. They will continue to have revolutions of dismay and anger. And this is a realization that needs to come from within. That's why Muslims and ex-Muslims who leave the Middle East, they voice their voices and they say that this needs to stop. And of course, they risk getting killed. In Sweden, Lars Vilks, who was a Swedish artist, he just drew Prophet Muhammad and he had to live under protection for the rest of his life because Muslims cannot accept people drawing Prophet Muhammad. This is an atrocious reality that exists in the Middle East and we need to change it. Louie, in many ways you're echoing what many geopolitical thinkers have called the clash of civilizations. The idea that radical Islam is on a collision course with Western liberalism and that we're going to see this clash play out in the streets of Western nations in the most catastrophic ways imaginable. Do you believe such a clash is something that can still be averted? Ariel, when Rasmus Paladon burned the Quran, when Salwan Mobsky burned the Quran in Sweden, we had hundreds, if not thousands of Muslims going out and turning Sweden upside down, burning hundreds of cars, burning neighborhoods, trying to kill more than 500 police officers because they do not want people to burn the book of Islam. And that is a major clash because in Sweden, you have to have freedom of expression. Freedom of expression and freedom of speech are the main building blocks of Western civilization and Swedish civilization. In Sweden, you can say anything. You can criticize any idea. You can scrutinize religion. You can examine all historical concepts. Anything can happen in Sweden regarding that. And that is the way that it has been for a very long time. After the Islamic migration happened, that has changed now. The Swedish society, the Swedish police, Swedish politicians are in panic mode because they did not know or they did not realize that the vast majority of the people who have moved to the West are not going to change just by setting their foot in Sweden. They're going to continue believing in the same ideologies and the same concepts in the Middle East, in Syria and Edda. So the clash of civilizations is very detrimental to the West, to Sweden, to the Netherlands, to the UK. And we will not be able to avoid this if we do not have an honest and open discussion about the threat that comes from Islamic migration. If we do not talk about how the integration courses and the integration projects that Sweden and other European countries have had have been completely unsuccessful, that there needs to be another alternative in the West to countering this. And in my belief, nationalism is great. We need more nationalism in Sweden and in the West and in Europe because what we're facing, we're not facing teletubbies who are just trying to make us change our values. We're facing people who want to slit our throats if we're criticizing their ideology, if we're criticizing their profit. These are not teletubbies.  So I do believe nationalism is very important in the West because we have to know that what we're fighting for in Sweden and Britain and America are things that Westerners have fought for for generations and for centuries. And we cannot just let them crawl back and take it back seat just because there are people here who do not accept them. If the people who do not accept these values come to the West, they need to get out. They cannot continue to live and try to change the mindset and the politics and the laws of the countries that they move to. Just like if a bunch of Swedes moved to Yemen or Saudi Arabia and started gay clubs and just tried to sell bacon, the governments, they are not going to accept them. They're going to... Well, I would hope that they would just deport them but I believe worse things would happen. And I don't believe in violent policies. I don't believe in regressive policies. But I do believe that just like Sweden now is trying to raise awareness in Sweden and try to tell immigrants that these are our values and this is what we believe in. And if you do not believe in these values, you can go back home. And that's going to be a huge challenge facing not just Sweden but the entire rest of the Western world moving forward. Luay, thank you very much for breaking down exactly the clash of civilizations that we find ourselves in. That said, we are out of time for now but we are going to be back in just three minutes for the breaking news updates at the top of the hour. We'll see you soon. Did you know that Martin Luther King's famous 1968 mountaintop speech was based on his trip to the promised land? Well now, 55 years later, his prophetic words are coming true. Hundreds of African American women took a journey of a lifetime to the holy land. We'll introduce you to the amazing female spiritual and religious leaders who are infusing new energy into the next generation of African Americans. Bridge of Israel at war is the top updates at the beginning of this hour. I'm Ariole Levin Waldman. This has been a very important update within the past 30 minutes. A top Hezbollah commander has just been eliminated in Lebanon in a presumed Israeli airstrike with Sam Altawil was one of the most senior commanders of the Radwan Force. Hezbollah has already said his killing is a painful blow for the group, one that will herald escalation. This is coming as the battle for the North continues to escalate as is. Amidst cross-border fire from the Hezbollah terror group this morning and fire that damaged an air traffic control base in the North earlier in the day, Hezbollah anti-tank missiles hitting Kiryat Shmona, the city in the North and the IDF striking a series of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as of this morning, including military bases. Defense Minister Yoav Galat has warned Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah that the destruction of Gaza can easily be copied in Beirut. The question now is not if the battle will begin but when the northern front will become a full blown war. The United States is clearly worried that the skirmishes on Israel's northern border will tip over into all out war. We want to do everything possible to make sure that we don't see escalation there. We know that this is not what Israel wants or seeks. It's not what we want or seek. So the question is in large part Hezbollah. In the early hours of Monday, Israel conducted extensive airstrikes against Hezbollah positions and hardware. This followed the admission by the IDF that a large salvo of rockets and anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah on Saturday had hit home. Hezbollah fired at IDF bases in the north including the Northern Air Control Unit on Mount Meron. The damage caused will be repaired and the unit continues to function as its systems were backed up. Hezbollah's strikes were likely a response to the assassination of Hamas figure Salah Al-Aroori, widely blamed on Israel. Both incidents represent an escalation by the warring parties. But so far, one that remains under the threshold of full war. While around 80,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes in northern Israel, Jerusalem is determined to push Hezbollah away from its border. I'm suggesting to Hezbollah to learn what Hamas already learned. No terrorist is immune. And we are determined to defend our citizens and return the people of the north to their homes. I'm saying this to our enemies and to our friends. Sympathetic to this goal, the US is urging Israel to achieve it through diplomatic means and pressure. A strategy which Israeli leaders say they are willing to try, but not indefinitely. Washington is also concerned about Israel's willingness to rely upon force. With a US intelligence report cited by the Washington Post noting that Israel may struggle to prosecute another front after depleting much of its war resources fighting in Gaza. And we are joined now by Chuck Freilich, former Israeli Deputy National Security Advisor and Senior Fellow at the International Settlement for the NSS Institute and Miriam Institutes as well. Chuck, thank you so much for being with us. Given everything we've just seen over the past week or so, is it safe to say the situation in the north is finally escalating into the sum of all fears? Well, it's a difficult question and a difficult question what we as Israel should want to happen there. Now, I think all of us would like to see a fundamental change in the situation, which is a very, very difficult one for the residents of the north in particular. And the common wisdom is that they cannot return until the situation changes. But if the war in Gaza is, shall I say, extraordinarily unpleasant, it's really child's play compared to what would happen if there's a war with Hezbollah. Now, you can make this a legitimate argument to be made. Well, it will probably happen sooner or later anyway. So let's get it over today while we're on alert. We're fully mobilized. The U.S. has a major presence here in the region. And at the same time, what we saw yesterday with the attack on the Air Command Center at Mount Meron and attacks against other sites, that's just a small indication of what will happen. It'll be Israel's national infrastructure, water power communications facilities. It'll be against IDF air bases and IDF bases of every kind, the national command and control, and of course, the entire home front. So this is a very, very difficult decision to make, whether we should go that way or not. The question we have to ask ourselves is, is it even our decision as Israelis to make that choice? Because we see Hezbollah threatening to keep escalating every single day. They've not yet crossed the red lines, but how much further can they go until they're there? That's exactly the question. Of course, it's not entirely a decision of our own making. But we are a significant actor in this. We have an impact on the decision. Look, they may force us to be the ones who make the final escalation and the war breaks out. They may do it themselves. We don't know. It would be nice to think that American diplomacy can achieve the objective that Hezbollah will withdraw beyond the Litany River, not inconceivable. But I don't think any of us would want to bet a lot of money on that actually happening. If we all acknowledge that that's, if not inconceivable, very highly unlikely, then war is the only real alternative to that, isn't it? Well, it depends. It depends how far they push us. There's the expression of beliefs beneath the escalatory threshold. That's an amorphous term. It's a flexible one. It depends how you want to define it. Look, I tend to think that we've got enough of a burden on our hands dealing with Gaza and that if we can avoid a second front, that probably is preferable, even though I recognize, again, there's a good argument to be made or actually taking the initiative here. But I think it's more than the traffic can bear. Let's put Gaza to bed and it's not done yet. It's been three months now and we are pretty far from achieving even our basic objectives there. If we have a choice, I think we should try and avoid it and we may not. We may not have that choice. Real talk, if we do not have that choice, if things truly start in earnest in the North, how much can Israel take out Hezbollah's offensive capabilities in the initial strikes? How much of that damage is still going to be done across Israel? Well, the damage across Israel, I think, is going to be severe. And then the question is how much we can do in the initial strike and afterwards. And of course, if I knew the answer, I wouldn't say. But it's obvious that we can hit them very hard. But what does that mean? Again, it's been three months against Hamas in Gaza. Hamas is much, much weaker, a much smaller organization than Hezbollah. They were assumed to have something like 30,000 rockets when the war broke out. Hezbollah is thought to have something like 150,000, including precision rockets that can hit all the kinds of sites that I mentioned before. So this is a different war. This is a much uglier, much more costly war. After the horror of October 7th, Israel's home front has been largely, not completely, but largely immune to attacks. In other words, the rocket attacks would very few people have been wounded or, God forbid, killed. That's not going to be the situation with Hezbollah. Even if we have a successful first strike, they will still be able to hit us quite hard. And the fighting will go on for a long time. Imagine how difficult we've found it trying to find Hamas capabilities. It may be much harder in Lebanon. We're going to discuss a little bit more about Hamas. So stay with us as we introduce that topic. Chuck, we're going to be right back with you in a couple of minutes. Heavy fighting in southern Gaza, concentrating on Hamas's main stronghold of Khan Yunus. The IDF says they have hit 30 significant Hamas targets, consisting of underground facilities as well as weapons depots. This combined with tactical strikes against real-time battlefield targets. Forces from the Maglan unit directing a drone strike on 10 Hamas terrorists operating a rocket launcher and paratroopers directing another strike on Hamas members in a nearby building during a gun battle. It was only hinted at until now, but now it is practically official. Defense Minister Yuv Galant has said that Israel will soon end high-intensity operations in the north of Gaza and move to another longer-form type of warfare. Chief of Staff has given his estimate on how long that could take. Our senior defense correspondent Jonathan Reghev has the details. On the ground, it may look the same. Those operating on the ground clearly sound the same. We're fighting here together with the armored corps and the engineering corps, and we are ready for every mission. But there is an understanding that the current phase of the fighting in Gaza may be ending and a different kind of fighting may be kicking in. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Israeli Minister of Defense Yuv Galant said that in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Israel will soon be shifting from an intensive maneuver to various kinds of special operations. It's expected to be a long process of constant operations in the Strip. The IDF Chief of Staff has no illusions about it ending anytime soon. 2024 will be a challenging year. We will certainly be fighting in Gaza during the entire year. There was no formal announcement at the beginning of the ground operation. Don't expect one to announce the move to the next stage of the war. Even without that formality, Israel seems to understand the current phase reached its peak, and it may be time to carry out a different approach. And now joining us from Israel's southern border is our correspondent Pierre Kloschen there. Pierre, thank you very much for being with us. Walk us through the latest developments we're seeing on the southern front. Right, first of all, I want to tell you that we're in the northern tip of the Gaza Strip, just on the border, which is a couple of hundred meters away in this direction. And this is the base, or the fort, that was taken by assault, by surprise, on October 7th. There was a massacre perpetrated by the Al-Nurbah commando units of Hamas that killed scores of soldiers here. And yet, there is a nary calm here. You don't see, you don't hear explosions. You don't see the plumes of smoke. The air is not trembling anymore with the sound of the ratata of the gunfire. It's very calm except for sporadic artillery fire on presumed terror targets that have not yet been dismantled. But all in all, the thrust of the offensive now, and it's been going on already for over a month in Hanyunas, and about two and a half weeks, in the central sector of the Gaza Strip, the thrust is there. In the central sector, there's still four battalions of Hamas standing versus a whole division, the 36th Division of Combined Combat Teams. And then in Hanyunas, you have another four Hamas brigades, facing the 99th Division of Commando Units and the Combined Combat Teams. The only place where the ground forces are not operating is on the border town of Rafah with Egypt. There, there's only pinpoint aerial strikes on presumed terror targets, but there are also there four battalions of Hamas protecting the city. So the chain of command in the northern sector has been broken. Out of 12 battalions, they were all decimated. 8,500 terrorists were killed, hundreds were taken prisoners, and the rest went south in support of their fellow terrorists in the central and southern sector. Now, that means that the IDF now, from a division brigade, on the northern sector is going to be operating on a brigade level, not from a division level, but from a brigade level. That means that not all the places in the northern Gaza Strip have an IDF presence now, but there are raids, targeted raids, by those brigades. This is the plan. Now, in addition, the 99th Division is cutting the Gaza Strip into half south of Gaza City, and that means that they prevent the displaced population from the northern sector to come back to their homes if they still exist, because the northern sector is a field of ruins, basically. But it's preventing, the army is preventing the residents to drive back or to go back to the northern sector. And right now, those who remain in the northern sector number probably 100 to 200,000 residents. The rest is in the central and southern sector, which means that the offensive, the high-intensity warfare there, is very cautious in order not to harm the civilian population, which is not involved in the battles, and also in order not to harm the hostages, basically, and in order to find meticulously the whereabouts of those hostages. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for that update from the southern front. We are going to return to Chuck Freilach, the former Deputy Israeli National Security Advisor. Chuck, we were just hearing from our correspondent, the State of Affairs on the ground in Gaza, with the northern part being downgraded from a high-intensity to a lower-intensity conflict. What is going to prevent Hamas in the north from being able to regroup using what's left of their infrastructure underground and their tunnel system and just reopening that front in a high-intensity manner once again? Well, the IDF is going to try and prevent it, of course, and first and foremost, that will be by the efforts to destroy the tunnel system. Those efforts are ongoing. There will be operations on the ground as well, not just underground. It's lower-intensity operations, not low or non-existent operations. We're still going to be pretty active there, and but most of the focus will be in the center and the southern part of Gaza.  I think the figure was 12 battalions. I'm not that impressed by these number counts, all right? Remember, the U.S. and Vietnam was, and I'm not comparing, but it was all about body counts, and Hamas isn't, for all the fact that it built up a military structure. It's not an army. It's a terrorist organization. It's a guerrilla organization, and they were very, very well prepared for this conflict, and they knew that we would be taking them apart, and they are now transitioning to, they're also transitioning to a different kind of warfare where they will just try and hit us with low-level attacks with small groups. There may be single fighters. It may be small groups of them, rather than the bigger ones in the beginning of the war. So of course, it's encouraging to hear that we've achieved these various things that the numbers have changed as they have, but that's not the effort, the primary effort against an organization like Hamas. If destroying them on the battlefield the way Israel has been doing isn't enough, what will be necessary to finally pacify Hamas? Well, I think most of the effort is indeed the military one, but if we want a longer-term solution after the fighting is over, then we need a responsible governing body in Gaza. And here I think the government is avoiding the painful decisions, painful from their perspective, that have to be made here. There really is only one realistic alternative to Hamas, and that's the Palestinian Authority for all of its faults. And here I'm glad that we managed to convince the Biden administration that there is a need for the PA itself to undergo what's come to be called a revitalization, because it was not ready, and it's still not ready to take over right away. But what we should be doing is helping, supporting the revitalization process so that they can come in, because otherwise we're going to have to be there for the long-term, and I can think of fewer less conducive outcomes from Israel's perspective than being bogged down in Gaza again long-term. That's actually exactly what Hamas is by law, and Iran would like. And in the last minute that we're going to have together, Chuck, ultimately, how do you revitalize an organization like the PA when it seems so much of the entire Palestinian national identity is based on the struggle, the armed struggle against Israel's existence? Well, that's very true, and that's one of the tragedies. I think the fact that the Palestinians just keep saying no forever, no to everything, and it's all about armed struggle is the source of their catastrophe or their tragedy. I believe that the Palestinians have probably missed their opportunity to ever have an independent state, a fully independent state. That also has severe ramifications for us. If that's the case, I think we should be trying, well, at least once the fighting is over, to pursue a diplomatic outcome. Chuck, I sincerely hope that there is a diplomatic outcome at the end of this for all of our sakes and for future generations. Thank you for helping us understand just why it's so difficult, the going ahead. Now, we're going to talk about many of the hostages that are still in Gaza, many of which were taken from the Nova Musical Festival near Ra'im. Those hostages and the Missing Families Forum arranged an event at the site of the massacre and our correspondent. Our illustrator was there to speak with family members, many of which are still hoping for loved ones to return and others grieving the death of their loved ones that are now confirmed to have been killed in Gaza. That said, they are all still fighting and praying for the return of those still alive. I tried to imagine the feeling that I'll have when I'll be here. I thought it will be different, but I thought it would be easier because I feel like I know everything here. I saw so many videos and so many pictures and had so many stories that it almost felt like I know everything. But the second I just stepped into this area felt different. For Michail Levi, visiting this beautiful wood outside Kibbutz Ra'im near the Gaza border is an emotional roller coaster. It's the site of the Deadly Nova Music Festival. And on October 7th, his brother Ol and sister-in-law Enav arrived just minutes before it was stormed by dozens of Hamas terrorists. Part of his need to know everything as he describes it led him to find a video that depicts Ol and Enav's last moments together. They stood close to the wall inside a bomb shelter. I didn't see what happened inside when those monsters threw the grenades and sprayed bullets into the shelter, but I can imagine. I can understand from the stories. He was, she was in front of him. They saw it. He saw his wife being murdered in front of him. And then taken to Gaza. And then taken to Gaza. Michail has not heard a word regarding his brother's condition since that day exactly three months ago. All he knows is that Ol was taken alive and uninjured. The reason Ol and Enav arrived in the morning of the party and not the night before when it began was because they wanted to spend the night with their two-year-old son, Almog, who they left at his grandparents before heading out to Ra'im at dawn. Now, Almog is essentially an orphan, not knowing if and when his father will return. He misses them. He calls them all the time. He wants to go home. He starts crying when someone mentioned the word, the word's dad or mom. It's as simple as that. He can understand that they are not here. I'm not sure how much of this he can understand, but he understands that they are not here with him. Michail is just one sibling of a kidnapped hostage who came to this now hollowed ground for an event arranged by the Hostage Family Forum. This was the dance floor at the Nova Music Festival where 364 partygoers were murdered, raped and mutilated by Hamas terrorists and Gaza locals on that dreadful October 7th. The area here is thicker. It's genuinely harder to breathe walking through here now. These are their faces. Most of them are gone for good, but for some, there's still hope to return home. But time is running out. Besides a mock bar, bullet shells on the ground, and the playlist from that day blaring in the background, the event also included a speech by 18-year-old Itaire Gev, who was taken hostage with his sister Maya from the festival. Both were freed after more than 50 days in the tunnels of Gaza. Some of his friends who were taken from the party remain in captivity. I was in captivity for 45 days, and every day there is like forever. The conditions there are very, very hard to survive, very hard. The hostages cannot stay there for one more second. They all have to return home now. Asaf Pozniak lost two of his relatives at the Nova Festival. His sister-in-law's two sisters, Hodaia and Itaire, were initially believed missing following October 7th. Their burnt bodies were found six days later in the nearby woods. Since then, Asaf has been very active in the family's forum. From the first week, I've been working like crazy to try and bring Hodaia and Itaire. They were at my wedding in June, and I remember thinking how amazing it would be to attend their weddings. Unfortunately, that dream has died. With negotiations over a second phase of hostage release faltering, both Asaf and Mikhail remain optimistic that the hostages will return and soon. I'm hopeful I wake up every morning with that hope, even when there are more difficult days in which we hear the terrible news of another hostage killed in captivity. Close to 20 hostages murdered by Hamas and the brave soldiers who risked their lives to bring back the hostages. We expect from the government to present an Israeli initiative to bring back all of the hostages and not to play by Hamas' dune. I know it will be back. It's just a matter of time. That's it. I know it will be back. And like I said on stage, I will do everything to bring him back, even if it means to turn the world upside down. Thank you. That is a trauma that's going to live with the Israeli people for generations after the events. With that said, though, we are out of time, at least for now. But you can schedule us for so much more on i24news.tv slash en. And of course, you can catch our next broadcast at three o'clock local time. That's just about a half hour away. Until then, thank you all so much for watching. A state of war, families completely done down in their beds. We have no idea where she is. Our soldiers are fighting on the front line, but the general perception is something that certainly needs to be fought as well. There have been countless memorable moments broadcasting with i24news in the past six years. But for me, the one that stands out the most was the first time that I had ever personally heard a rocket siren sounding in Tel Aviv. And at that moment, we were live on air in studio. I will never forget the moment our senior producer said to me in my ear, the sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv. The control room is going to the shelter. With me in studio at the time were Michael Herzog, a former Brigadier General today, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and Arsena Strafsky, an international human rights lawyer. And their responses were completely different. Michael Herzog was calm and composed, and on the other hand, Arsena Strafsky was trying to phone his family and check in to make sure that his loved ones were okay. The camera that normally faces us was hoisted from above. There was an overhead shot of the three of us in the studio. You could see colleagues going to the shelter if you looked at the glass behind the studio. And obviously, we lost contact with our team on the ground, our reporters in Ashkelon, and all the witnesses that we were speaking to during that time. When rockets are coming towards a residential area, they don't distinguish between race, religion, political views, cultural views. They just intend to harm civilians. And that moment being in studio, hearing those interceptions overhead, was the most real coverage I have ever been involved in. Welcome back to our ongoing coverage of Israel at War. This is the top update at the beginning of this hour. I'm Ariole Levin Waldman. This has been a very important update within the past 30 minutes. A top Hezbollah commander has just been eliminated in Lebanon in a presumed Israeli airstrike. Wussam Altawil was one of the most senior commanders of the Radwan Force. Hezbollah has already said his killing is a painful blow for the group, one that will herald escalation. This is coming as the battle for the North continues to escalate as is, amidst cross-border fire from the Hezbollah terror group this morning, and fire that damaged an air traffic control base in the North earlier in the day, Hezbollah anti-tank missiles hitting Kiryat Shmona, the city in the North, and the IDF striking a series of Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as of this morning, including military bases. Defense Minister Yoav Galat has warned Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah that the destruction of Gaza can easily be copied in Beirut. The question now is not if the battle will begin, but when the Northern Front will become a full-blown war. The United States is clearly worried that the skirmishes on Israel's northern border will tip over into all-out war. We want to do everything possible to make sure that we don't see escalation there. We know that this is not what Israel wants or seeks. It's not what we want or seek. So the question is, in large part, Hezbollah. In the early hours of Monday, Israel conducted extensive airstrikes against Hezbollah positions and hardware. This followed the admission by the IDF that the large salvo of rockets and anti-tank missiles fired by Hezbollah on Saturday had hit home. Hezbollah fired at IDF bases in the north, including the Northern Air Control Unit on Mount Meron. The damage caused will be repaired, and the unit continues to function as its systems were backed up. Hezbollah's strikes were likely a response to the assassination of Hamas figure Salah Al-Aroori, widely blamed on Israel. Both incidents represent an escalation by the warring parties, but so far, one that remains under the threshold of full war. While around 80,000 Israelis remain displaced from their homes in northern Israel, Jerusalem is determined to push Hezbollah away from its border. I'm suggesting to Hezbollah to learn what Hamas already learned. No terrorist is immune, and we are determined to defend our citizens and return the people of the north to their homes. I'm saying this to our enemies and to our friends. Sympathetic to this goal, the U.S. is urging Israel to achieve it through diplomatic means and pressure, a strategy which Israeli leaders say they are willing to try, but not indefinitely. Washington is also concerned about Israel's willingness to rely upon force. With a U.S. intelligence report cited by The Washington Post, noting that Israel may struggle to prosecute another front after depleting much of its war resources fighting in Gaza. And we are joined now by Chuck Freilich, former Israeli deputy national security advisor and senior fellow at the International Senate for the NSS Institute and Miriam Institutes as well. Chuck, thank you so much for being with us. Given everything we've just seen over the past week or so, is it safe to say the situation in the north is finally escalating into the sum of all fears? Well, it's a difficult question and a difficult question what we as Israel should want to happen there. Now, I think all of us would like to see a fundamental change in the situation, which is a very, very difficult one for the residents of the north in particular. And the common wisdom is that they cannot return until the situation changes. But if the war in Gaza is, shall I say, extraordinarily unconstitutional, extraordinarily unpleasant, it's really child's play compared to what would happen if there's a war with Hezbollah. Now, you can make this a legitimate argument to be made. Well, it will probably happen sooner or later anyway. So let's get it over today while we're on alert. We're fully mobilized. The U.S. has a major presence here in the region. And at the same time, what we saw yesterday with the attack on the Air Command Center in Mount Meron and attacks against other sites, that's just a small indication of what will happen. It'll be Israel's national infrastructure, water, power, communications facilities. It'll be against IDF air bases and IDF bases of every kind, the national command and control, and of course, the entire home front. So this is a very, very difficult decision to make whether we should go that way or not. The question we have to ask ourselves is it even our decision as Israelis to make that choice because we see Hezbollah threatening to keep escalating every single day. They've not yet crossed the red lines, but how much further can they go until they're there? That's exactly the question. Of course, it's not entirely a decision of our own making, but we are a significant actor in this. We have an impact on the decision. Look, they may force us to be the ones who make the final escalation and the war breaks out. They may do it themselves. We don't know. It would be nice to think that American diplomacy can achieve the objective that Hezbollah will withdraw beyond the Litany River. Not inconceivable, but I don't think any of us would want to bet a lot of money on that actually happening. If we all acknowledge that that's, if not inconceivable, very highly unlikely, then war is the only real alternative to that, isn't it? Well, it depends. It depends how far they push us. There's the expression of beliefs beneath the escalatory threshold. That's an amorphous term. It's a flexible one. It depends how you want to define it. Look, I tend to think that we've got enough of a burden on our hands dealing with Gaza and that if we can avoid a second front, that probably is preferable. Even though I recognize, again, there's a good argument to be made or actually taking the initiative here, but I think it's more than the traffic can bear. Let's put Gaza to bed and it's not done yet. It's been three months now and we are pretty far from achieving even our basic objectives there. If we have a choice, I think we should try and avoid it and we may not. We may not have that choice. Real talk, if we do not have that choice, if things truly start in earnest in the North, how much can Israel take out Hezbollah's offensive capabilities in the initial strikes? How much of that damage is still going to be done across Israel? Well, the damage across Israel, I think is going to be severe. And then the question is, how much we can do in the initial strike and afterwards? And of course, if I knew the answer, I wouldn't say, but it's obvious that we can hit them very hard, but what does that mean? Again, it's been three months against Hamas and Gaza. Hamas is much, much weaker than a much smaller organization than Hezbollah. They were assumed to have something like 30,000 rockets when the war broke out. Hezbollah is thought to have something like 150,000, including precision rockets that can hit all the kinds of sites that I mentioned before. So this is a different war. This is a much uglier, much more costly war. After the horror of October 7th, Israel's home front has been largely, not completely, but largely immune to attacks. In other words, there have been the rocket attacks where very few people have been wounded or, God forbid, killed. That's not going to be the situation with Hezbollah. Even if we have a successful first strike, they will still be able to hit us quite hard and the fighting will go on for a long time. Imagine how difficult we've found it trying to find Hamas capabilities. It may be much harder than Lebanon. We're going to discuss a little bit more about Hamas, so stay with us as we introduce that topic. Chuck, we're going to be right back with you in a couple of minutes. Heavy fighting in southern Gaza, concentrating on Hamas's main stronghold of Khan Yunus. The IDF says they have hit 30 significant Hamas targets, consisting of underground facilities as well as weapons depots. This combined with tactical strikes against real-time battlefield targets. Forces from the Maglan unit directing a drone strike on 10 Hamas terrorists operating a rocket launcher and paratroopers directing another strike on Hamas members in a nearby building during a gun battle. It was only hinted at until now, but now it is practically official. Defense Minister Yuv Galant has said that Israel will soon end high-intensity operations in the north of Gaza and move to another longer-form type of warfare. Chief of Staff has given his estimate on how long that could take our senior defense correspondent. Jonathan Regap has the details. On the ground, it may look the same. Those operating on the ground clearly sound the same. We're fighting here together with the armored corps and the engineering corps, and we are ready for every mission. But there is an understanding that the current phase of the fighting in Gaza may be ending, and a different kind of fighting may be kicking in. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Israeli Minister of Defense Yuv Galant said that in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, Israel will soon be shifting from an intensive maneuver to various kinds of special operations. It's expected to be a long process of constant operations in the Strip. The IDF Chief of Staff has no illusions about it ending anytime soon. 2024 will be a challenging year. We will certainly be fighting in Gaza during the entire year. There was no formal announcement at the beginning of the ground operation. Don't expect one to announce the move to the next stage of the war. Even without that formality, Israel seems to understand the current phase reached its peak, and it may be time to carry out a different approach. And now joining us from Israel's southern border is our correspondent Pierre Kloschen there. Pierre, thank you very much for being with us. Walk us through the latest developments we're seeing on the southern front. Right. First of all, I want to tell you that we're in the northern tip of the Gaza Strip just on the border, which is a couple of hundred meters away in this direction. And this is the base, or the fort, that was taken by assault, by surprise, on October 7. There was a massacre perpetrated by the Al-Nurbah commando units of Hamas that killed scores of soldiers here. And yet there is a nary calm here. You don't see, you don't hear explosions. You don't see the plumes of smoke. The air is not trembling anymore with the sound of the ratata of the gunfire. It's very calm, except for sporadic artillery fire on presumed terror targets that have not yet been dismantled. But all in all, the thrust of the offensive now, and it's been going on already for over a month in Hanyunas, and about two and a half weeks in the central sector of the Gaza Strip, the thrust is there. In the central sector, there's still four battalions of Hamas standing versus a whole division, the 36th Division of Combined Combat Teams. And then in Hanyunas, you have another four Hamas brigades, facing the 99th Division of Commando Units and the Combined Combat Teams. The only place where the ground forces are not operating is on the border town of Rafah with Egypt. There, there's only pinpoint aerial strikes on presumed terror targets. But there are also there four battalions of Hamas protecting the city. So the chain of command in the northern sector has been broken. Out of 12 battalions, they were all decimated, 8,500 terrorists were killed, hundreds were taken prisoners, and the rest went south in support of their fellow terrorists in the central and southern sector. Now, that means that the IDF now, from a division brigade on the northern sector, is going to be operating on a brigade level, not from a division level but from a brigade level. That means that not all the places in the northern Gaza Strip have an IDF presence now. But there are raids, targeted raids, by those brigades. This is the plan. Now, in addition, the 99th Division is cutting the Gaza Strip into half south of Gaza City. And that means that they prevent the displaced population from the northern sector to come back to their homes if they still exist because the northern sector is a field of ruins, basically. But it's preventing, the army is preventing the residents to drive back or to go back to the northern sector. And right now, those who remain in the northern sector number probably 100 to 200,000 residents. The rest is in the central and southern sector, which means that the offensive, the high-intensity warfare there is very cautious in order not to harm the civilian population which is not involved in the battles and also in order not to harm the hostages, basically, and in order to find meticulously the whereabouts of those hostages. Well, thank you very much, Pierre, for that update from the southern front. We are going to return to Chuck Freilac, the former Deputy Israeli National Security Advisor. Chuck, we were just hearing from our correspondent, the State of Affairs on the ground in Gaza with the northern part being downgraded from high-intensity to a lower-intensity conflict. What is going to prevent Hamas in the north from being able to regroup using what's left of their infrastructure underground and their tunnel system and just reopening that front in a high-intensity manner once again? Well, the IDF is going to try and prevent it, of course, and first and foremost, that will be by the efforts to destroy the tunnel system. Those efforts are ongoing. There will be operations on the ground as well, not just underground. It's lower-intensity operations, not low or non-existent operations. We're still going to be pretty active there, but most of the focus will be in the center and the southern part of Gaza.  I think the figure was 12 battalions. I'm not that impressed by these number counts. All right? Remember, the U.S. and Vietnam was, and I'm not comparing, but it was all about body counts. And Hamas isn't, for all the fact that it built up a military structure, it's not an army. It's a terrorist organization. It's a guerrilla organization. And they were very, very well prepared for this conflict. And they knew that we would be taking them apart. And they are now transitioning to a... They're also transitioning to a different kind of warfare. Where they will just try and hit us with low-level attacks with small groups. There may be single fighters. There may be small groups of them rather than the bigger ones in the beginning of the war. So, of course, it's encouraging to hear that we've achieved these various things that the numbers have changed as they have. But that's not the effort, the primary effort against an organization like Hamas. If destroying them on the battlefield the way Israel has been doing isn't enough, what will be necessary to finally pacify Hamas? Well, I think most of the effort is indeed the military one. But if we want a longer-term solution after the fighting is over, then we need a responsible governing body in Gaza. And here I think the government is avoiding the painful decisions, painful from their perspective that have to be made here. There really is only one realistic alternative to Hamas and that's the Palestinian Authority for all of its faults. And here I'm glad that we managed to convince the Biden administration that there is a need for the PA itself to undergo what's come to be called a revitalization because it was not ready and it's still not ready to take over right away. But what we should be doing is helping and supporting the revitalization process so that they can come in. Because otherwise, we're going to have to be there for the long term and I can think of fewer less conducive outcomes from Israel's perspective than being bogged down in Gaza again long term. That's actually exactly what Hamas is by law and Iran would like. And in the last minute that we're going to have together, Chuck, ultimately, how do you revitalize an organization like the PA when it seems so much of the entire Palestinian national identity is based on the struggle, the armed struggle against Israel's existence? Well, that's very true and that's one of the tragedies. I think the fact that the Palestinians just keep saying no forever, no to everything and it's all about armed struggle is the source of their catastrophe or their tragedy. I believe that the Palestinians have probably missed their opportunity to ever have an independent state, a fully independent state. That also has severe ramifications for us if that's the case. I think we should be trying, well, at least once the fighting is over to pursue a diplomatic outcome. Chuck, I sincerely hope that there is a diplomatic outcome at the end of this for all of our sakes and for future generations. Thank you for helping us understand just why it's so difficult to going ahead. Now, we're going to talk about many of the hostages that are still in Gaza, many of which were taken from the Nova Musical Festival near Raim. Those hostages and the Missing Families Forum arranged an event at the site of the massacre and our correspondent, Ariel O'Sarrem, was there to speak with family members, many of which are still hoping for their loved ones to return and others grieving the death of their loved ones that are now confirmed who have been killed in Gaza. That said, they are all still fighting and praying for the return of those still alive. I tried to imagine the feeling that I'll have when I'll be here. I thought it would be different but I thought it would be easier because I feel like I know everything here. I saw so many videos and so many pictures and had so many stories that it almost felt like I know everything. But the second, I just stepped into this area felt different. For Michail Levi, visiting this beautiful wood outside Kibbutz Raim near the Gaza border is an emotional roller coaster. It's the site of the deadly Nova Music Festival. And on October 7th, his brother Ol and sister-in-law Einav arrived just minutes before it was stormed by dozens of Hamas terrorists. Part of his need to know everything as he describes it led him to find a video that depicts Ol and Einav's last moments together. They stood close to the wall inside a bomb shelter. I didn't see what happened inside when those monsters threw the grenades and sprayed bullets into the shelter but I can imagine I can understand from the stories. He was, she was in front of him. He saw it. He saw his wife being murdered in front of him. And then taken to Gaza. And then taken to Gaza. Michail has not heard a word regarding his brother's condition since that day exactly three months ago. All he knows is that Ol was taken alive and uninjured. The reason Ol and Einav arrived in the morning of the party and not the night before when it began was because they wanted to spend the night with their two-year-old son Almog who they left at his grandparents before heading out to Ra'im at dawn. Now, Almog is essentially an orphan not knowing if and when his father will return. He misses them. He calls them all the time. He wants to go home. He starts crying when someone mentioned the words Almog. It's as simple as that. He can understand that they are not here. I'm not sure how much of this he can understand, but he understands that they are not here with him. Michail is just one sibling of a kidnapped hostage who came to this now hollowed ground for an event arranged by the Hostage Family Forum. This was the dance floor at the Nova Music Festival where 364 partygoers were murdered, raped, and mutilated by Hamas terrorists and Gaza locals on a dreadful October 7th. The air here is thicker. It's genuinely harder to breathe walking through here now. These are their faces. Most of them are gone for good, but for some, there's still hope to return home. But time is running out. Besides a mock bar, bullet shells on the ground and the playlist from that day blaring in the background, the event also included a speech by 18-year-old Itai Regan who was taken hostage with his sister Maya from the festival. Both were freed after more than 50 days in the tunnels of Gaza. Some of his friends who were taken from the party remain in captivity. I was in captivity for 45 days and every day there is like forever. The conditions there are very, very hard to survive, very hard. The hostages cannot stay there for one more second. They all have to return home now. Asaf Pozniak lost two of his relatives at the Nova Festival. His sister-in-law's two sisters, Hodaya and Tahir, were initially believed missing following October 7th. Their burnt bodies were found six days later in the nearby woods. Since then, Asaf has been very active in the family's forum. From the first week, I've been working like crazy to try and bring Hodaya and Tahir. They were at my wedding in June and I remember thinking how amazing it would be to attend their weddings. Unfortunately, that dream has died. With negotiations over a second phase of hostage release faltering, both Asaf and Mikhail remain optimistic that the hostages will return and soon. I'm hopeful I wake up every morning with that hope, even when there are more difficult days in which we hear the terrible news of another hostage killed in captivity. Both the 20 hostages murdered by Hamas and the brave soldiers who risked their lives to bring back the hostages. We expect from the government to present an Israeli initiative to bring back all of the hostages and not to play by Hamas' dune. It's not hope. I know he will be back. It's just a matter of time. That's it. I know he will be back and like I said on stage, I will do everything to bring him back even if it means to turn the world upside down. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. You're welcome. That is a trauma that's going to live with the Israeli people for generations after the events. With that said though, we are out of time at least for now. But you can schedule us for so much more on i24news.tv slash en. And of course, you can catch our next broadcast at three o'clock local time that's just about a half hour away. Until then, thank you.