Friday 02/08/24 🇮🇱 Day 301 🎗 3 HEADLINES, 7 NEWS and 1 COMMENTARY… (🇬🇧 version)

🚩 Haniyeh and Shukr funeral in Doha and Beirut today, beginning of expected retaliation

🚩 IDF Chief of Staff: Israel is “willing to go far” to strike those who harm the country

🚩 Lebanon: Hezbollah evacuates military equipment from Beirut in preparation for escalation

🔷 Israel recently assassinated two Hamas politburo leaders and three military commanders in a tunnel under Gaza City, according to sources from the terror group quoted by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. https://lnk.sk/xhiy

🔷 Details about assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran start to emerge. Reports about a drone or missile attack now seem to have been disseminated by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), who were responsible for the security of the guest house, in order to be able to blame some other security force in the country. https://lnk.sk/pfq3

🔷 Sky News Arabia reports that the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) has found Hezbollah to be responsible for launching the rocket that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights’ Majdal Shams last Saturday. https://lnk.sk/uztw

🔷 IDF kills Palestinian Islamic Jihad deputy weapons production head Mohammed al-Jabari. Mohammed al-Jabari’s role in the terror group was to finance weapon manufacturing infrastructure for the Islamic Jihad in northern Gaza. https://lnk.sk/pmu4

🔷 Turkey declares day of mourning for Haniyeh, lowers flag to half-mast at Tel Aviv embassy. In response to the lowered flag, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz made an order to summon Turkey’s deputy ambassador to Israel for a „stern reprimand“ and slammed the representatives. https://lnk.sk/zmz6

🔷 Over 200 BBC staff, contractors, suppliers, and contributors wrote to the board and Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, to demand investigation into what the letter described as “anti-Jewish racism” at the BBC, The Telegraph reported on Friday. “Jews don’t count” and declared that antisemitism is systematic at the BBC. https://lnk.sk/rwe6

🔷 Investigation of Israeli strike in April that killed seven charity workers in a Gaza: despite the litany of operational failures report found that Israel’s subsequent response had been “timely, appropriate and, with some exceptions, sufficient.” https://lnk.sk/q348

🔵 COMMENTARY of the day “Ismail Haniyeh’s Place in Palestinian Politics”

Khaled Abu Toameh (an award-winning Israeli Arab journalist) for Jerusalem Center for Public Affaires

Shortly after Haniyeh’s death, Abbas and Fatah issued separate statements in which they strongly condemned the killing as a “cowardly act” and “a dangerous development.” Such statements, however, are viewed by many Palestinians as mere lip service directed towards the Palestinian public. It’s hard to conclude that Abbas and Fatah are genuinely grieving over the death of a Hamas leader.

The death of Haniyeh may be a severe blow to Hamas, but it’s unlikely to expedite the demise of the terror group. Israel has targeted many Hamas leaders over the past two decades, only to see them quickly replaced by other figures. It now remains to be seen what impact the absence of one of Hamas’s significant symbols and figureheads will have on the group, both in the Gaza Strip and abroad, as well as efforts to reach a ceasefire and a deal over the hostages. https://lnk.sk/vl48