(Jerusalem Post) Israel's Justice Ministry on Saturday published a list of 735 terrorists who will be released as part of the hostage deal. Among those to be released is Ahmed Barghouti, a close aide to and relative of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving 13 life sentences. Ahmed was responsible for supplying weapons to the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, where he served as their operational commander. Barghouti was convicted for orchestrating the bombing at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market that killed three Israelis and wounded 30, an attack in Jerusalem that killed a policewoman and wounded nine, a shooting attack during a bat mitzvah celebration in Hadera in which six Israelis were killed and 26 were injured, and a bombing on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem that killed two women.

(Ha'aretz) Josh Breiner - Slated for release is Mohammad Abu Warda, who was sentenced to 48 life terms for his role in two terror bombings on Jerusalem's bus line 18 in 1996, which killed 45 people. Tabet Mardawi, a senior figure in Islamic Jihad in Jenin, was involved in the murder of 20 Israelis and the injury of 150 others, and was sentenced to 21 life terms and an additional 40 years. During the Second Intifada, he was involved in a suicide bombing at a bus station in Binyamina, a shooting attack at the market in Hadera, a suicide bombing on a bus near Hadera, a car bombing in Hadera, a bombing at a restaurant in Kiryat Motzkin, a suicide bombing at the central bus station in Afula, and a suicide bombing on a bus in Wadi Ara. Mohammed Naifeh was sentenced to 13 life terms for dispatching the attackers responsible for the 2002 Kibbutz Metzer attack that killed five Israelis and ordering an attack on Hermesh in which three Israeli women were killed. Nassim Zaatari, a member of Hamas, was sentenced to 23 life terms for an attack on bus line 2 in Jerusalem in which 23 people were killed. Ashraf Zaghaiar, a senior Hamas figure, dispatched the suicide bomber responsible for a 2002 attack on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv. Ahmad Obeid was sentenced to seven life terms for dispatching the suicide bomber responsible for the 2004 Cafe Hillel attack in Jerusalem, which claimed the lives of seven people. Bilal Abu Ghanem carried out the 2015 bus attack in Jerusalem in which three people were killed. Leili Abu Ragila was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenager Eliyahu Asheri in Jerusalem in 2006. Sharif Naji was sentenced to four life terms for the 2002 bombing at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv, which killed three Israelis, and for another attack in which a Border Police officer was killed. Riyad Arafat was convicted of murdering two soldiers, Lt. Ariel Buda and Sgt. Maj. Yosef Atiya, at Tapuach Junction in 2005. Raad Khalil was convicted of the 2015 stabbing attack at a synagogue in Tel Aviv in which two Israelis were killed. Ahmed Araf Khalil al-Asafra led the cell that murdered Dvir Sorek in Gush Etzion in 2019. Iyad Mahlawas was convicted of murdering Israeli Amir Simhon in Jaffa in 2003. Ibrahim Sarahna transported bombers involved in three suicide attacks.

(AP) Jon Gambrell - Two prominent hard-line judges serving on Iran's Supreme Court were fatally shot in Tehran Saturday, officials said, both of whom took part in the mass execution of dissidents in 1988. The attacker, armed with a handgun, killed himself.

(Jerusalem Post) Israel Security Agency Director Ronen Bar told Israel's Security Cabinet on Friday that "82% of those released in the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011 returned to terrorism," and that 15% of them carried out attacks themselves after their release, or planned the attacks. He also said the current release of terrorists is expected to increase motivation to carry out attacks in the West Bank. "We are well used to arresting and thwarting terrorists," Bar added, noting that some of the Palestinian prisoners being exchanged for hostages he arrested himself. "We have a very difficult time releasing terrorists and murderers."

(Ynet News) Yoav Zitun - The IDF and Israel Security Agency, in a secret operation, rescued the body of kidnapped Sgt. Oron Shaul, who fell in battle in Gaza on July 20, 2014. Shaul was identified at Israel's Institute of Forensic Medicine.

(Ynet News) Dan Raban - A 28-year-old man was severely wounded in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on Saturday by Saleh Yahya, 19, a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Tulkarm, who was shot and killed at the scene by an armed civilian.

(Ynet News) IDF air defenses intercepted two missiles launched at separate times from Yemen on Saturday.

(Israel Hayom) Yehuda Shlezinger - The U.S. has begun lifting restrictions on arms it sold to Israel, with 70 D9 bulldozers now cleared for shipment, part of a 130-vehicle order signed ten months ago. The heavy-duty bulldozers are essential for establishing secure movement corridors for combat forces and detecting explosive devices. Israeli security sources said the availability of this equipment during recent military operations could have significantly reduced casualties from explosive devices among military personnel. The Biden administration had halted their delivery in October as leverage to facilitate humanitarian aid access to Gaza.

(Times of Israel) Jacob Magid - The Palestinian Authority has reached a truce agreement with the Jenin Battalion to end a six-week standoff in the West Bank city, a Palestinian official confirmed on Friday. The PA had been targeting the battalion, made up of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. Palestinian media reported that as PA vehicles entered the Jenin refugee camp, dozens of people gathered to chant slogans in favor of the armed groups. Arabic media reported 15 Palestinians were killed in the PA operation in Jenin, including six members of the PA security forces, eight civilians, and one terror suspect. PA forces arrested a handful of Jenin Battalion members.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser - The ceasefire agreement leaves Israel with mixed emotions - joy at the anticipated return of hostages is tempered by frustration at the high cost. Hamas and its supporters have achieved many of their objectives, most notably securing the continuation of their rule in Gaza while ensuring the release of prisoners from Israeli jails. Hamas suffered military but not political damage, and the agreement provides no guarantees that Hamas will not rebuild its capabilities to resume attacks against Israel from Gaza. The outcome is likely to bolster its standing among the Palestinian public and enhance the influence of radical Islam more broadly. Unlike the Lebanon agreement, the agreement neither prohibits Hamas from rearming nor grants Israel the freedom to act against Gaza's terror groups' efforts to rebuild their forces unless they breach the ceasefire. Attention will shift to leveraging the regional changes Israel has influenced to advance other key objectives shared with the U.S. These include thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions, expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia, stabilizing the situation in Syria and Lebanon, and reducing threats to Israel and the West. The writer, former head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, is Director, National Security and Middle East Affairs at the Jerusalem Center.

(Ynet News) Yoav Zitun - For the IDF commanders involved in the protracted and complex fight against Hamas, it is clear that further action will be necessary. Defense officials believe that Hamas or other rogue groups in Gaza likely will provide justification for resuming combat operations. Military commanders anticipate years of ground operations in Gaza to scale Hamas back to its size of two decades ago. Hamas still retains tens of kilometers of tunnels, particularly in central and southern Gaza, that could be used to restart limited weapons production, conceal thousands of weapons, and hide senior commanders. Hamas has also recruited and armed hundreds of new members, including teenagers, to replenish its ranks. Hamas retains two brigades in Nuseirat and al-Bureij in central Gaza, which have been largely untouched - possibly due to the presence of hostages in the area.

(Ynet News) Sever Plocker - Where were Hamas and its "axis of resistance" before Oct. 7, 2023, and where are they today? Hamas's military capabilities have been reduced by 80% and its supply lines for weaponry have dried up completely. Its political and military leadership has been systematically eliminated. Much of its underground tunnel network has been destroyed, command and control centers obliterated, and training and concealment facilities erased. Critics of the ceasefire agreement argue that Hamas will still "control Gaza." But what exactly will it control? Gaza is a wasteland, with a population surviving on handouts. A million residents have been displaced from their homes and live in tents. There is no trade, agriculture, education or future.

(Telegraph-UK) Col. Richard Kemp - Netanyahu's objective remains total victory over Hamas and Iran's terrorist axis that seeks the annihilation of the Jewish state. Having largely eliminated Hamas's military capability over the last 15 months we have now reached the stage where the priority is to free the remaining 94 hostages. It has so far proven impossible to release more than a handful by direct military force. The presence of the hostages has been a drag-anchor in the campaign and prevented Hamas's total destruction. The terrorists know this only too well: that was exactly the reason they kidnapped them on Oct. 7. Those who are horrified by this deal are right to highlight its grave risks. It seems to involve release of more than a thousand Palestinian terrorists in exchange for 33 Israeli hostages. And a cessation will give Hamas some opportunity to regroup and rebuild its capabilities. Above all, it leaves Hamas in a position to maintain its stranglehold on Gaza's population. That would certainly be disastrous and the eventual eradication or survival of Hamas will be the true measure of the success of this ceasefire. The writer, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was chairman of the UK's national crisis management committee, COBRA.

(Telegraph-UK) Charles Moore - The ceasefire deal legitimates Hamas as a continuing force in Gaza. They will remain on the ground and Israel will not. Hamas now knows they will be part of future negotiations. Plenty of malign actors - many of them in Western governments, policy elites and media - will even start to hail them as peacemakers. Moreover, the deal will prove that hostage-taking works. If Hamas had simply murdered those 1,200 plus people on Oct. 7, they would have won themselves no protection against Israeli retaliation. Because they took the hostages, they were able to make Israel hesitate. The deal will also be seen in Islamist minds as a successful precedent. Capture Jews, will be the internal message, torture them, kill a proportion of them, play cat-and-mouse about the ones who live, and it will give you power. So, when you get the chance, do it again. As the country founded to offer refuge to Jews everywhere, Israel has a Talmudically inspired duty to rescue them wherever it can. It is pierced, too, by the deep personal pain inflicted on so many families. Politically, it may be that there is an Israeli consensus round the idea that this deal is, as one Jewish friend expert in the region put it to me, "bad, but essential." But I cannot let go of the point that, with this deal, Hamas have pried open the jaws of defeat and won, if not a victory, at least the chance to live and fight and murder for much more than another day. The writer, a member of the House of Lords, is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph, the Spectator, and the Sunday Telegraph.

(Gatestone Institute) Khaled Abu Toameh - Those who think that the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will abandon its Jihad (holy war) to murder more Jews and destroy Israel in the aftermath of the recent ceasefire-hostage agreement are mistaken. The deal does not require Hamas to disarm or cede control over Gaza. To Hamas, this is just another deal similar to ceasefire agreements reached with Israel after previous rounds of fighting over the past 20 years. Hamas supporters in Khan Yunis took to the streets to celebrate the ceasefire-hostage deal and chanted: "We will go to Jerusalem, we will sacrifice millions of martyrs!" Hamas supporters in Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority, chanted slogans in support of slain Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the masterminds of the Oct. 7 carnage. A ceasefire-hostage deal that allows Hamas to remain in power means that it is only a matter of time before the terrorist groups attempt to launch another Oct. 7-style attack on Israel. Hamas's defiant statements show that its leadership is willing to sacrifice more of its people to fulfill its objective of destroying Israel. The only deal that will actually bring peace is one where Hamas ceases to exist. The writer, a veteran Israeli journalist, is a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

(Jerusalem Post) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, who served in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps for 19 years, this week described the fundamental inequality of releasing convicted murderers, some serving life sentences, for innocent civilians. "This cannot be referred to as a prisoner exchange. On the one hand, you have a genocidal terrorist organization, and on the other side, you have a democratic country. That's not a prisoner exchange deal. It is extortion by a terrorist organization. There is no equality that can be drawn between the two sides." "By 2014, 50% of those released in Judea and Samaria [in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal] almost immediately returned to terrorism....The Palestinians celebrate 41 separate incidences where Palestinian prisoners have been released since 1998. Some of these were as part of the Oslo Accords, others were in exchange for hostages or bodies, and some are features of 'goodwill' from Israel for a variety of reasons such as before Ramadan." "It's a cycle that feeds itself. If we keep releasing terrorists in exchange for hostages, they will keep taking hostages because there is a reward for their actions....[We're] feeding the flames of desire to kidnap more people because it brings about good results for the terrorists....All these major deals have caused wide-scale destruction and murder. The Shalit deal led to the October 7 massacre. Already by November 2012, [freed Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar was meeting with Qassem Solemanei in Tehran and planning October 7."

(Gatestone Institute) Alan M. Dershowitz - The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a "deal." It was an extortion. Would you call it a deal if somebody kidnapped your child and you "agreed" to pay ransom to get her back? The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime. The proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the U.S., capitulated to the unlawful and extortionate demands of Hamas as the only way of saving the lives of kidnapped babies, mothers and other innocent, mostly civilian, hostages. If an armed robber puts a gun to your head and says, "your money or your life," your decision to give him your money would not be described as a deal. When a terrorist group "negotiates" with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. A democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families. The heart rules the brain, as it often does in moral democracies that value the immediate saving of the lives of known people over the future deaths of hypothetical people whose identities we do not know. The writer is Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School.

(Telegraph-UK) Zoe Strimpel - Each hostage returned alive is a world of meaning and love, worth everything to get back. Crushing Hamas was crucial, and Israel has done this to an extent that has exceed expectations. But Israeli society has been through a nightmare. Antisemitism has been unleashed again around the world. This ceasefire serves to remind us of a distinction of key importance: that of life versus death; light versus dark; civilization versus depravity and barbarism. We are reminded that Israel, and the moral and political world to which it belongs, stands for life, love and reason against the barbarians, whether in Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. Israel's foes are defined by an enduring love affair with death and "martyrdom," murder and mayhem.

(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Robert Satloff - The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is the controversial body tasked with providing aid and services to Palestinian refugees. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the body established to address the fate of all other refugees around the world. Its core mission includes promoting the resettlement and integration of refugees into countries where they have sought refuge. However, UNRWA's mission has been the exact opposite - to oppose their resettlement and integration. Providing relief to millions of Palestinian descendants of the original refugees, based on the argument that their legitimate, rightful home lies inside Israel, is deeply counterproductive to the search for peace. UNRWA long ago shed its identity as an impartial provider of emergency relief to become a Palestinian advocacy agency. UNRWA schools that serve hundreds of thousands of children have often taught curricula suffused with anti-Israel, even antisemitic, messages. In October 2024, the Israeli parliament passed laws that will come into effect January 30: a ban on UNRWA operations in Israeli sovereign territory and the severing of all Israeli ties with the agency. With this deadline looming, the Biden administration reportedly approached other UN agencies operating in Gaza - including UNHCR, the World Food Program (WFP), the World Health Organization, and others - to gauge their ability to take over UNRWA's tasks. They all said no, insisting that only UNRWA can do the job. In other words, the UN system essentially said it would rather Gazans starve than for it to be complicit in sidelining UNRWA. Instead of politely asking them if they can assume UNRWA's job in Gaza, the Trump administration should put them on notice that continued U.S. funding of their own global operations is contingent on them taking over those tasks. The U.S. is the largest donor to the WFP, providing 46% of its budget, and to UNHCR, providing 44% of its budget. Faced with losing a large chunk of this aid, these agencies would no doubt discover that they are suddenly quite capable of doing UNRWA's job. The writer is Executive Director of The Washington Institute.

(Gatestone Institute) Daniel Greenfield - Every day, the UN, international organizations and the media claim that everyone in Gaza is starving, and every day Israel's COGAT aid coordination agency lists exactly how many trucks filled with humanitarian aid have actually entered Gaza. Food has been piling up and rotting inside Gaza because it's not being delivered by the UN. Politicians, activists and the media have spent over a year perpetuating a myth that Israel is blocking food deliveries into Gaza, when there is actually more aid coming in than the aid groups can deliver to Gazans. Israel has offered to provide security for aid deliveries, but those offers have been rejected, since the UN is coordinating with Hamas. As the New York Times described: "The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its neutrality."