(New York Times) David M. Halbfinger - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he had directed the Israeli military to expand its control of Gaza to 70% of the enclave, ratcheting up pressure on Hamas. Negotiations on Gaza's future have stalled over Hamas's refusal to disarm. After the ceasefire agreement in October, the Israeli military held 53%, but it has gradually taken more territory, sometimes simply by moving concrete blocks with which it marks the boundary. Earlier this month, Netanyahu disclosed that Israel had increased its control to 60%.

(Wall Street Journal) Summer Said - The United Arab Emirates carried out dozens of airstrikes against Iran beginning in the early days of the war and continuing through the day after the April ceasefire was announced, setting it apart from some of its Gulf neighbors which have taken a far more cautious approach to the threat from Iran. The attacks were conducted in coordination with the U.S. and Israel, both of which provided intelligence. The targets included Qeshm and Abu Musa islands in the Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas, the oil refinery on Lavan Island in the Persian Gulf, and the Asaluyeh petrochemical complex. Some of those strikes targeted Iranian energy facilities in response to Tehran's attacks on UAE oil and gas infrastructure. The Asaluyeh strike was carried out with Israel. Iran targeted the UAE with 2,800 missiles and drones, far more than it fired at any other country including Israel. Israel sent Iron Dome batteries and Israeli troops to defend the UAE during the war, with many dozens of troops still stationed in a military complex in the Gulf nation.

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - Over the past week, the IDF launched an operation to take control of the area north of the Litani River in response to increasing drone attacks, as Hizbullah expanded its rocket fire on Israel. The move marks a significant expansion of Israeli military operations in Lebanon into an area considered a key Hizbullah stronghold. "Once this area is captured, it opens up additional options for us to continue pressuring Hizbullah. It will put us in a stronger position for negotiations. With each passing day, the organization grows weaker," military officials said.

(Ynet News) More than 10 rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israeli cities including Karmiel, Safed and Nahariya. A rocket hit a shopping center in Kiryat Shmona on Saturday. Footage from Nahariya showed rocket impacts in the sea and bathers fleeing the beach.

(Ha'aretz-Ynet News) Yaniv Kubovich - Israeli troops have captured the Crusader-built Beaufort castle in southern Lebanon, the IDF said Sunday. David Azoulay, head of the Metula town council, said, "The Beaufort is 4.5 km. from Metula. Dozens of anti-tank missiles were fired from there....It's a place that threatens Metula and the Galilee Panhandle."

(Ynet News) Elisha Ben Kimon - Staff Sgt. Michael Tyukin, 21, was killed Saturday by a Hizbullah drone in southern Lebanon and four other soldiers were wounded, the IDF said Sunday. He was the 13th soldier killed since the ceasefire in Lebanon took effect.

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Dr. Dan Diker - Iran views negotiations not as a path to permanent peace, but as a continuation of conflict through diplomatic means. The regime sees agreements as tactical pauses that preserve the broader struggle rather than resolve it. Iran's strategic culture is shaped by the concepts of endurance, sacrifice, and martyrdom rooted in Shi'a history. Survival and continued resistance are more important than material losses, allowing the regime to frame hardship as ideological victory. Temporary truces are a recurring strategic model used to buy time, regroup, and strengthen before resuming confrontation. Iran's recent ceasefire behavior around the Strait of Hormuz is an example of this approach. Iran's internal power structure is divided between pragmatic negotiators and hardline ideological institutions tied to the Supreme Leader and the IRGC. These parallel systems are capable of obstructing or quietly reversing concessions even after agreements are signed. The U.S. must not give up leverage too early through phased diplomacy. Sanctions, military pressure, and blockades have weakened Iran's networks, and easing that pressure prematurely could allow Tehran to regroup economically and militarily. The writer is President of the Jerusalem Center.

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - A deal with Iran that allows the regime to emerge from the war as the perceived victor instantly magnifies our overall geopolitical risks. China will take note of the fact that the president lost his appetite for war after just 39 days and 13 military fatalities. U.S. allies in the region will take similar note. Why would the Saudis or Pakistanis want to incur the domestic risks of recognizing Israel if Israel and the U.S. look like the weak horses against Iran? Worse: Iran's new leaders will draw the lesson that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a card they can play at will, knowing they have a greater tolerance than their adversaries for the pain it might impose. They will use it to extract an ever-increasing list of economic and strategic demands. The closer we get to the midterms, the more political incentive Trump has to avoid conflict. The Iranians know this, which is why they'll play for time with a carefully balanced set of tantalizing promises and extraneous demands, whether about Hizbullah or the financial payoffs they'll insist upon in exchange for easily reversible concessions. The Iranian regime hangs by slender threads: a worthless currency, a mostly bankrupt state, a badly wounded military, all-but-undefended airspace, and a leadership whose final claim to legitimacy is that it has stood up to the Great and Little Satans and, so far, survived.

(Wall Street Journal) Walter Russell Mead - The common interest in ending the war gives both Iran and America an incentive to hype the prospects for peace, but the gap between the two sides' minimum requirements makes an actual agreement fiendishly hard to work out. Having alienated one wing of his coalition by launching the war, Mr. Trump seems reluctant to enrage another by accepting a weak peace. The Iranian regime feels that its ability to block the Strait of Hormuz and damage its neighbors by drone and missile attacks entitles it to painful concessions from the U.S. side. The writer, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, is Professor of Strategy and Statecraft at the University of Florida.

(Times of Israel) Marziyeh Amirizadeh - I have been watching reports of negotiations between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic of Iran with anguish. I want to believe that President Trump understands what I know as the truth about the Islamic Republic: that you can never negotiate with them, and they will always lie and do anything to stay in power. I have lived inside this regime's cruelty. I have suffered in its prisons. I have witnessed friends, and my husband, tortured and executed. And I know, with every part of my being, that a deal with the Islamic Republic is not a path to peace. It is a gift of time to an evil regime. What I learned inside its prison walls is the same thing the world keeps refusing to learn outside them: this regime does not negotiate in good faith. It negotiates for survival. Lying - taqiyya - is its religiously sanctioned strategic weapon. Western leaders consistently make the same mistake. They look at Iran and see a government with factions - "reformists" and hardliners. They conclude that the "reformists" represent a genuine alternative. They do not. The "reformist" and hardliner structure is a performance, a deliberate good cop, bad cop strategy designed to give Westerners the illusion that progress is possible. Both serve the same system. The Islamic Republic regime is centered around an extremist Islamic ideology. Leaders have changed but the ideology's goals do not change. From the beginning, that goal has included the export of revolutionary Islam, the destruction of the U.S. and Israel, and the subordination of every nation to an Islamist vision of global order. The Islamic Republic leaders understand that American presidential terms end. Policies shift. A deal signed today can be quietly undermined tomorrow, and an administration that championed it may no longer be in office to notice, or care. The ideology that drives them and the hostility toward the U.S., Israel, and the West is written into their founding documents. But none of it will appear on any negotiating table. There is no real victory and no deals to be had for America while the Islamic Republic remains in power. They will never let go of their plans to achieve nuclear weapons and are willing to make a deal now and wait until Trump's successor is looking the other way to break out to a weapon. No deal will change this reality. The writer is an Iranian American who immigrated to the U.S. after being sentenced to death in Iran for converting to Christianity.

(Ynet News) Ron Ben-Yishai - Hizbullah is currently under severe pressure on every front. Hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents were displaced from southern Lebanese villages. The Lebanese government, backed by all sects in the country, including some Shiites, rejects Hizbullah's claim to retain an independent armed force. Hizbullah leader Naim Qassem has failed to fill Nasrallah's shoes, while Nabih Berri, the aging speaker of parliament and leader of the Amal movement, has effectively become the leading political figure within the Shiite community.

(X) Maj. (ret.) John Spencer - The IDF reports it has eliminated 2,500 Hizbullah terrorists in Lebanon since Feb. 28, 2026. The Lebanese Ministry of Health claimed 3,300 deaths since this date. This means the wide majority of deaths have been Hizbullah terrorists, reflecting the reality that the IDF is operating with immense precision. The IDF targets terrorists while taking many effective measures to mitigate harm to civilians. That's what the numbers show. The writer is chair of urban warfare studies at West Point's Modern War Institute.

(Washington Times) Joan Leslie McGill - Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, was recently asked why he hadn't charged Israel with genocide. The answer: "It would be a reckless prosecutor to move simply because of clamor. You move based upon evidence." The interviewer pressed him. Hasn't there been evidence in Gaza? There is no evidence. What makes this especially significant is that Mr. Khan is no friend of Israel. He rushed to prosecute Israeli leaders after Oct. 7, 2023. Moreover, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Kenyan jurist who served as the UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, explicitly stated that Israel's operations in Gaza did not meet the definition. In the summer of 2025, I led a congressional delegation to Israel, traveled to the Gaza border, and met the senior IDF official for humanitarian aid. He provided evidence that the Israelis allowed 600 aid trucks into the strip every day, while the Gaza population could comfortably survive on 300 trucks. The tragic truth is that any Gaza residents going hungry were doing so because their Hamas government stole their aid and profited from it. For two years influencers irresponsibly hurled "genocide" to generate viral content, and no one bothered to fact-check. The writer is executive director of the U.S.-Israel Education Association (USIEA).

(Los Angeles Jewish Journal) Lt.-Col. (res.) Or Horvitz - On Nov. 23, 2025, Israel eliminated Hizbullah's chief of staff, Haytham Ali Tabataba'i. The U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Tabataba'i, citing his responsibility for operations that killed Americans. For years, Israel has directly advanced American interests and helped protect the U.S., Israel and the Free World from some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth that were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans. The U.S. benefits from an ally that actively removes direct threats to American interests - often without requiring American forces to fight. Many countries shared the assessment that Iran posed a grave strategic threat. But only one country had both the capabilities and the willingness to act shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. in carrying out the campaign, while assuming significant risk. The military and intelligence cooperation with Israel enabled exceptional operational results that could not have been achieved in the same way without it. Israel's unique and diverse intelligence capabilities have served American security in countless ways. Israeli intelligence has helped thwart terrorist activity on U.S. soil, systematically weakened terrorist organizations, and protected Americans in the Middle East. Cooperation between two of the world's leading intelligence communities creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts - making both nations safer. Israel is also one of the most effective real-world testing grounds for American military systems. Israel's extensive use of U.S.-made weapons creates an unparalleled learning laboratory in which American systems are tested in combat against Soviet, Russian and Iranian-made weapons. When Israeli F-35s successfully operate against Russian or Iranian air defense systems, the U.S. gains critical lessons, and the world sees the superiority of American military technology over its competitors. Israel's startup culture, when integrated with the scale and depth of the American defense ecosystem, has helped produce some of the world's most advanced missile defense layers. American access to Israeli defense innovation directly serves the U.S. effort to preserve its military and technological edge over its rivals. My American colleagues understood well that the U.S. has few partners as effective, useful and proactive as Israel. Israel's willingness to defend itself by itself makes it one of the highest-return security investments the U.S. can make. The writer served as Head of the Hizbullah and Lebanon Branch of Israeli Defense Intelligence (2022-24).

(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch - In 2025, the PA continued terror reward payments to terrorist prisoners and families of "martyrs." Where did they get the money to pay the terror rewards? A 1995 report of the U.S. General Accounting Office examined the PLO's ability to support the PA, the Palestinian governance body created by the Oslo Accords. The report questioned why the PLO-PA mechanisms required the employment of 9,000 civil servants to replace the 1,600 employees of the Israeli civil administration. The report also questioned why the PA police force, which at the time was capped at 9,000 people, had already grown to over 18,000. The report referenced one international mechanism established to help the PA cover expenses. The largest trust fund set up for this purpose is the World Bank's Holst Fund, which served as a central repository for donors wishing to disburse pledges through the Bank. The report notes that the PA spent $2 million of Holst funds on martyr payments. The use of international donations through World Bank mechanisms to fund "Pay-for-Slay" occurred repeatedly. The EU restricts most of its direct aid to the PA for payment of teachers', civil servants', and healthcare workers' salaries. However, since funding is fungible, by shouldering the burden of paying the PA's ostensibly legitimate employees, the EU allows the PA to use its remaining funds to pay the terror rewards. Moreover, the EU is funding the people who have indoctrinated generations of Palestinian to hate Israelis and seek their murder. The writer, former director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria, is director of the Palestinian Authority Accountability Initiative at the Jerusalem Center.

(National Post-Canada) Barbara Kay - In 2005, Hebrew University sociology student and ardent anti-Zionist Tal Nitzan began work on a Master's thesis examining the (presumed) systemic rape of Palestinian women by the IDF. To her chagrin, Nitzan couldn't find a single documented case of rape by any IDF soldier. Undeterred, she adjusted her thesis. The IDF were still bent on humiliating Palestinian women, but her new "theory" had them accomplishing this by refusing to rape them. For a more famous and recent example, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times is claiming that sexual violence against imprisoned male Palestinians is happening "day after day." His charges are unreliably sourced, and he did not ask the Israel Prison Service for comment, yet claims sexual violence is "standard operating procedure" in Israeli prisons. Academic Naomi Klein, Canada's leading Marxist public intellectual, wrote in the Guardian in October 2024 about "How Israel Has Made Trauma a Weapon of War." She decries the Jews' excessive "memory culture" that turns traumatic events into educational experiences through art and technology. Israelis and diaspora Jews' continuous mourning over Oct. 7 disturbs Klein, who is particularly hard on the documentaries and exhibitions that show footage from the Palestinian invaders' GoPro cameras, or that recreate scenes of violence such as the Nova Exhibition. She also finds Holocaust memorialization extremely annoying. In her anti-Zionist playbook, it is only permissible to invoke the Holocaust in its inversion form, where Israelis are the new Nazis, Palestinians the new Jews.