IDF put on alert for "immediate" return to Gaza fighting: report

Photo: Jerusalem Post

As KAN News reported on Friday evening, the nation’s political echelon, under the steely gaze of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has directed the Israel Defense Forces to gird themselves for an “immediate” return to the crucible of combat in Gaza, as reported by The Jerusalem Post.

This is no idle threat, no mere posturing. Earlier this week, the outlet laid bare the grim calculus of Israeli officials: absent a deal with Hamas, the guns of war will roar once more within a week and a half.

The sticking point, as ever, is Hamas’s intransigence. 

“Hamas is currently rejecting [US Middle East envoy Steve] Witkoff’s proposal, so it is very difficult to make progress,” one official remarked, his words dripping with the weary frustration of a man who has seen this play enacted too many times. And what is this proposal, this slender thread of hope? 

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, Witkoff’s plan offers a phased redemption: half of the living hostages and half of the bodies returned on day one, the rest—the full tally of the living and the dead—restored to their families by the 42nd day, the ceasefire’s final act. A simple bargain, you might think, to end the torment of those held captive by savages. Yet Hamas, true to its nature, dithers. Or does it? 

A source close to the negotiations muddies the waters: “Hamas has neither accepted nor rejected the Witkoff proposal.” Ambiguity, that old refuge of the morally unmoored.

Meanwhile, the IDF’s new chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, wasted no time on his first day in command. Speaking to the heads of Gaza border communities—those resilient souls who live in the shadow of rocket fire—he was unequivocal: “We are preparing to return to fighting.” 

His words carry the weight of necessity, not bluster. “We must defeat Hamas,” he declared, before adding, with a nod to the innocents still in captivity, “The hostages are our top priority.” He understands the stakes and knows that peace is not won by wishful thinking but by the hard, bloody business of confronting evil head-on.

Israel, as ever, finds itself caught between the imperatives of justice and the mirage of diplomacy. 

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Hamas, with its predictable rejectionist posturing—or is it mere coyness?—plays its familiar game, dangling the lives of hostages like bait before a world too often willing to look the other way. 

The clock ticks. The IDF readies itself. And a nation braces for what may come.

Am Yisrael Chai!

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