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US President Donald Trump announces that his Board of Peace has reached an agreement on the “complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.”

The agreement was inked earlier Thursday between negotiators from Hamas, the Board of Peace and Mideast mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, a source familiar with the matter tells The Times of Israel.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office subsequently issued a statement saying that the Board of Peace’s 15-point disarmament proposal did not meet Israeli demands for Gaza’s complete demilitarization. Accordingly, it’s unclear how the agreement will be able to proceed.

“This agreement is a critical step toward Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks,” Trump writes on Truth Social.

“This is a major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan. The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors,” he continues.

“One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity. We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do,” Trump adds.

“I want to thank the mediators—Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye—for their important efforts, and especially my outstanding team, whose tireless work made this historic breakthrough possible,” Trump says.

“The threat that emerged from Gaza on October 7 will NOT be allowed to rebuild!” he continues. “Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its people.”

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Around 100 infantry soldiers left behind their weapons and abandoned the military’s Sde Teiman base in southern Israel on Thursday after their battalion commander destroyed decorative signs they had put up, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The mass walkout by troops from the Givati Brigade’s Tzabar Battalion was “being investigated and handled by the commanders,” the IDF said. “This is an incident that is inconsistent with the values of the IDF and with what is expected of its soldiers.”

Later, most of the troops, aside from one platoon — around 30-40 soldiers — returned to the base, according to the military.

Footage posted online showed the soldiers marching out of the base while chanting an obscenity against officers. Other footage from the base showed a disorganized mount of guns left behind by the soldiers, and the wreckage of the removed signs, including one with a hellish motif that read “Kingdom of Devils.”

The soldiers claimed the signs were “part of our company’s tradition.” According to the army, the signs contained materials meant to disparage rookie soldiers.

Infantry soldiers in the IDF have a history of hazing new recruits and of deserting en masse over alleged mistreatment by commanders.

The Givati soldiers’ commander gave them until 4 p.m. to return to Sde Teiman or face punishment. The names of soldiers who failed to show up would be forwarded to the Military Police for further handling, the officer said in a message to the troops.

“At exactly 16:00, there will be a check in the company to see who has remained/returned,” read the message. “Anyone who has not returned by 16:00 will be immediately classified as AWOL.”

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The Israeli military has blown up Hezbollah’s tunnel system beneath the Beaufort Ridge in southern Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announce in a joint statement.

They say that the IDF used 700 tons of explosives to demolish the subterranean facility.

The demolition was planned for an earlier date but was postponed because of the ceasefire. Netanyahu and Katz say the destruction of the tunnel system at this time comes in response to Hezbollah’s “blatant” violation of the ceasefire agreement yesterday, by targeting an unmanned bulldozer with an explosive drone.

The tunnel, which journalists toured earlier this month, served as a “central part of the Hezbollah terror organization’s invasion plan against the Galilee communities,” the statement says.

“The State of Israel will not accept any violation of the ceasefire agreement. Any attempt by Hezbollah to harm IDF troops or Israeli civilians will be met with a severe and powerful response that will exact a heavy price from the terrorist organization,”. Netanyahu and Katz say, adding that the IDF “will remain in the security zone in southern Lebanon and will continue to destroy all terror infrastructure in order to prevent any attempt by Hezbollah to restore its capabilities.”

The IDF in its own statement says it demolished “several key underground routes in the Beaufort Ridge area.”

“Over the past several weeks, IDF troops completed securing the Beaufort Ridge area, while taking control of and clearing the underground infrastructure and preparing it for destruction,” the military says.

The military had already on July 13 demolished a tunnel that was part of the Beaufort Ridge area underground system. With the latest demolition, most of the tunnel network in the area has been destroyed.

The IDF is also still monitoring a major Hezbollah tunnel system beneath the Ali Taher ridge, where dozens of operatives are still believed to be holed up.

Former hostage Evyatar David, who was filmed pale and emaciated in a video where he said he was digging his own grave in a Hamas tunnel in Gaza, recounts the experience one year after the video was filmed.

The footage, released in early August last year and filmed a few days prior, sparked outcry and became one of the most harrowing images of the plight of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas in the terror group’s October 7, 2023, attack.

In the video, a skeletal David described how he had not eaten for a few days, held a shovel and dug a pit in a tunnel.

“This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in,” he said in the video. “Time is running out. You are the only ones who can end this.”

David recalls smelling food being eaten by his captors as they took him to film the video.

“They tell me, come, we’re going somewhere else for a moment,” he recalls. “On the way, we pass by their big room… I was blindfolded, and I remember the smell of tea they’re preparing and cakes, and hear them chewing. And a skeleton is walking by them now, and they’re enjoying cake and tea.”

His captors then showed him a pit and instructed him to dig, he recalls.

“Then we get to this place, and I see a half-dug pit, and they say, ‘Here, take this, here’s a shovel, go in, this will be your grave,” he recalls. “I dug this grave. It was close to impossible to do physically. I told myself in my head, it could be that if I’m really going to die, I’ll go lay down in this pit.”

He adds, “Think of what it is to dig your own grave. Maybe I am going to die of hunger?”

David, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, was released in October along with the rest of the surviving hostages upon the signing of a ceasefire deal in Gaza.

For the UK Jewish Orthodox Community
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