Talks among Republicans in Congress are already underway for another route to split up aid for Israel and Ukraine aid, as the House’s $14.3 billion Israel-only aid proposal is likely to be dead-on-arrival in the Senate, sources told Fox News Digital Wednesday afternoon. 

‘We need to come up with a different package to move forward that has the ability to get through the Democrat controlled Senate and signed into law by a president, who is also a Democrat,’ a senate aide told Fox News Digital Wednesday. 

‘Some people are concerned about Ukraine. Some people are going about the border. Some people are concerned about money for Hamas,’ an aide said. ‘So, everyone has their own reasons as to why they are concerned about the large package, but it is a pretty evenly split amongst the party.’

House Republicans debuted their version of the emergency bill on Monday giving $14.3 billion in aid to Israel, while cutting into cash President Biden allocated toward the IRS last year.

The 13-page bill would offset the foreign aid by rescinding those funds from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year. Specifically, it targets part of the $80 billion the package gave to the IRS. The bill mirrors a GOP package introduced by Sens. Roger Marshall, Ted Cruz, JD Vance and Mike Lee in the upper chamber last week, which would also provide $14.3 billion to Israel.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., — who has been advocating for the aid package to remain separate — supports the House’s bill. 

‘We have a Republican-majority House, and what we should be doing as Republican senators is support our Republican majority in the House,’ Scott told Fox News Digital in an interview. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized the House’s bill on the Senate floor Tuesday. Schumer called the package ‘woefully inadequate’ and denounced its offset provisions as ‘poison pills that increase the deficit and help wealthy tax cheats avoid paying their fair share.’

The House’s bill could put Democrats in a tough spot between the political fallout of rejecting Israel aid and the bill’s removal of funds from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

When it comes to the Senate’s version, Scott said he doesn’t think ‘they will have the votes necessary to get the Ukraine aid done’ without stronger border security policies implemented. A number of GOP senators in recent days have been outspoken about their opposition to more federal dollars sent to the border without policy reforms.

‘If we do Ukraine aid, then we do ought to do it in a manner that is tied completely to incrementally giving them the aid as we actually get real border security, which I completely support,’ Scott said. ‘If Chuck Schumer wants to get aid to Ukraine, we’re going to have border security, otherwise, it’s not going to happen.’

Meanwhile, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been advocating for the package to remain cohesive despite dwindling support for Ukraine within the GOP, calling it a ‘global’ war against countries like Russia, China and Iran who oppose democratic nations. 

The total amount requested from Biden is roughly $105 billion. It includes $61.4 billion for Ukraine; $14.3 billion for Israel (with $10.6 billion allocated for military aid); $13.6 billion for ‘border protection’ such as speeding up processing asylum seekers; and significant investments in Indo-Pacific security assistance, totaling around $7.4 billion. Additionally, there’s $9 billion earmarked for humanitarian aid in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.

Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.

President Biden made several claims during the 2020 presidential debates that 3 years later are being labeled as falsehoods by conservatives as evidence continues to trickle out in the investigations into his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings. 

‘My son has not made money in terms of this thing you’re talking about, what are you talking about, China,’ Biden said on the debate stage leading up to the 2020 election. 

Since that claim, Hunter Biden contradicted his dad earlier this year, admitting in court that he received $664,000 from a ‘Chinese infrastructure investment company.’

In December 2013, Hunter Biden traveled with his dad on an Asia trip, which included China as a stop, and introduced him to his Chinese business partner Jonathan Li in the lobby of the hotel where the U.S. delegation was staying. A recent closed-door interview with Hunter’s former business partner, Devon Archer, revealed that the elder Biden would have coffee with him too during the visit. Less than two weeks later, Hunter would enter into a joint-venture called BHR Partners, a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited.

‘Lie, deny, counter accuse,’ GOP Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas, a member of the House Oversight Committee, posted on X on Wednesday with a clip of Biden’s claim about his son’s dealings in China. ‘The three principles of the Biden family influence peddling scheme!’

Also on Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee released information it says shows that Biden received $40,000 in ‘laundered China money’ from the bank account of his brother and his sister-in-law in the form of a personal check which would contradict another debate claim from candidate Biden. 

‘I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life!’ Biden said on the debate stage. ‘I have not taken a single penny from any country whatsoever, ever.’

House Oversight Chair James Comer said that even if the check — which was 10% of the $400,000 sent to Hunter’s company Owasco — was, in fact, a loan repayment, ‘it still shows how Joe benefited from his family cashing in on his name — with money from China no less.’

While President Biden has maintained he was never in business with his son, text messages obtained by Fox News Digital back in 2020 revealed that Joe Biden, in May 2017, met with Hunter’s business associates for the Sinohawk venture — specifically, Tony Bobulinski. The meeting on May 2, 2017, would have taken place just 11 days before a May 13, 2017, email obtained by Fox News in 2020, which included a discussion of ‘remuneration packages’ for six people in the business deal with CEFC. 

The email includes a note that ‘Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.’ A proposed equity split references ’20’ for ‘H’ and ’10 held by H for the big guy?’ with no further details.

Bobulinski previously confirmed in 2020 that ‘big guy’ referred to the elder Biden. 

Fox News Digital has also reported on how Biden has met with over a dozen of Hunter Biden’s business associates and that his business partners visited the Obama-Biden White House over 90 times, which contradicts the changing narratives about Biden not discussing business dealings with his son.

The communications obtained by Fox News Digital were found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that bring to light another claim Biden made on the 2020 debate stage that also appears to be false.

‘What he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,’ Biden said about the laptop on the debate stage when pressed by Trump. ‘What he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.’

For years, Biden and his administration officials have claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian ‘misinformation’ despite numerous media outlets independently verifying its legitimacy. 

‘My son did nothing wrong,’ Biden said on the debate stage during the Democratic primary in 2019. ‘I did nothing wrong.’

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report

JERUSALEM — In his daily briefings, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari regularly reminds Israelis that the war against Hamas in Gaza is being fought from ‘the air, the sea and the land,’ yet he misses out on one important arena that is likely to become the focus as Israel sends its troops deeper into the Palestinian enclave: The vast web of underground tunnels built by Hamas.

According to those who closely track the Iranian-backed terror group, as well as admissions by its own leaders, Hamas has built an approximately 300-mile subterranean system that snakes beneath civilian homes, schools and hospitals in urban areas of the Gaza Strip.

And for the past three weeks – since its forces carried out a massive and brutal terrorist attack inside Israel on Oct. 7 – Hamas’ leadership, both political and military, has been safely holed up down there as Israeli fighter jets pound the territory from above.

On Wednesday during a briefing with the foreign press, Hagari said the massive damage in the Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday was worsened by the fact that there were tunnels underneath the densely packed urban area. Locals reported seeing sinkholes opening up under the bombed-out buildings.

As Israeli ground forces expand further inside Gaza, the IDF will be forced to turn its attention to this underground battlefield, which is a challenge faced in other recent conflicts, particularly in the Middle East, but never on this scale, experts told Fox News Digital this week.

‘Tunnels change everything about how the military is going to be able to advance and take control of the situation,’ said Daphné Richemond-Barak, senior researcher and head of the International Law Desk at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Israel. 

‘Tunnels turn the battlefield into a multidimensional battlefield, which is not the case in regular urban terrain, and that is something that must be considered as part of the operational challenges,’ continued Richemond-Barak, also a research fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

‘As they (the IDF) advance into Gaza, they might be ambushed by tunnels behind them or below them in a most violent and unsettling fashion,’ she said.

Such a scenario actually happened to an elite force of Israeli soldiers during a previous round of fighting in Gaza. In the 2014 conflict that Israelis refer to as Operation Protective Edge, three Israeli soldiers were ambushed by Hamas terrorists who succeeded in dragging the dead body of one of the soldiers, Lt. Hadar Goldin, into a secret tunnel. Israelis were shocked by this action, which happened during a U.N.-mediated cease-fire, and have been fighting to return Goldin’s body ever since.

Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and founder of ‘Inside the Middle East,’ an educational program, told Fox News Digital that Hamas has been building such tunnels for more than two decades. If initially they were used to smuggle goods and weaponry from Egypt into Gaza, the underground operation evolved into a system of attack tunnels that enable terrorists to move beneath the border fence with Israel and reach inside Israeli communities. Israel detected those tunnels both prior and during the 2014 conflict.

Now, noted Melamed, Hamas’ tunnel has developed even further into a vast labyrinth of passageways that connect bunkers, command centers and even munitions storage facilities, a system that is often referred to as ‘the Gaza metro.’

Many officials in Israel believe that the majority of the 240 hostages, held captive by Hamas since the Oct. 7 assault, are hidden somewhere inside this underground network. Yocheved Lifshitz, one of four hostages released so far, told the media that she’walked for two or three kilometers on wet ground’ after her abduction.

‘There was a large network of underground tunnels that looked like spider webs,’ the 85-year-old grandmother said.

‘The soil in Gaza is soft, there is no need for massive drilling machinery to dig underground,’ Melamed said, describing how tunnel-building has become a massive industry for Hamas, which even has a dedicated authority overseeing the labor-intensive work and local families who are hired as contractors.

‘At some point, some of the contractors were killed while digging those tunnels and Hamas was forced to pay out compensation to their families,’ he noted. ‘Most of the tunnels have been fortified with cement to stop them from collapsing and burying people alive.’

But the tunnels may also be an ‘Achilles heel’ for the terror group as Israel continues to build up its forces in the Gaza Strip, Melamed said. 

‘The weakness is with the flow of air and oxygen,’ he said. ‘You need big ventilation systems to blow air inside, and that means if those are located, the flow of air can be completely shut off in a second.’

After three weeks of fighting, Israel has been trying to smoke the terrorists from their hiding places below ground by preventing additional fuel from entering Gaza, Fox News Digital reported last week. Israeli officials have repeatedly refused to allow fuel to enter Gaza for civilian purposes despite international pressure, arguing that it will likely end up being confiscated by Hamas and used to power the tunnel’s ventilation system.

Richemond-Barak, who authored a 2017 book ‘Underground Warfare,’ said tunnel warfare has been a part of war for as long as wars have existed but that in recent years there has been a surge in use by ‘violent, non-state actors – terrorist groups’ such as ISIS, al Qaeda and Hamas.

‘Tunnels are an appealing strategy for terrorist groups because they serve as a great equalizer with the sophisticated technologies of armies like those in Israel or the U.S.,’ she said before adding ‘that the challenges were vast for both sides fighting in such an arena.’

For those hiding within the tunnels – in this case, Hamas – the pressure comes from spending a great deal of time in hot and humid conditions underground. For a traditional army, such as the IDF, it is not only a drain on resources as it slows down the fight, it also demands special equipment and training, she said.

‘Soldiers need to be vetted specifically for this kind of claustrophobic, confined environment, which not every soldier can handle,’ said Richemond-Barak. ‘Even the best-trained soldiers will find it difficult to operate in endless passageways in which you lose a sense of time and direction.’

‘When you’re facing subterranean threats, you really need to think about which soldiers you’re going to send into the tunnels, and most military doctrines recommend against doing that,’ she added, describing how they are likely to be highly booby-trapped because Hamas has been anticipating Israel’s ground operation.

States that face or have faced such threats have been forced to develop new tools – robots and other equipment – that might be used to detect and neutralize tunnels, said Richemond-Barak, pointing out that the IDF has invested heavily in this over the past nine years.

‘Although we knew tunnels were a serious threat before 2014, we did not build the right operational ideas back then,’ Amir Avivi, founder and CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum and an IDF brigadier general (res.) from the engineering corps previously responsible for the Gaza area, said of Israel’s previous battle against Hamas inside Gaza.

Avivi said that 10 years ago, the theory was that Hamas’ tunnel system was for offensive, not strategic, purposes. Tunnels detected by Israel previous to 2014 had been used for smuggling goods and weapons from Egypt into Gaza and for infiltrations into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

‘When you don’t build the right operational ideas then you do not train right and do not develop the right equipment and technologies for such a threat,’ Avivi said, adding, ‘When we went in to destroy the offensive tunnels in 2014, we lacked the right equipment, and we lacked the right technologies.’

‘The army was so shocked, and that is why it took 51 days to defeat Hamas then,’ said Avivi. ‘That is when started the whole process of building our capabilities, and today we are completely able to both detect, destroy and fight tunnel warfare.’

While he admitted that the army faces a huge challenge in detecting the tunnels and fighting those inside them, the best ‘solution is not going down but simply burying the people who are in there.’

‘Creating a reality where they are going to die inside and that is it,’ Avivi said.

The United States and its partners are reportedly discussing sending foreign troops to Gaza to serve as an ‘international peacekeeping force’ in the region currently controlled by Hamas militants following the war in Israel. 

Two U.S. senators confirmed the early, closed-door talks to Politico, though it is unclear if negotiations including potential sending American troops. 

‘There certainly has been discussion with the Saudi about their being part of some international peacekeeping force if only to provide resources, and, longer term, supporting Palestinian leadership and a separate state, obviously,’ Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Politico. ‘Reconstruction of Gaza will require a vast amount of resources, which the Saudis potentially could help provide.’ 

‘I’m not sure how active the conversation is about U.S. troops,’ Blumenthal added, speaking of the discussions he had with the congressional delegation with whom he traveled to Israel last month. ‘I would think that maybe an international force could be mustered without U.S. troops.’

‘There are ongoing conversations regarding the possible composition of an international force,’ Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., also told Politico, reportedly declining to go into detail. ‘They are very preliminary and fragile.’

‘I do think it’d be important to have some kind of multinational force in Gaza as a transition to whatever comes next,’ he added. 

Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg first reported that the United States and Israel were weighing the option of a multinational force in the Gaza Strip once Hamas is ousted. However, in a statement to the outlet, National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson reported denied ‘sending U.S. troops’ was under consideration. 

Speaking with Politico, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin, D-Md., who traveled to the Middle East with Blumenthal, said talks with Israeli officials included how aid and security would be administered in Gaza after the conflict. Though he prefers a multinational force, Cardin explained that sensitivities in the region to American troops could deter them from being involved heavily in the coalition intended to maintain order. 

‘It’s got to be credible, it’s got to provide security, and it has to involve the surrounding states that believe in a two-state solution,’ Cardin said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that the Biden administration prefers that the Palestinian Authority lead Gaza after Hamas’ defeat if possible. However, that is only if, ‘there are other temporary arrangements that may involve a number of other countries in the region,’ he told lawmakers. ‘It may involve international agencies that would help provide for both security and governance.’