An Israeli reserve soldier with dual American citizenship was killed Thursday by an anti-tank missile fired from Lebanon, according to Israel Defense Forces.

The soldier was identified as Staff Sgt. Omer Balva, 22, from Herzliya, Israeli media reported. He was a commander in the 9203rd Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade. 

Balva was born to Israeli parents but grew up in Rockville, Maryland, where he attended the Charles E. Smith Jewish day school, the Times of Israel reported.

He was one of some 360,000 Israeli reservists called into action after the Islamic group Hamas infiltrated Israel on October 7, brutally murdering at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and taking an estimated 210 people captive back to Gaza. 

Balva was in the United States last week when he was called into reserve service. He promptly flew back to Israel to report for duty, the report said. 

Skirmishes along the Israeli-Lebanon border between Israeli troops and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah have become more frequent in recent days as concerns are escalating of a second front emerging in Israel’s war with Hamas. 

Israel Defense Forces traded fire with Hezbollah terrorists on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon on Saturday, after terrorists fired anti-tank missiles into Israeli territory overnight.

The Israeli military said an anti-tank guided missile was fired from Lebanon into the Margaliot area in northern Israel. IDF responded with a drone strike against the terrorist squad. 

Additionally, another missile was launched from Lebanon targeting the Hanita area, IDF said. Israeli troops responded with artillery fire that struck missile launchers on the Lebanese side of the border, according to IDF. 

‘The IDF is ready for all scenarios in the various sectors and will continue to act for the security of Israeli citizens,’ a military spokesperson said. 

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Saturday that Hezbollah terrorists have been paying a ‘heavy price’ for their attacks on Israeli military outposts since the war with Hamas began on Oct. 7.

‘Hezbollah has decided to participate in the fighting, we are exacting a heavy price from it,’ Gallant told troops with the 91st territorial division base, at the Biranit camp on the Lebanon border, according to the Times of Israel. 

‘I assume that the challenges will be greater [than they are now], and you have to take this into account, to be ready like a [coiled] spring for any situation,’ he added. 

At least 5,700 people have been killed in the war between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, including at least 32 American civilians. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims at least 4,385 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank and more than 13,561 wounded by Israeli retaliatory strikes. At least 10 Americans are feared to be held captive by Hamas. 

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but in their effort to elect a House speaker, Republicans have taken a more tortured route.

Compared to a straight line, Republicans will follow the path of the ‘truncated icosidodecahedron rhombus,’ a monstrous, convex, polygonous shape.

At least the truncated icosidodecahedron rhombus is an actual thing.

The Rube Goldberg-esque approach by House Republicans to the speakership would probably confuse Archimedes, Pythagoras and Euclid.

I’ve always said that the essence of Congress is ‘the math.’ The math is rather simple. Republicans need an outright majority of the entire House — voting by name — to elect someone as speaker. But since they can’t balance the equation after nearly three weeks, the House has devolved into a state of unsolvable political algebra.

If nothing else, House Republicans have been consistent about one thing the past few weeks: Whatever the plan is, they will alter the strategy 180 degrees a few hours later.

Everyone has whiplash.

House Republicans tapped House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., as their speaker nominee a week ago Wednesday, but 30 hours later, he dropped out. 

Last Friday afternoon, Republicans then anointed House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, as their speaker nominee. But a week later, Republicans voted Jordan off the island after he lost three consecutive votes for speaker on the floor. Jordan hemorrhaged additional ballots each time.

But that doesn’t do justice to the frenzied planning that has become a touchstone of the manic process to tap a new speaker.

Jordan lost consecutive floor votes for speaker on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday morning, the tentative plan was for the House to meet at noon, potentially teeing up a vote for speaker around 1 p.m.

But House Republicans convened one of their labyrinthine ‘conference’ meetings for 11 a.m.

Just as the meeting started, word came that Jordan would not demand a roll call vote that day. Jordan was destined to lose that vote, the same as he had lost on the days before. One GOP source said that the strategy by Jordan’s opponents was ‘escalatory’ — a move to prompt more opponents to cast ballots against Jordan on each ballot.

Before the meeting, Jordan indicated that he would remain a candidate for speaker and remain the official GOP nominee for the job. But he endorsed a plan for the House to formally elect Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., as interim speaker pro tempore. McHenry simply assumed the role once the House bounced former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., from the speakership earlier this month. McHenry is handcuffed in his powers as acting speaker pro tempore, but the House would formally empower McHenry if he were elected speaker pro tempore. That would allow the House to function again and vote on legislation. There is precedent for this. More on that in a moment.

But after four hours, Republicans emerged from the meeting, swerving suddenly toward a divergent plan. Republicans incinerated the idea to elect McHenry and get the House running again — even though Jordan supported it.

Wildly, the plan switched back to holding a floor vote for Jordan later that day, perhaps even in the middle of President Biden’s prime-time address about the Middle East.

Naturally, the vote never came. 

The House adjourned early Thursday evening without voting, but, true to form, a new plan emerged. The House would meet at 10 a.m. Friday with a third vote for speaker beginning around 11 a.m.

Holy trapezoid.

‘Additional votes are expected throughout the weekend,’ tweeted Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, a Jordan ally, at 7:23 p.m. Thursday.

But there was a problem with the idea of weekend votes for speaker.

‘Additonal votes’ would mean that Jordan still hadn’t wrapped up his bid for speaker on Friday. Lawmakers on both sides saw the possibility of an attendance problem over the weekend. They scheduled events in their districts. It was unclear how many would be willing to hang around Washington for another vote that was destined to fail.

However, weekend absences could actually help Jordan. If the right mixture of Members were absent, that could lower the threshold to elect a speaker. Depending on who were gone, there was a possibility that Jordan could actually WIN.

However, any benefit to Jordan would mean a nearly equal risk of losing the speaker’s gavel entirely.

If another blend of members were absent, it was possible that Republicans, if they weren’t careful, could elect House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., as speaker.

The magic number to prevail as speaker morphs with each roll call vote. It’s contingent on how many members are there and vote for a candidate by name. The speaker must win an outright majority of the ballots being cast.

That’s why the Jeffries scenario was in play.

As they say in the movies, ‘You play a dangerous game, Mr. Bond.’

But it never got to that point.

At 9:33 p.m. on Thursday, Jordan announced he would hold an 8 a.m. press conference Friday in the Rayburn Room of the U.S. Capitol. It’s rare for any event on Capitol Hill to begin before 9 a.m, but it’s even stranger to announce an event of this magnitude so late the night before.

But Jordan strode in to the Rayburn Room a few moments after 8 a.m. Friday, jacketless, as is his custom.

‘Our plan this weekend is to get a speaker elected,’ said Jordan at 8:11 a.m.

During his remarks, Jordan spoke of how the Wright Brothers built a plane in 1903 that was ‘barely’ airborne.

‘Flew like 100 feet. Got a few feet off the ground,’ said Jordan.

He then added that Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in a jet in 1947.

‘In 44 years, we go from two guys flying 100 feet to another American breaking the sound barrier in a jet,’ said Jordan.

Jordan concluded his remarks at 8:12 a.m. He was back in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building by 8:21 a.m. The House began voting shortly after 11 a.m. By 11:26 a.m., the House was only through names beginning with letter ‘G.’ But it was clear Jordan had lost another vote for speaker. McHenry gaveled the vote closed at 12:06 p.m. By 1:56 p.m., House Republicans voted by secret ballot to move on from Jordan as their speaker nominee.

Jordan’s campaign for speaker probably traveled further politically than the 120 feet on the maiden voyage of the Wright Brothers’ flyer. However, the Wright Brothers kept at it that day in 1903, increasing their flight distance with each sortie. Their fourth flight was aloft for nearly a full minute and flew 852 feet. But unlike the Wright Brothers, Jordan kept losing ground on his subsequent roll call votes. At the rate Jordan was going, it may have taken him 44 years to become speaker — the same amount of time it took Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier.

Some Republicans took umbrage at what they perceived as strong-arm tactics by Jordan and his allies. Some received death threats. Their family members encountered vulgar messages. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, called her warnings ‘credible’ and reported them to the U.S. Capitol Police. She described Jordan as a ‘bully.’

Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga., said he planned to support Jordan on the second ballot, but he changed his mind after intimidation tactics ‘ramped up.’ He also characterized Jordan as a ‘bully.’

Jordan allies rode to his defense.

‘Jordan has never pressured anybody,’ said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn., minimized security concerns.

‘All of us in Congress receive death threats. I don’t know if that’s a news flash for anybody here,’ said Perry. ‘It’s nothing new to a member of Congress. We all know it. That is another red herring.’

Never mind that former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., nearly died during a 2011 shooting that also injured future Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz. And Scalise nearly perished during the GOP baseball practice shooting in 2017. 

A cavalcade of House Republicans entered the speaker sweepstakes Friday following Jordan’s defeat. The House aims to vote again on Tuesday. But it’s anyone’s guess whether the House can elect a speaker then or anytime soon.

One senior Republican source told Fox that it was likely the House had to go at least one more round with a bona fide candidate for speaker before it began to consider the scenario mentioned earlier about empowering McHenry.

The House has done so in the past. House Rule I, Clause 8 allows an elected speaker pro tempore to assume ‘virtually all the duties, authorities, and prerogatives of the Speaker of the House.’

One of the best examples came in 1961. Late House Speaker Sam Rayburn, D-Tex., fell ill over the summer and went back to the Lone Star State to die. The House elected future House Speaker John McCormack, D-Mass., as speaker pro tempore in Rayburn’s absence. The House returned to legislative form, passing a foreign operations spending bill and legislation to create the Peace Corps. The latter was one of the hallmarks of President John F. Kennedy’s legislative agenda.

Rayburn passed away in the fall. The House later elected McCormack as the regular speaker.

It’s far from clear whether the House will ever follow this path to elect a speaker pro tempore if it can’t pick an actual speaker, but one thing is certain: The pathway over the next week remains circuitous. Ellipitical. Contorted. Malformed.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. That is rarely the case for anything in Congress, but the exercise of electing a speaker is certainly akin to a truncated scosidodecahedron rhombus.

China is rapidly increasing its nuclear arsenal and is expected to double its number of nuclear warheads from more than 500 currently to more than 1,000 by 2030, which exceeds earlier projections, the Pentagon’s annual report on China’s military growth said this week. 

The Pentagon previously estimated that Beijing had more than 400 nuclear warheads as of 2021. 

The Chinese military’s ‘evolving capabilities and concepts continue to strengthen the PRC’s ability to ‘fight and win wars’ against a ‘strong enemy’ (a likely euphemism for the United States), counter an intervention by a third party in a conflict along the PRC’s periphery, and project power globally,’ the Thursday report said, noting the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of having a ‘world-class’ military by 2049. 

It added, ‘The PRC probably will use its new fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons program, despite publicly maintaining these technologies are intended for peaceful purposes.’

The military is also developing new ICBMs that will ‘significantly improve its nuclear-capable missile forces and will require increased nuclear warhead production’ and may be exploring the development of conventionally-armed intercontinental range missile systems that would allow it to ‘threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.’ 

The Pentagon said that Russia’s war in Ukraine had presented an ‘unexpected challenge’ for Beijing. 

‘As Beijing deliberates the scale and scope of material commitments to Russia’s war on Ukraine, it probably will seek to balance its strategic partnership with Russia while avoiding reputational or economic costs that could result from its assistance,’ the report said. 

China is ‘almost certainly is learning lessons’ from the war in Ukraine in relation to a potential conflict over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as a Chinese territory. 

China already has the world’s largest navy and has increased its number of ships from 340 to 370 since last year, the report added. 

Beijing is expected to increase its number of ships to 435 by 2030. 

On Friday, China foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the Pentagon report ‘ignores the facts, is full of prejudice and spreads the theory of the threat posed by China.’

Mao continued, ‘As long as any country does not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against China, it will not be threatened by China’s nuclear weapons.’

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is concerned President Joe Biden’s supplemental request to Congress, which includes humanitarian aid for Gaza, will further fund terrorism in the region. 

‘Even last week, we got a report that Hamas was intersecting aid that was going and whether it is money, food, fuel even first aid kits and medical supplies — they’re taking it all and it is not even Gazans,’ Blackburn told Fox News Digital in an interview Friday. ‘So, we’ve got to move to a position where humanitarian aid is going to make it to people that are suffering, and not terrorists.’

Last week, the United Nations agency that delivers aid to Palestinians, announced Hamas leaders in Gaza had stolen medical supplies and fuel that was meant for civilians. They later deleted the post on X and claimed nothing had been stolen.

In Biden’s $105 billion emergency supplemental request, he outlined $9 billion for Ukraine, Gaza and Israel.

‘The majority of the American people support Israel, and they want to make certain that aid is going to make it to people who need that aid,’ Blackburn said. ‘You now have this progressive group that conducts themselves as if they are Hamas sympathizers, and that is incredibly disappointing to see.’

Blackburn’s jab was aimed at progressive ‘Squad’ members like Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and oppose more funding for Israel’s military.

Blackburn — who has been a leading lawmaker in calling on the administration to freeze the $6 billion in Iranian assets — was part of a group of GOP lawmakers who penned a letter to Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. on Friday calling for the supplemental request to be split up in separate packages. 

‘These are two separate conflicts and it would be wrong to leverage support of aid to Israel in attempt to get additional aid for Ukraine across the finish line. Furthermore, it would be irresponsible and we should not risk a government shutdown by bundling these priorities together and thus complicating the process and lessening the likelihood of a funding package,’ the lawmakers wrote. 

Congress will have to convene next week to begun negotiations on the supplemental request and pass a final package and send it for final approval to the White House. 

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, was pulled as the GOP nominee for speaker on Friday after three failed ballots.

Jordan’s downfall had several factors in play, but a few of them drove the Ohio Republican down the exit ramp after 25 Republicans voted for other speaker candidates over him.

Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., who did not vote for Jordan to be speaker, told Fox News Digital on Friday he thinks the large number of people who voted to pull Jordan from the nomination was due to the conference’s secret ballot.

The House Republican Conference on Friday convened after the third speaker vote where Jordan was removed as the nominee via secret ballot.

‘There was no reason for this suspense,’ Kelly said. ‘There was no reason for any of this going on.’

One major factor that reared its ugly head was likely the death threats made against several of Jordan’s holdouts.

GOP Reps. Marianette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Nick LaLota of New York said this week that they received death threats after not voting for Jordan’s speakership bid.

Miller-Meeks released a statement on Wednesday night about the ‘credible death threats’ she has received after voting for House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, for speaker over Jordan in the second round of voting.

Meanwhile, LaLota posted a picture on X of an email he said he received, telling him to go ‘f— yourself and die.’

‘If I see your face, I will whip all the hair out of your f—ing head you f—ing scumbag,’ the person wrote.

Jordan’s office has denounced the death threats, with spokesperson Russell Dye calling the words ‘abhorrent’ that have ‘no place in a civil discourse.’

Nebraska GOP Rep. Don Bacon’s wife also received anonymous messages threatening to remove the congressman from his job unless he voted for Jordan.

Kelly said there ‘is no reason for people getting threatening phone calls’ and that the total votes against Jordan in the secret ballot were ‘overwhelming.’

Jordan’s stances on issues like the 2020 election also played a part in him losing the nomination.

The last presidential election became a key talking point among House Democrats as they backed Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., against Jordan for the gavel.

However, the 2020 election became a contention point in the GOP conference as well, and was a major factor in Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., not voting for Jordan.

Additionally, while Jordan managed to secure the majority of the House GOP behind him, the Ohio Republican is a polarizing figure among lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

That polarization likely played a part in pushing moderates away from voting for him, as several represent districts won by President Biden in 2020.

The House GOP conference on Friday voted to drop Jordan as its speaker nominee after a third defeat in floor-wide votes earlier in the day.

Sources told Fox News Digital that the conference had voted to remove Jordan as the nominee in a closed-door meeting.

In the final round, 25 Republicans voted against Jordan, giving him just 194 votes — far short of the approximately 217 he would need to win the speaker’s race. It was his lowest total out of the three ballots.

Fox News Digital’s Adam Shaw and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and his House Democrats are sitting pretty amid Republicans’ infighting over who will be the next speaker.

The Democrats’ messaging against House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s speaker candidacy and their consistent voting record behind Jeffries — as well as calls for a bipartisan path forward — position the Democrats well amid the House chaos.

The Democrats have remained in lockstep behind Jeffries as their speaker nominee since the race to replace ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., kicked off.

Jeffries and the Democrats supported the motion to remove McCarthy by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida nearly three weeks ago.

Since then, Jeffries and the Democrats have been politicking hard, playing up the situation in their favor before the political pendulum swings back toward the GOP.

After Jordan’s nomination to become House speaker, Jeffries and his party positioned themselves as united.

Democrats consistently highlighted Jordan’s record in Congress and his stance on the 2020 election results while pushing calls for a bipartisan deal to elect a speaker.

However, Jeffries has not named any Republicans who the House Democrats would get behind for speaker.

‘House Democrats have repeatedly made clear we want to find a bipartisan path forward leader to serve at every step of the way. Republicans have rejected bipartisanship and embrace extremism,’ Jeffries told reporters Friday.

The calls for bipartisanship while spotlighting the chaos infecting the GOP amid the speaker fight will also likely help the House Democrats heading into 2024.

However, House Republicans will not let the American people forget about the Democrats joining Gaetz and seven other GOP lawmakers in ousting McCarthy, and that likely won’t change before 2024.

Jordan held his third vote for speaker Friday, and he failed again to take the gavel as members of his party voted for other Republicans over him.

Twenty-five Republicans voted against Jordan, giving him just 194 votes — far short of the approximately 217 he needed to win the speaker’s race. Jeffries picked up 210 votes from House Democrats. 

Jordan was later voted out as the speaker designee by House Republicans in a closed-door conference.

Fox News Digital’s Liz Elkind and Adam Shaw contributed reporting.

Former Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a Libertarian, said Friday that several of his relatives were killed in a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza that was damaged by an Israeli airstrike amid the war between Israel forces and Hamas terrorists.

The explosion struck the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius Thursday evening and knocked down a wall of the church. At least 500 displaced Muslims and Christians had taken shelter in the church, where the Hamas-run government’s health ministry said at least 16 were killed.

The Israeli military said a strike on a nearby command center damaged part of the church, and that the incident is under investigation. The military said the church was not the target of the strike.

Amash, who represented Michigan’s third congressional district until he left the U.S. House in 2021, confirmed the death of his relatives on social media.

‘With great sadness, I have now confirmed that several of my relatives (including Viola and Yara pictured here) were killed at Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, where they had been sheltering, when part of the complex was destroyed as the result of an Israeli airstrike,’ Amash wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. ‘Give rest, O Lord, to their souls, and may their memories be eternal.’

‘The Palestinian Christian community has endured so much. Our family is hurting badly. May God watch over all Christians in Gaza—and all Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering, whatever their religion or creed,’ he continued.

Amash is a Palestinian-American who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 to 2021. The former congressman left the GOP in 2019 before later joining the Libertarian Party.

The Holy Orthodox Order of Saint George confirmed the bombing of the church.

‘The bombs hit the two church halls where the refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping. Presently, survivors are searching the rubble for other casualties,’ the order said in a statement Thursday night. ‘Our source at the scene says that they estimate that 150-200 people are dead, and that number is expected to rise as more people are found in the wreckage.’

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement after the church was damaged that it ‘expresses its strongest condemnation of the Israeli air strike that has struck its church compound in the city of Gaza.’

More than 5,600 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on October 7, leading to retaliatory action from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.

Reuters contributed to this report.

On a tour of southern Israel Thursday aimed at boosting morale among troops preparing for a likely ground operation inside Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant promised to lead Israel to a decisive victory against Hamas.   

‘We will be precise and forceful, and we will keep going until we fulfill our mission,’ Gallant stated.  

What exactly that mission is has been clearly echoed throughout Israel’s military ranks up to its political leadership over the last two weeks since an elite unit of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel.  

After the murder of 1,400 people, civilians and soldiers and the kidnapping of 210 people, Israel has said it will not stop this war until Hamas, its people and its infrastructure are wiped out. 

Voices around the world have begun questioning whether Israel’s response is ‘proportionate,’ calling for restraint as the civilian death toll in Gaza rises and demanding a cease-fire before this conflict drags in other, more nefarious, regional players 

But Israelis remain steadfast, believing there is no choice — ‘It’s either them or us.’ There is no room in the region for both.  

Speaking to Fox News Digital, Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, reiterated Israel’s goal to destroy Hamas.

‘Demanding a ceasefire from Israel is saying that Hamas should get away with what it did — and should keep its ability to do it again,’ Levy said. 

‘Until we complete our mission of dismantling Hamas, urging a ceasefire is the pro-Hamas position. 

‘We’re talking about whole families cremated alive, burned until there was nothing left of the children but fragments of bone and ash,’ Levy said, describing the sprawling attack on multiple communities and towns throughout southern Israel. ‘These images reminded us not only of ISIS but of the worst horrors of the Holocaust. Israel cannot allow this satanic terror organization to threaten its citizens any longer.’ 

On Friday night, two of the hostages – U.S. nationals Judith and Natalie Raanan – were released by Hamas, and on Saturday morning the United Nations confirmed that several truckloads of aid had crossed into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Despite this, Israel continued its airstrikes in the Palestinian enclave, hitting key infrastructure sites used by Hamas terrorists. 

Miri Eisen, a retired IDF colonel and director of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at Reichman University near Tel Aviv, said, ‘Israel has no choice in doing this because, on Oct. 7, 2023, all of us who have been following Hamas our entire adult lives were caught by surprise.

‘In its 16 years ruling Gaza, Hamas has built a subterranean system of tunnels, it has tons of operatives and the leaders of this terror group planned, trained and invested down to the tiniest of details a terror attack that is incomparable to anything that has ever happened anywhere else. This is not about revenge. This is just like what the world faced with ISIS. We must erase every part of their operation.’  

Describing the horrific brutality of Hamas’ attack, which included members of its armed Nukhba force killing, brutalizing, decapitating, raping and even burning people alive, as well as kidnapping hundreds, Eisen said, ‘The world cannot allow any terror organization — not Hamas, not ISIS and not Hezbollah — to replicate and execute another attack of this kind in the heart of civilian communities.

‘Anyway, who would be willing to go back to live in an area with that kind of threat?’   

According to information shared by the IDF, some 22 communities and two towns were attacked by up to 3,000 Palestinian terrorists, including some from other extremist organizations in Gaza.  

In at least a dozen of the communities, most of which are agricultural villages (kibbutzim), homes and infrastructure were destroyed. All Israeli civilians that survived have now been evacuated from the area around the Gaza Strip, and many who survived the attack have nowhere left to return. This is the first time in Israel’s 75-year history there are internally displaced citizens. Estimates say the number is higher than 50,000 people.  

‘The whole concept that Israel lived with for decades regarding the security and safety of its civilian population around the Gaza Strip has collapsed,’ Shaul Shay, also a retired IDF colonel and former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, told Fox News Digital.  

‘If, in the past, Israel thought it could contain Hamas through rounds of violence, rocket fire tunnels, and other efforts, the recent attack showed us in a painful way that the concept no longer works,’ he said. He added that, during the previous rounds, there had been debates over removing Hamas and retaking control of Gaza. Israel controlled the Strip until it unilaterally withdrew in 2005, but the cost was always considered to be too high.  

‘There is no other option but to totally change the paradigm in the Gaza Strip,’ Shay said. ‘It is impossible to return to what happened before.’ 

Since Hamas’ surprise attack, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against what it calls ‘terror infrastructure’ in the Palestinian enclave and assassinated a growing number of top-ranking leaders from the various terror groups operating there. The army has said its main goal is reaching Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who the IDF spokesman has described as a ‘dead man walking.’ 

Yet with much of Hamas’ so-called fighting infrastructure buried deep beneath the ground in residential areas, including beneath hospitals, schools and houses of worship, according to the Israeli military, civilian deaths are unavoidable. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims at least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza so far.

As the death toll in Gaza rises and the humanitarian situation worsens, the delivery of essential aid from Egypt, which also shares a border with Gaza, had still not arrived Friday. Tensions in other parts of the region are also rising.

On Friday morning, Israel began evacuating the civilian population from its largest town in the north, Kiryat Shmona, as rocket fire and artillery continued to rain down from the Iranian-backed Shiite group Hezbollah.  

‘Unfortunately, this is not just a local problem,’ said Shay. ‘It is part of a regional conflict that on a geo-strategic level was initiated by Iran. Hamas, Hezbollah and other Shiite militia groups are all part of the Iranian infrastructure.

‘Iran was concerned with the growing regional alliance that the U.S. was trying to build in the Middle East, including the possible peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the Abraham Accords. They saw the regional balance shifting in favor of Israel and the U.S., and they wanted to stop it.’  

Lt. Col. (res) Shaul Bartal, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said over the past few months he noticed an increase in meetings between senior Hamas leaders based outside of Gaza such as Ismail Haniyeh, Khaled Mashal and Saleh al-Arouri meeting with top Iranian officials.  

‘If you followed the Arabic news, then you saw that these leaders were meeting or speaking to each other nearly every week,’ noted Bartal, also a research fellow at Institutio do Oriente at the University of Lisbon. ‘As a researcher, I noticed something bad was happening and saw their courage increasing.’ 

In addition to being emboldened by Iran, Bartal said, Hamas has long been ‘antisemitic ideologues, describing Jews as animals in a way that is similar to the Nazis.’  

‘We knew this. That is why we built a fence to protect ourselves from them, and we spent millions of dollars to stop them reaching our territory, to stop their rockets and their attack tunnels,’ he said.  

‘The problem is, no matter what we do, they will always find a way around it and try to kill us in the same way ISIS killed non-believers and infidels,’ Bartal said. ‘If we want to live in security and peace, the only way is to topple Hamas.’