Israel braces for retaliation attack from Iran; US General arrives on trip to mobilise regional coalition

The US Central Command’s General Michael Kurilla arrived in the Middle East on Saturday, reported Axios.

An Israeli delegation led by the country’s intelligence chief visited Egypt, seeking to make progress on long-stalled talks over a possible Gaza truce, but returned with no immediate sign of a breakthrough.

Israel braces for attack from Iran as US urges Gaza ceasefire

Israel braced for a possible attack from Iran and regional militias in retaliation for assassinations of Hezbollah and Hamas officials as the US sent defensive reinforcements while pressing for a Gaza ceasefire deal.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of a Cabinet meeting on Sunday that “Israel is in a multifront war against Iran’s axis of evil. We are striking every one of its arms with great force. We are prepared for any scenario — both offensively and defensively.”

The US, which is moving a fighter jet squadron to the region and keeping an aircraft carrier nearby to help Israel, was also pressing Netanyahu to redouble negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza to prevent the nearly 10-month-long war from escalating.

US Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer appealed to both sides to “get back to the table.”

Netanyahu said the problem was that Hamas kept changing its demands. Others say Israel has done the same, making a deal harder.

Leaders of both Iran and Hezbollah have sworn that the killings last week in Beirut and Tehran will not go unanswered, that red lines have been crossed and that attacks are coming.

Israeli officials said any assaults, expected imminently, were likely to be simultaneous and could come from Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Iran itself. In April, after Israel killed two Iranian generals in Syria, Iran for the first time fired more than 300 projectiles at Israel, nearly all of which were shot down by Israel and a coalition of US-led powers with regional assistance.

In Israel, GPS systems were telling stunned residents of Tel Aviv that they were in Beirut — part of a scrambling to make it harder for an attack to be successful. Two officials said the Cabinet had been issued with satellite phones to enable communications should phone lines crash under shelling or cyberattacks.

With numerous foreign carriers — Delta, United, Lufthansa — suspending flights to and from Israel for fear of getting caught in the crossfire, tens of thousands of Israelis are stuck abroad. El Al, the national carrier was trying to add more flights to bring Israelis home. There has also been talk of boats to help ferry Israelis back.

Read more: Biden tells Netanyahu to accept ceasefire in ‘very direct’ call

The US, UK, Canada and other countries have urged their citizens to leave Beirut. France also told its citizens to get out of Iran.

Within Israel, a West Bank Palestinian on Sunday morning stabbed to death two elderly Israelis in a park and bus station in the city of Holon near Tel Aviv before being shot dead by police, adding to the rising tensions.

An Israeli delegation led by the country’s intelligence chief visited Egypt on Saturday seeking to make progress in the long-stalled Gaza war talks, but returned with no immediate sign of a breakthrough.

“We still believe the gaps are narrow enough to close,” John Kirby, the spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council, said on Fox News Sunday.

President Joe Biden conveyed the message to Netanyahu that “this deal needs to get done” when the Israeli leader visited Washington in July, said Finer.

“In this context, when there’s so much going on in the region, and the risk level and the threat level is so high, there are always these external events that can make these negotiations themselves much more difficult,” Finer told CBS.

“But, you know, this is the work of diplomacy,” he said. “It’s not about frustration.”

US General arrives in Middle East

The US Central Command’s General Michael Kurilla arrived in the Middle East on Saturday as Israel prepared itself for a possible attack by Iran, reported Axios.

While Kurilla’s trip was planned before the recent escalation in tensions, he was expected to use the trip to attempt to mobilise the same international and regional coalition that defended Israel against an attack by Iran on 13 April, the publication reported, citing a US official it didn’t identify.

Three US and Israeli officials also told Axios that they expected Iran to attack Israel as early as Monday.

The Pentagon and Centcom didn’t immediately respond to the publication’s request for comment, the report said, adding that Kurilla was expected to visit Jordan and several countries in the Gulf.

Israel’s spymaster visits Egypt for Gaza ceasefire talks

An Israeli delegation led by the country’s intelligence chief visited Egypt, seeking to make progress on long-stalled talks over a possible Gaza truce, but returned with no immediate sign of a breakthrough.

Read more: Israel-Hamas truce talks said to face four key sticking points

Saturday’s visit was aimed at pursuing negotiations for a ceasefire in the almost 10-month-old war with Hamas, which could free some hostages held by the Iran-backed militant group, Israeli officials said, asking not to be identified citing the sensitivity of the matter.

The delegation returned to Israel later in the day, one of the officials said, without providing details.

Read more: Biden tells Netanyahu to accept truce in ‘very direct’ call

Netanyahu’s office, which oversees Mossad, did not comment on the trip by David Barnea, the spy agency’s director. Authorities in Egypt, which has acted as a key mediator in Israel-Hamas negotiations, weren’t available for comment.

On Friday, Netanyahu’s office said Israel and Hamas remained divided over what a possible ceasefire would look like.

The proposed arrangement, which is backed by the US, could help reduce the scale of reprisals that Hamas, its ally Hezbollah and their sponsor Iran have threatened for the killing this week of senior militants in Beirut and Tehran.

Read more: Israel’s twin strikes in Tehran, Beirut ratchet up tensions

But Israel’s demonstration of willingness to return to ceasefire talks also is a bold move because Iran and its proxies blame it for killing a top negotiator for their side.

Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian faction’s political leader, was killed in the Iranian capital, Tehran, this week. Both Hamas and the Islamic Republic have blamed Israel for Haniyeh’s assassination.

Israel hasn’t acknowledged responsibility for his death, though it has vowed since the outset of the war to destroy the militant group’s leadership.

Israel maintains its forces should remain stationed along the border that separates the Palestinian enclave from neighbouring Egypt even after a possible truce deal with Hamas. The Jewish state also demands the creation of a mechanism to prevent Hamas fighters from returning to northern Gaza.

Another sticking point is the number of hostages to be released by the group, which is believed to be holding more than 100 people captive. Hamas, designated a terrorist organisation by the US, raided southern Israel on 7 October, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping around 250 others.

The militant group wants any truce deal to eventually bring to an end the war in Gaza, where more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the war, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Pentagon deploying ships, jets to boost Middle East presence

The Pentagon is bolstering its presence in the Middle East with ships, fighter planes and ballistic missile defence vessels as Israel faces threats from Iran to avenge the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders.

The moves announced on Friday by the Defense Department came a day after the White House said Biden had promised Netanyahu that the US would provide new “defensive US military deployments”.

The deployments include sending additional ballistic missile defence-capable cruisers and destroyers to the US European and Central Command regions, said Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson on Friday. The US was also taking steps “to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defence”, said Singh, without explaining those moves.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also ordered steps including moving an additional squadron of fighter jets to the region and dispatching the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is now in the Gulf of Oman, according to the statement.

But many of the moves announced, including sending the Lincoln carrier group, which is now in the Pacific, will take weeks to achieve even though Iran may be poised to strike Israel imminently.

UAE shows diplomatic sway with Gaza aid and ties to Israel

A slice of Abu Dhabi has come to El-Arish, a small city in Northern Sinai about 50km from Gaza. Once rarely visited by outsiders, the coastal spot now teems with Emirati volunteers wearing cargo pants and beige vests adorned with the flag of the United Arab Emirates.

They’ve joined UAE government officials, Red Crescent workers and hospital staff in the Egyptian area just outside the strip, part of a humanitarian effort to help more than two million people whose lives have been devastated by the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Since the start of the conflict almost 10 months ago, aid efforts by the UAE in El-Arish and the Palestinian territory have cost the UAE around $700-million, Sultan Mohammed Al Shamsi, one of the Emirati officials overseeing the operations, told Bloomberg in early July.

That includes the setting up of a field hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah that’s treated close to 50,000 people, according to its staff, and a second makeshift medical facility on a ship anchored close by on the Mediterranean Sea.

The UAE effort is a testament to the growing regional sway of the Gulf nation, which has forged ties with Israel and strengthened its bond with Egypt in recent years — including via a $35-billion investment to help unlock an International Monetary Fund rescue.

The country is using those relationships, and its trillions of petrodollars, to play a leading role in diplomatic and aid efforts in the conflict and has indicated a willingness to help prepare for a postwar scenario — including by sending security forces into Gaza. That said, its influence only goes so far — as the war shows no sign of ending and the Israeli leadership has paid little heed to international calls for a ceasefire.

The UAE could “consider taking part in a temporary stabilisation mission following a formal invitation from a reformed Palestinian Authority”, said Reem Al Hashimy, minister of state for international cooperation, referring to the administration that rules parts of the West Bank and controlled Gaza before Hamas took over in 2007.

Part of the UAE’s motivation could be “to make itself an important diplomatic intermediary that can deal with both Israel and Egypt in a way few other countries can”, said Steffen Hertog, an associate professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

“The UAE is also under some pressure to have a positive impact on Palestine given how much flak they are getting in the Arab public sphere” for establishing ties with Israel, he said.

The initiative follows other international interventions by the UAE, including the brokering of a Russia-Ukraine prisoner swap deal in June.

The UAE operates about half a dozen water desalination plants in El-Arish, producing more than 3.8 million litres a day for the Gazan people, while multiple warehouses holding food, medicine and clothes have been built on the Egyptian side of the border. Funding has been provided for air drops costing as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars per tonne, according to Al Shamsi, who is the assistant minister of foreign affairs for development affairs and international organisations.

With no access through land routes including the Rafah Border Crossing into Sinai — closed since Israel took control of it in May —  aid groups have been forced to rely mainly on air drops, which need the Israeli government’s approval.

“By sea, land and through 300 flights, we have provided nearly 40,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to secure the urgent needs of the Palestinians,” Al Hashimy told Bloomberg.

Read more: How Israel’s Rafah operation threatens Gaza’s critical aid pipeline

Some Emirati military planes stationed at El-Arish’s airport can hold tonnes of food and medical supplies. They’ve recently carried packages to the north of Gaza, the area most affected by Israel’s air and ground campaign, said Al Shamsi.

“The nature of food insecurity across the entire Gaza Strip is unprecedented in this century,” the Center For Strategic and International Studies said in research published in April. About 90% of people in the densely populated strip have fled their homes and lack access to sufficient shelter, food, medical services and clean water, according to the United Nations.

For Duaa’, a mother of five from Gaza, arriving at the UAE’s makeshift hospital with her children about three months ago provided her with shelter after months of constant bombardment. She’s been waiting for a transfer to the Gulf country to get a prosthetic limb after having her right leg amputated.

“I haven’t seen my husband in months — he’s in an Egyptian hospital but his case was too critical to be moved here,” she told Bloomberg. “This situation is harder than anyone can imagine.” DM

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