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Six soldiers were wounded on Tuesday evening by a barrage of mortar shells in the Gaza Region. The condition of the six wounded soldiers has not yet been made public. Yesterday, four soldiers were killed by mortar shells near Israel’s border with Gaza: Staff Sergeant Eliav Eliahu Chaim Kachlon, aged 22 from Tzfat; Corporal Meidan Maimon Bitton, aged 20 from Netivot; Corporal Niran Cohen, aged 20 from Tiberias; and Sergeant Major Adi Brigga, aged 23 from Beit Shikmah. Earlier on Tuesday night, at around 8:20 p.m. sirens were heard in Beit Shemesh, the communities comprising the Mateh Yehudah region, and...

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday evening, and stressed the need for an immediate and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza. “The President underscored the United States’ strong condemnation of Hamas’ rocket and tunnel attacks against Israel and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself,” said a statement from the White House. “The President also reiterated the United States’ serious and growing concern about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives, as well as the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza,” it added. According to the statement, Obama “made clear the strategic...

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of Judea and Samaria, the military wing of Fatah (PLO), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, who also serves as the "President of Palestine" and head of the PLO, has declared "open war" against the "Zionist enemy." In a ecorded message from July 23, three armed terrorists from the al-Aqsa brigade announced that they would not sit idly by during the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, and that they intend to bring the struggle deep into Israeli territory. "The language of blood is the only way to answer Zionist aggression", they said, stating that international law permits...

US Secretary of State John Kerry informed Hamas via Qatar last week that under his proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, based on the original Egyptian initiative, the US would guarantee the fulfillment of many of Hamas’s demands for an end to the war, Palestinian sources told The Times of Israel on Saturday. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign up! Kerry’s handling of the ceasefire effort was castigated by Israeli sources on Friday and Saturday, and the Israeli security cabinet unanimously rejected his ceasefire proposal on Friday night. The...

The IDF has struck a terrorist position in Gaza's Al Wafa hospital, illustrating the highly sensitive and illegal use of civilian targets as human shields by Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups. IDF sources say that the controversial decision to attack the position was taken after several days in which ground forces came under heavy fire from gunmen positioned inside the hospital grounds. The fire reportedly included both light weaponry and heavy anti-tank missiles directed towards IDF armored vehicles. "The hospital premises were being used as war rooms and command centers by the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad," said...

Wounded soldiers have given shocking testimony regarding Hamas’ use of young children as human shields. Parents of wounded soldiers spoke to Kol Yisrael on Tuesday and shared some of the disturbing stories they had heard from their sons. They said soldiers have repeatedly seen young children in Sheijaya, Gaza, be sent out into the streets with guns to try to attack IDF troops. One parent reported that terrorists had run at IDF soldiers with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other, apparently in hopes that the soldiers would see the child and hold their fire. If...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the nation and answered reporters' questions Sunday evening during the prime time newscasts after 8:00 p.m., and spelled out relatively modest aims for Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, which completes its 13th day Sunday night. In response to a question, Netanyahu said that Israel has embarked on a gradual process of undoing the harm done by the 2005 unilateral Gaza withdrawal known as the Disengagement, which ended up allowing Hamas to take over Gaza. At the time, he noted, he had warned that the vacuum left behind by Israel would be filled by Hamas, which...

A video released by the IDF Sunday shows soldiers in action, destroying a tunnel dug by Hamas terrorists into Israel. The video shows the soldiers stringing explosives and blowing the tunnel up. “This is one of the first tunnels we found during this operation,” a soldier tells the camera. “It was dug in order to infiltrate Israeli communities. The IDF said Sunday that in three days of the ground campaign in Operation Protective Edge, soldiers had found and destroyed dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas terrorists into Israeli territory. Video

Thirteen IDF soldiers have been killed since Saturday night, the IDF said. The process of identifying the bodies is still ongoing. Golani Brigade, armor and engineering corps forces were met with effective close range guerrilla actions in Shejaiya, Gaza. The dead are apparently all from the Golani Brigade. The Brigade's commander, Col. Rasan Alian, was also lightly injured. According to Channel 2, there were several incidents that involved IDF deaths that occurred one after the other after midnight. In the most serious incident, around 1:00 a.m., an armored personnel carrier hit a large explosive charge, or may have been hit...

In an unusual moment during Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace presented Secretary of State John Kerry with video recorded before he came on air. Wallace presented the segment as being in reference to civilians killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, writes the Washington Post. "While you were on camera and while on microphone," Wallace said, "you spoke to one of your top aides between the interviews about the situation in Israel." He then played what the network had recorded. In the clip, Kerry is holding a cellphone conversation with an unidentified person, but Kerry's comments are clear. "It's...

Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) continued to openly encourage Hamas in the battle against Israel's self-defense operation, giving another inflammatory interview to Al-Jazeera Saturday " " . "The Israeli Home Front Command is afraid of casualties rising following a ground operation," Zoabi said. "The Israeli public cannot stand [the idea that] confrontation will injure more and more IDF soldiers." "Israeli society is interested in a brief ground offensive, to reduce IDF casualties," she added. Zoabi stated that the Hamas escalation took Israel "by surprise." "The Israeli public was certainly surprised that rockets reached Tel Aviv," she boasted. "Israel tried...

In a special interview on CNN Wednesday night, Economics Minister Naftali Bennett said that incidents such as the killing of four children on a Gaza beach earlier Wednesday were entirely the fault of Hamas – and were no accident. “I think it is terrible that Hamas is butchering its own children like this,” Bennett told senior CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer. “I would never take my children and place them next to rocket missile launchers,” knowing that it was likely to be targeted by the IDF, he said. “Hamas is conducting massive self-genocide, taking women and children and placing them next...

Hamas threatened Israel on Thursday evening and warned that it will pay a "high price" for launching a ground assault on Gaza. "The start of the Israeli ground attack on Gaza is a dangerous step, the consequences of which have not been calculated," Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement quoted by AFP. "Israel will pay a high price and Hamas is ready for the confrontation," he declared. "With this action the Israeli government seeks to restore the morale of its soldiers and the morale of its army leadership - a leadership that is collapsing because of the qualitative...

The Prime Minister's Office has issued a statement that says the IDF has embarked on a ground assault into Gaza against Hamas's tunnels. The operation is deemed as "limited" and will probably not go further than two or three kilometers into Gaza's territory. This is deemed to be deep enough in enemy land to find the openings into Hamas's attack tunnels, like the one that was used in Thursday morning's infiltration into Israel by 13 terrorists. Egypt, meanwhile, has issued a statement saying that Hamas is to blame for the possible deaths of hundreds of Gazan civilians. The statement appears...

Hamas agreed on Wednesday night to a temporary humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, but not before firing another salvo of rockets towards Israel. "The group agrees to a ceasefire for five hours," starting from 10:00 a.m. local time Thursday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement quoted by the AFP news agency. "The Palestinian factions agreed to accept the offer from the United Nations for a cooling-down on the ground for five hours starting from 10 in the morning," he told the news agency. Shortly before 2:00 a.m. Thursday morning, however, sirens were heard in the Eshkol region, Hof...

The United States is doing "everything in our power" to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday, according to AFP. "Our concern is to have a legitimate ceasefire and see if we can find a way to stop the conflict and killing so we can get to the real issues that are underlying it," Kerry told reporters as he met his counterpart from Luxembourg. "And we're doing everything in our power," said Kerry, adding that he has been speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Arab officials. .....

Seventy thousand Gazans from Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah were in the dark Sunday night after a Hamas rocket hit the power line that supplies electricity to those places. It's not clear when Israel Electric Company workers will be able to repair the system, but they are apparently in no rush to do so. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked the IEC not to risk the lives of its employees in trying to restore power to the affected sector in Gaza, an operation that could take hours. As Operation Protective Edge enters its seventh day, many Israelis are demanding that...

Sirens sounded in the Tel Aviv area on Friday morning at approximately 10:45 a.m., in what Hamas claims to be its first attack targeting the Ben Gurion International Airport. The Iron Dome anti-missile defense system shot down three rockets over the Tel Aviv area, according to the IDF Spokesperson's Office. However, shrapnel from the intercepted rockets has fallen in multiple places throughout the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, including one near a gas station; no injuries or damage have been reported. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, boasting that this is the first time they have specifically targeted Ben Gurion Airport,...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on Thursday that his country’s ties with Israel would not return to normal unless Israel ceases its offensive on Gaza, AFP reports. "You will first stop this oppression. If not, it is not possible to realize normalization between Turkey and Israel," Erdogan said in the central Anatolian city of Yozgat after a dinner breaking the daily Ramadan fast. .....

South Africa’s ruling party on Thursday issued a statement in which it compared Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza to the actions of the Nazis during World War II. The statement by the African National Congress (ANC) did not mention the rocket attacks from Gaza which led Israel to launch Operation Protective Edge. “The African National Congress (ANC), condemns in the strongest terms, the barbaric attacks on the defenseless Palestinian people of Gaza,” said the statement by the party’s Deputy Secretary General, Jessie Duarte. “As we move towards the month of August and are reminded of [the] atrocities of Nazi Germany, surely...