Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi vowed on Monday to keep up Tehran's "unlimited support" for terror groups throughout the region while avoiding a direct clash with Israel, according to official Iranian media.

The policy of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's government is to "provide unlimited support to the resistance," said Araghchi. "We will support the resistance front, which has established itself as a reality in the region."

The "Axis of Resistance" includes Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen's Houthi rebels and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the Middle East.

The Israeli army "has so far failed to achieve its main goal of destroying Hamas," Araghchi claimed in remarks cited by the Tasnim news agency.

The diplomat stressed that the Islamic Republic "remains vigilant against traps that might be set to draw us into the conflict. We are monitoring regional developments with intelligence and awareness."

In separate remarks at a press conference on Monday, Pezeshkian told reporters that his government would "never" give up its ballistic missile program as demanded by the United States and European nations.

"If we don't have missiles, they will bomb us whenever they want, just like in Gaza," he charged, calling on the international community "to first disarm Israel before making the same demands to Iran."

The Islamic Republic, he claimed, "has never been the initiator of war, and the history of the past 100 years shows that we have not been an initiator of war."

On April 14, Iran launched 300 drones and missiles at Israel in the first-ever direct attack on the Jewish state from Iranian soil. It said the attack was retaliation for a strike that killed a top Iranian general in Damascus.

In June, Tehran threatened that an Israel Defense Forces operation against Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists could lead to an "obliterating war" with all of Iran's proxies, warning that "all options are on the table."

Iran has also threatened revenge following the July 31 assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the top "political" leader of Hamas, who died in an explosion at his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran. Iran and Hamas have accused Israel of killing Haniyeh.

There have also been Iranian threats of a push toward a nuclear bomb. In May, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Tehran would weaponize its nuclear program if Israel "threatens its existence."

Araghchi's interim predecessor, Ali Bagheri Kani, said on July 15 that Hamas's Oct. 7 cross-border massacre in Israel's northwestern Negev region shifted the balance in the Middle East "in favor of the resistance."

As many as 500 terrorists affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad based in the Gaza Strip trained in Iran leading up to the Oct. 7 assault, The Wall Street Journal reported in late October.

Iran has officially hailed the attacks as a "success," saying the murder of some 1,200 people, mainly Jewish civilians, was a response to the 2020 killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani by the United States.

The New Tolerance Campaign (NTC), a U.S.-based watchdog organization, announced on Monday a $1 million offer to “Queers for Palestine” or any U.S. LGBTQ advocacy organization to host a Gay Pride Parade in Gaza or Judea and Samaria.

“This isn’t a joke. It’s not a publicity stunt. Our offer is real,” NTC President Gregory T. Angelo, who is gay and the former president of Log Cabin Republicans, said in a statement on the organization's website.

“For the past year we’ve seen so-called ‘Queers for Palestine’ and allied LGBTQ organizations insist that the Palestinian territories are ‘inclusive’ — well, here’s their chance to prove it. We’re willing to put our money where their mouths are to underwrite a Gay Pride Parade in Gaza or the West Bank.”

NTC has secured commitments for the $1,000,000 prize, which is being offered to potential parade organizers. The offer is good for the next six months, until March 16, 2025.

NTC said it had attempted to publicize the campaign with full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. All three newspapers declined, citing safety concerns.

Times Square in New York City also declined to run the ad, saying the buildings displaying it could become targets of violence.

Not to be deterred, NTC began circulating mobile billboards on Monday around Columbia University in Manhattan, the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. and the University of California, Los Angeles.

The mobile billboards will run through Wednesday. Additional dates may be announced.

"The campaign will also allow everyday Americans to send messages directly to the senior leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, the LGBTQ Task Force, and Advocates for Trans Equality encouraging them to actually fight for LGBTQ rights rather than taking a political stance against the only gay-friendly country in the Middle East, Israel," NTC's website stated.

“This project highlights the lack of human rights for the LGBTQ community in Palestine, while noting LGBTQ people live freely in Israel. It also has the potential to be a breakthrough moment for pluralism and peace throughout the Arab world,” said Angelo.

According to the rules of the challenge, the recipient group must be a recognized U.S. 501(c)3 organization, the parade march must be at least one kilometer (approximately half a mile) in length and on a major street, and include at least 200 participants, 80% of whom must be Palestinian and from Judea and Samaria or Gaza.

In addition, participants must outwardly “show” LGBTQ pride symbols or dress, including but not limited to rainbow flags, trans flags, full leather outfits, or drag.

At least half of parade signs must be in Arabic and the parade filmed by NTC.

California high-school golf phenom Max Margolis, 17, played 101 holes on Sunday at the Caesarea Golf Club, in the baking sun, to raise money for Israeli victims of terror.

He originally planned to play an even 100 holes, but added the extra one to represent the 101 hostages still in Hamas captivity in Gaza. 

Margolis, who is visiting Israel for the first time, told JNS that prior to the Oct. 7, he hadn't felt connected to the Jewish state, but the massacre on that Simchat Torah holiday "spurred a religious revival in me, and I feel way more connected to Judaism. What happened here that day was really an attack on the Jewish people.”

His response was to launch a $1 million fundraising campaign to benefit the organization OneFamily, which has been assisting victims of terrorism and their families since 2001.

After hearing from his father, Michael—who visited Israel in February—about the devastating situation of the families in the south, the teenager decided that he, too, wanted to take a trip to Israel, and to use his passion and talent for golf to assist in some way.

Michael Margolis told JNS he was so inspired when he saw up close the kind of work that OneFamily does that he and his decided to get involved in the organization. They did this first by “adopting” a family from a community near the Gaza border whose matriarch was raped and murdered by Hamas in front of her two small children.

“Meeting the victims face to face breaks your heart, and it's also life-changing. When Max heard about it, he was inspired to help in any way he could,” said Michael.

It is thus that on Sunday at around 6 a.m. Max Margolis teed up in Caesarea and played what he described was a “golf marathon,” finishing late in the afternoon.

As difficult and exhausting as that feat was, Margolis said that the highlight of his day, and of his entire Israel experience so far, was “after the 101 holes, OneFamily brought a group of victims of terrorism—children and adults—to the course, and I spent some two hours teaching them the game of golf.”

He added, “It was so touching and powerful to spend time with them, and to give them a joyful and fun afternoon. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Following the golf lesson, OneFamily treated the victims of terror in attendance, along with the Margolises, to a barbeque at the Caesarea home of one of the organization’s donors.

Chantal Belzberg, OneFamily’s founder and executive chairman, told JNS, “It is incredible to see a young, athletic teenager say, ‘I’m going to dedicate my time for an important cause in Israel.’ I was totally blown away.”

She added, “No kid has ever said he wants to raise a million dollars. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Max is so special.”

Belzberg shared that Max arrived at the golf course on foot, while it was still dark outside, and spent the whole day playing and greeting people with grace and charm.

“He had so much patience and warmth, and took the time to talk to everybody," she said. "He was also genuinely interested in hearing everyone’s stories. He did this like a champ. Unbelievable.”  

Eric Rubin, president of Project Max [Nordau] and global ambassador for the Maccabi World Union, commented to JNS about Max’s initiative.

“Athletes have a big platform that can be used to effect positive outcomes," he said. "Max Margolis, one of the top golf prospects in the United States, is using his platform to speak out for victims of terror—specifically those committed on 10/7.”

Rubin added, “I’m so proud of him for partnering with OneFamily, not only to raise awareness for the victims of 10/7, but for using his sport to raise funds for the people who continue to suffer from that tragic day."

Utilizing the hashtag #SportSpeaksUp, Rubin and Maccabi USA have mobilized, leveraging the large online followings of influential members of the professional sports community to speak up and raise awareness about the plight of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas. 

After high school, Margolis plans to play golf at Santa Clara University, an NCAA Division I program, with dreams of playing professionally after graduation from college.

He also holds the course record at California’s Stone Eagle Golf course, previously held by professional golfer Jason Day, winner of the PGA championship in 2015, one of tour’s four major tournaments.

But before he pursues those dreams, Margolis is planning a similar golfing event and dinner in California this winter towards his goal of raising the million dollars for terror victims.

“In California, we are too isolated and live very well, but as a Jews from the United States, we all have to our part as well to help,” he said.

Within 24 hours of his golf marathon in Caesarea, Margolis’s OneFamily campaign garnered $70,000. As he stated on his campaign page: “We take so much in our lives for granted, but giving is the greatest gift of all. My goal is to raise $1,000,000; an attainable goal and an opportunity for you to be part of the rehabilitation and reintegration so desperately needed by so many people in Israel.  Open your hearts, then open your wallets.”  

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid met with former U.S. president Barack Obama in Washington on Monday, with the two political leaders discussing advancing a deal to return the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

"I met with former President Barack Obama at his office in Washington," the head of the Yesh Atid party tweeted on Tuesday morning.

"I thanked him for his public support and his efforts to secure the return of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza. I told him that we all need to work together to ensure a deal that will bring the hostages home," he wrote.

Lapid also visited the White House on Monday, meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to talk about the 101 hostages remaining in Gaza and a potential ceasefire agreement to secure their release after nearly a year of captivity.

He was also scheduled to meet on Monday with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham during his D.C. diplomatic swing.

Israel's Security Cabinet overnight Monday added returning Israelis displaced from their homes in the north to the country's war goals, bringing a potential major confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon closer to reality.

"The Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes," the Prime Minister's Office said in a terse statement on Tuesday morning. "Israel will continue to act to implement this objective."

According to government figures, over 60,000 people have been evacuated from their residences near the Lebanese border since last October, when the Iranian-backed terror army began near-daily rocket and drone attacks in support of Hamas, after the Gaza-based terror group initiated a war by invading the northwestern Negev.

Communities in the Galilee and Golan have become increasingly frustrated at the ongoing attacks and the government's response in Jerusalem.

According to Channel 12, the military is discussing an expanded operation in Lebanon, including the timing and the details.

"In the military, there's a reluctance to repeat the precedent set in Gaza, where the objectives of the war were not clearly defined" ahead of time, according to the report.

"Instead, they have established several clear targets for defining the success of the operation. Among these targets are: the return of residents, a significant buildup of forces along the border, and pushing Hezbollah forces away from the border. A senior security official stated that preparations should be made for a prolonged campaign that will exact a heavy toll."

According to the Channel 12 report, "In the IDF, they are convinced that the State of Israel has passed the [tipping point]—that there is no resolution and the situation is escalating, and no one is saying anything different.

"This has enormous implications, but in the security establishment, there is a firm belief that Israel cannot, at this stage, be satisfied with a 'targeted operation' like those seen in previous years in Gaza, for example. They believe that a broad and comprehensive action throughout Lebanon, including Dahieh [a Hezbollah stronghold in Beirut], is necessary."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein on Monday that the thousands of displaced Israelis will not be able to return without military or diplomatic action against the terror group.

Netanyahu “made it very clear that it will not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north,” according to a readout from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.

While Jerusalem “appreciates and respects” the Biden administration’s support, it will “ultimately do what is necessary to safeguard its security and return the residents of the north securely to their homes,” he told Hochstein during a meeting at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv.

The additional war goal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is considering replacing Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with New Hope Party leader Gideon Sa’ar.

Gallant for his part publicly supports an expanded military operation to remove the Hezbollah threat in the north, telling his American counterpart Lloyd Austin during a call on Monday that time was running out for an agreed-upon de-escalation with the terror proxy.

“The possibility of a settlement in the north is passing. Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas. The direction is clear,” Gallant told Austin in an overnight phone call, according to the Defense Ministry.

Gallant also met with Hochstein on Monday. The Biden envoy reportedly warned that a major military operation against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon will not bring about the return of Israel's displaced residents.

Hochstein informed Gallant that the United States supports a diplomatic deal with Hezbollah, including through a truce with Hamas terrorists in Gaza, a source familiar with the conversation told local media. The United States envoy warned that military action would raise the risk of all-out regional war.

Gallant was said to have informed the White House envoy that only Israeli military action against Hezbollah can create conditions that will allow Israel to return the evacuees to their homes safely.

Jordan has a predominantly Palestinian population and the longest border with Israel of any country, but is rarely thought of as a threat to the Jewish state.

Despite some terrorism involving Jordan—including the murder of three people at the Allenby border crossing with Israel on Sept. 8—the Jordanian kingdom’s last military adventure against Israel ended in 1967, and in 1994 the two countries signed a peace accord.

Yet the unprecedented gains of a Muslim Brotherhood party in last week’s elections in Jordan demonstrated the potential for change in a dictatorship rife with anti-Israel hatred amid religious radicalization and ancient interethnic animosities.

In the Sept. 11 election, Jordan's main opposition party, the Islamic Action Front, or IAF, received 22% of the vote—the largest share of any party and triple its previous performance, securing 31 out of 138 seats in parliament. Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh has resigned and is to be replaced by Jaafar Hassan, now head of King Abdullah’s office and a former planning minister, Reuters reported Sunday.

The IAF’s success is widely attributed to its ideological proximity to Hamas, with which many voters feel solidarity amid Israel's 11-month war against the terrorist group. Some analysts warn that this points to creeping religious radicalization amid a tribal rift in Jordan, which is ruled by the Hashemite royal family and its Bedouin allies but whose population mostly comprises a marginalized Palestinian majority.

At stake is a scenario where a destabilized Jordan allows Iran, which already controls Iraq, to add bordering Jordan to its list of satellite states, thereby gaining access to Israel. “If you think Gaza’s a problem, Jordan can be a far worse one, with rockets being launched from Amman,” Middle East analyst Pinchas Inbari, a researcher for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told JNS.

Inbari warned that the result of the election represents not only the rise of a potentially destabilizing force but a weakening of the internal tribal alliance that allows the Hashemites to rule. Much of IAF’s power base is from the Howeitat Bedouin tribe in southern Jordan, to which the killer from the Sept. 8 attack belonged, Inbari noted. The Howeitat have effectively transferred their allegiance from the Hashemite-run establishment to the IAF opposition, he said.

“So we’re not only talking about the ruling coalition facing an external threat, such as the Palestinians or fundamentalism. We’re seeing cracks with the coalition that allow fundamentalism and pro-Palestinian sentiment, and that’s a far more worrisome development because it could portend a breakup, and a dangerous power vacuum,” said Inbari.

Daniel Pipes, a prominent Middle East analyst and the president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank, has a more sanguine approach to the election’s results.

He views the IAF’s gains as attributable to an “anti-Zionist” sentiment, as he termed it, following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7, when Hamas murdered some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 251. Thousands of people in Gaza have died in the war, and images of the human suffering in Gaza have outraged much of the Muslim world and beyond.

In March, fiery protests broke out against Israel in Amman, including an attempt to storm the Israeli embassy there.

Against this background, “the IAF was the vehicle to express anti-Zionism. So it's not so much an Islamist vote as an anti-Israel vote,” said Pipes.

King Abdullah of Jordan, Pipes said, is a cautious leader who, long before the elections, was adept at coexisting with the Muslim Brotherhood in a modus vivendi in which his regime tolerated the movement as long as it avoided violence or power grabs. Even after the election, “that basic premise has remained.”

Should the IAF attempt to leverage its electoral gains to force the king to take a more hostile line on Israel, Pipes added, this prospect is limited by Jordan’s dependence on Israel for water, gas and other benefits.

Israel, which enjoys a massive water surplus thanks to its unrivaled desalination project, now produces most of its own drinking water and provides Jordan with 100 million cubic meters annually. That covers about 25% of Jordan's chronic water shortfall.

Pipes recalled speaking about this with locals in Amman during his last visit there in 2017. “In the city, there’s a weekly water supply to tanks of individual buildings or homes. You better have your water tank, you better fill it up, or you won't have any water,” he said.

If Israel didn't supply that water, “then you'd find riots on the streets. The Israeli connection is vital economically and politically or in security intelligence terms,” he added.

This dependence and others are a strong deterrence to any governing power, and the Hashemite royal family especially, against rash moves against Israel, said Pipes.

The elections may mean more anti-Israel rhetoric from Jordanian officials, he added, though they were not mincing words before it, either.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi charged Israel with “genocide” in December over its actions in Gaza. King Abdullah accused Israel of committing a “war crime” there, later claiming, while ignoring Hamas’s atrocities, that the “root of the crisis” was Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Murad Adailah, the head of IAF, dedicated his party’s showing to the killer of three Israelis at Allenby, calling him a martyr. “He is a tremendous hero,” Adailah said of Maher al-Jazi, who was killed in the attack. “On election night, he made all Jordanians walk taller, he is the real winner,” said Adailah.

Inbari, the Israeli Middle East analyst, said Israel has an important role to play in bolstering the king’s position vis-a-vis the IAF if it desists from what Inbari called “silly actions” on the Temple Mount. A holy site to Jews and to Muslims, the Temple Mont is run by the Jordanian Waqf with permission from Israel to enforce policies that prohibit Jewish worship.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and other officials have visited the Temple Mount in recent months, triggering outrage throughout the Muslim world and in Jordan especially. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently forbade any such visits without his approval.

Inbari said that “nothing erodes the prestige of King Abdullah more effectively than the appearance of Israeli encroachments on the Temple Mount.”

On this issue, too, Pipes sounded less alarmed. When it comes to the anti-Israeli priorities of Jordanians, Pipes said he supposes that “Gaza is the overwhelmingly largest story and that Temple Mount is a rather small sideshow compared to it.”

The ban on Jewish worship on the Temple Mount “has become the status quo, but it's a very strange situation, one that should not be,” he said. As for Jordan’s role there, he argued for opening up the position to the several other Muslim powers interested in controlling the site, in exchange for concessions there or beyond.

The Temple Mount offers “Israel a great benefit that it can bestow on the Islamic authority of its choosing—maybe Saudi Arabia, in exchange for diplomatic relations, maybe another party,” he added. But the case for allowing King Abdullah to run the site, Pipes said, “is rather weak at this point.”

There is a viciousness in comparing former U.S. President Donald Trump to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler. Two assassination attempts have been made on Trump's life. On Sept. 15, less than a couple of months after the first attempt, that comparison turned up again in a convoluted and foolish 30-second ad as part of a $1 million effort by the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) to convince Jewish voters to cast their ballots for the Democrats in the U.S. elections in November.

Overlain with a looping, addled voice of self-importance and stultifying music that bursts in and out, the video jolts from scene to scene—first of Hitler, then marching Nazis, then Hitler, then Trump, Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un, then the video pans to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, then to Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance and so on.

Splice and dice as they have, the video producers cut and pasted images and quotes together that are so incongruously out of context that they are blurred and muffled from the copious amounts of glue used to keep the thing from falling apart. The 30-second by-product might have embarrassed one or two of the hardiest of the plagiarist professors unable to define antisemitism.

“Vote,” the viewer is … ordered? The word appears on screen in a yellow tone reminiscent of the yellow star, followed by the words, “before it’s too late.”

The budget of this ad would have been significantly reduced if its producers had instead watched pertinent, intact videos on Hitler, Nazism, fascism and tyranny by authentic professors such as Thomas Sowell and Jordan B. Peterson. They could also scope Prager University on these subjects. And all for free, with no essays or exams.

The JDCA would then have been faced with the dilemma of returning part of the $1 million to the donors, who could have reallocated the funds, for example, to campaigning for the fast-diminishing rights of Jewish students running the gauntlets of hatred each day on their way to lectures and trying to leave university libraries without being assaulted.

Having watched some of the videos and learned a bit about who Hitler and the Nazis actually were and what fascism and tyranny are, this is what the JDCA ad producers and donors should know when they next try paralleling Hitler with Trump.

Hitler ruled for 12 years in his brutally imposed dictatorship. Trump was in office for a single, four-year term in a historic democracy.

Hitler raided, divested and siphoned off financial institutions, and had his personal accountant take violent possession of works of art for Hitler’s private ownership. Trump gave away his presidential salary, and his personal wealth dropped by the time he left office.

Hitler practiced the occult, which involved tearing babies and children apart. Trump brought Christmas back to the White House.

Hitler ranted and raved in speeches full of bile, venom and seething hatred. In his speeches, Trump details policies, criticizes, chides, ad-libs, labels, narrates, wonders and ponders, poeticizes, encourages, empathizes and listens to the crowd.

Hitler’s rage at any slight was terrifying, and his revenge was swift and cruel, usually resulting in the offender’s death. In America during Trump’s presidency, people could be seen wearing T-shirts of Trump as Hitler, and the wearers all returned home from their shopping.

Hitler met disagreement and dissent with summary torture and execution. Trump either reassigned or dismissed those who disagreed with him and his positions.

Hitler tyrannized, then militarized and then devastated the economy. Trump opened up the economy and developed it. Hitler brought total war and ruination to the world, with millions of people being murdered, killed and maimed, the Holocaust forever scarring human history. There were no new wars during Trump’s administration. A phased withdrawal from Afghanistan was prepared. The 2020 Abraham Accords were agreed upon, ending decades of stoked-up hostilities between the Israeli and Arab signatories, and Sudan, which was just beginning to recover from its genocidal wars, was sufficiently stable then, enabling it to participate in the process.

Hitler bridged a continuum with Europe’s dark past of antisemitism and added the Holocaust to its murderous ledger of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, underlain with specifically formulated laws. The Jewish people had their villages, businesses, properties and possessions attacked, burnt down, confiscated or stolen. Millions were enslaved and sent to death camps on an industrial scale. Germany methodically and systematically exported organized, fascist Nazi-ideological antisemitism to the Arab world and the rest of the world.

Trump’s family had a long history of supporting the Jewish people and the Jewish state. His father, Fred Trump, unwaveringly supported the Jews during the Second World War. He bought Israel Bonds. In 1952, he donated a plot of land and funds enabling Rabbi Israel Wagner, a Polish Holocaust survivor, to build a synagogue and community center, the Beach Haven Jewish Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., to serve the neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors and U.S. Army veterans. Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, married an Orthodox Jewish man, Jared Kushner, and converted to Judaism. Kushner was appointed by Trump to conduct the Abraham Accords. In one of his greatest acts, Trump relocated the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, its rightful place in the capital of Israel.

Hitler’s obsession with “race polluting” drove his persecution of blacks and people of mixed race, whom he murdered, beginning with their forced sterilization. Trump forged business alliances with the black communities and black unemployment fell to its lowest in the history of America. He made a government commitment of $255 million in annual funding for historically black colleges and universities so they could not only get by but thrive.

When Hitler’s personal fiber was tested, he shot himself. After Trump was shot and wounded, he stood up and immediately shouted to the crowd: “Fight! Fight! Fight!” After the second assassination attempt, Trump vowed: “I’ll never surrender!”

This is not about whether a person is for or against Trump. If Hitler had been more like Trump, the world would be different today. Instead, an intense and lethal form of antisemitism and hatred has continued to spread far and wide, seeping into many people’s psyche as the Jewish world is, once again, at war for survival. The Jewish producers of that election campaign ad would not have worn the T-shirt in Hitler’s Europe or, indeed, anywhere else. They would have gone home without it.

Israel Defense Forces Northern Command head Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin has recently suggested in private meetings that the IDF be authorized to create a security buffer zone under Israeli control in Southern Lebanon, sources privy to the discussions told Israel Hayom on Monday.

Gordin argued that current conditions are favorable for the IDF to swiftly implement such a move. He noted that many members of the "Radwan Force," the Hezbollah unit previously stationed near the border fence, have either been killed during the past 11 months of conflict or retreated northward.

Furthermore, there has been a significant departure of civilians from southern Lebanese villages. Estimates suggest that only about 20% of the pre-Oct. 7 population remains in the area. This substantial decrease in civilian presence would allow the IDF to execute the proposed maneuver more efficiently and rapidly.

The primary objectives of this strategy are to neutralize the threat and push Hezbollah forces back, thereby safeguarding northern Israeli communities. Additionally, it aims to create leverage for negotiating a lasting settlement, as Hezbollah would likely be motivated to reach an agreement to prompt an IDF withdrawal.

It's important to note that such an operation would effectively launch a major, wide-ranging campaign against Hezbollah. There are uncertainties about controlling its duration and preventing it from escalating into a broader regional conflict. Nevertheless, there's a growing recognition among Israel's civilian leadership that, given the failure of U.S. diplomatic efforts to broker a political settlement with Hezbollah, substantial military action may be the only recourse to enable northern residents to return to their homes.

An IDF spokesperson stated in response to the report that, "We do not comment on discussions held in closed forums."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated during recent strategic discussions that the IDF should prepare for an expanded northern campaign. The Diplomatic-Security Cabinet on Monday officially designated the return of northern residents as a war objective.

The thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes by Hezbollah's ongoing cross-border attacks will not be able to return without military or diplomatic action against the terror group, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein on Monday.

Netanyahu "made it very clear that it will not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north," according to a readout from the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.

While Jerusalem "appreciates and respects" the Biden administration's support, it will "ultimately do what is necessary to safeguard its security and return the residents of the north securely to their homes," he told Hochstein during a meeting at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Earlier on Monday, during a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Hochstein reportedly warned that a major military operation against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon will not bring about the return of displaced residents.

Hochstein informed Gallant that the United States supports a diplomatic deal with Hezbollah, including through a truce with Hamas terrorists in Gaza, a source familiar with the conversation told local media. The U.S. envoy warned that military action would raise the risk of all-out regional war.

Gallant was said to have informed the White House envoy that only IDF military action against Hezbollah can create conditions that will allow Israel to return the evacuees to their homes safely.

Iran-backed Hezbollah has attacked Israel nearly daily since Oct. 8, firing thousands of rockets, missiles and drones. The attacks have so far killed more than 40 people and caused widespread damage. Tens of thousands of civilians remain internally displaced due to the violence.

Speaking at the start of Sunday's weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu vowed that the current circumstances in the Galilee and the Golan "will not continue." He called for a "change in the balance of forces on our northern border" while pledging to return evacuated residents.

Netanyahu spoke days after he ordered the IDF to prepare for a broad campaign against the Iranian-backed terror army in Southern Lebanon.

The instructions were reportedly given during a security-strategic discussion on Sept. 12 with the heads of the defense establishment, including Gallant, as well as Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

Senior defense officials said during the meeting that a diplomatic resolution would not be enough to return the displaced residents of the north. A senior Netanyahu associate stressed that no date has been set for a military operation but that it could be weeks or a few months away.