IDF Spokesperson in Arabic Avichay Adraee called on residents in various areas of the Gaza Strip to evacuate southward due to impending IDF operations in a post on X/Twitter on Wednesday evening.
Adraee listed neighbourhoods that included Jebna, Beit Lahia, and Jabalya.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his first press conference since December 2024 on Wednesday, calling the offensive in Gaza "an unprecedented operation in the history of wars," and publicly stated that there are 20 hostages still alive in Gaza.
“We have returned so far 197 hostages, of whom 148 are alive. 20 are alive; we will return them all," he said.
Before the release of former hostage Edan Alexander, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said that it still believed that the number of living hostages was 24 people. The fate of three of the hostages, who include one Israeli and two foreign nationals, is a serious concern for officials.
Once, the notion of an Israeli citizen spying for Iran could shock the nation.
There were rare cases – outliers whose names were seared ignominiously into public memory: Nahum Manbar, the kibbutznik arms dealer who helped Iran build chemical weapons in the 1990s. Gonen Segev, a disgraced former minister turned smuggler, turned Iranian agent.
They were the exceptions that proved the rule: Israelis don’t work for the enemy.
Not anymore.
IDF soldiers opened fire in the direction of a delegation of around 30 people in Jenin, in the West Bank, Israeli media reported on Wednesday, citing Palestinian reports.
According to the reports, the delegation, which was made up of diplomats from Arab and European countries, was taking a tour of the city.
The reason behind the gunfire wasn't made clear, and the IDF has not addressed the incident.
The IDF spokesperson says that the entry was coordinated, and the delegation was given an approved route due to their presence in an active combat area.
דיווחים: כוחות צה"ל ירו באוויר בג'נין בזמן סיור של עשרות דיפלומטים זרים בעיר@Doron_Kadosh pic.twitter.com/kBKJqSfYGs
— גלצ (@GLZRadio) May 21, 2025
The IDF and Shin Bet struck over 115 terror targets in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, killing Nukhba terrorists who participated in the October 7 massacre, the military confirmed on Wednesday.
IAF aircraft, guided by Division 162, targeted and killed Mohammad Shahin, a Nukhba terrorist from Hamas’s East Jabaliya battalion, in northern Gaza. Shaheen infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the October 7 attack.
In the past 24 hours, the Air Force attacked more than 115 targets in the Gaza Strip, including launchers, military buildings, tunnels, terrorist squads, and other infrastructure.
At the same time, naval forces, working with ground troops, carried out attacks on terrorist targets in northern Gaza.
Additionally, the IDF carried out an airstrike Wednesday in the Tyre area of southern Lebanon, killing Hasin Nazih Baraj.
Baraj was an expert in weapons manufacturing who worked in Hezbollah’s research, development and production division.
This division is responsible for developing, producing, and maintaining weapons, as well as expanding the group’s supply capabilities. It has overseen numerous weapons projects, including the production of precision-guided missiles.
An experienced engineer, Baraj was tasked with building the infrastructure for producing precision ground-to-ground missiles. His killing is intended to disrupt Hezbollah’s efforts to recover after Operation Northern Shield.
Baraj’s activities violated the agreement current between Israel and Lebanon.
Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday appealed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, calling the situation in the Palestinian enclave "yet more worrying and saddening."
"I renew my fervent appeal to allow for the entry of fair humanitarian help and to bring to an end the hostilities, the devastating price of which is paid by children, the elderly and the sick," the pope said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.
Leo, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost, was elected the leader of the Catholic Church on May 8 to succeed the late Pope Francis. He has mentioned the situation in Gaza several times in the first weeks of his papacy.
A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.
Reuters identified more than 60 unique government users of the messaging platform TeleMessage in a cache of leaked data provided by Distributed Denial of Secrets, a US nonprofit whose stated mission is to archive hacked and leaked documents in the public interest.
The trove included material from disaster responders, customs officials, several US diplomatic staffers, at least one White House staffer, and members of the Secret Service. The messages reviewed by Reuters covered a roughly day-long period of time ending on May 4, and many of them were fragmentary.
Once little known outside government and finance circles, TeleMessage drew media attention after an April 30 Reuters photograph showed Waltz checking TeleMessage's version of the privacy-focused app Signal during a cabinet meeting.
The United Nations humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC on Tuesday that 14,000 Gazan babies could die in the next 48 hours unless aid reaches them, a statement that was seemingly retracted soon after by other UN officials.
"There are five trucks just sitting on the other side of the border right now, they've not reached the communities they need to reach," Fletcher told the BBC. "This is baby food, baby nutrition. There's 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them."
When asked by the BBC how he came to this "extraordinary figure," Fletcher explained "we've got strong teams on the ground, they are at the medical centers, the schools, trying to assess needs."
However, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) later told the BBC that: "We are pointing to the imperative of getting supplies in to save an estimated 14,000 babies suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Gaza, as the IPC partnership has warned about. We need to get the supplies in as soon as possible, ideally within the next 48 hours."
The IDF demolished the home of Abd al-Qader Qawasmeh in the West Bank on Tuesday night, the military announced on Wednesday.
Qawasmeh killed IDF Cpl. Avraham Fetena at a checkpoint in 2023.
Staff Sergeant Danilo Mocanu, aged 20, from Holon, fell during combat in the southern Gaza Strip, the IDF announced on Wednesday.
Mocanu served in the IDF's 82nd Battalion, part of the 7th Brigade.
He was posthumously promoted from Sergeant to Staff Sergeant upon his death, the IDF confirmed.
