An Israeli military spokesman announced the assassination of Motasem Muhammad Suleiman Salah, a member of Hamas's military wing, in Gaza City, in an airstrike. The spokesman claimed Salah had recently sought to carry out military acts against Israeli army forces and Israeli citizens, worked to rebuild Hamas's capabilities, and described that as a systematic violation of the ceasefire. In a related development, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that the Israeli army assassinated Ibrahim Allam, a commander in Hamas's military wing, in the Khan Younis area earlier this week (Monday), alleging he infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7 attack, participated in killing Israeli civilians, and kidnapped the body of Sergeant Shaked Dahan, whom Hamas had captured.
Politically, these developments coincided with a reading published three years after the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7, 2023, which argued that Israel emerged as the dominant power in the Middle East without signs of exhaustion, while Iran's standing declined, Hezbollah was undermined, and the Assad regime collapsed. It noted that the Palestinian state project suffered successive blows: Gaza's separation from the national equation, settlement expansion and the displacement of camps in the West Bank, the marginalization of the Palestinian Authority, alongside the weakening of Hamas and the entry into force of Trump's plan regarding Gaza under UN Security Council Resolution 2803.
In the media and international sphere, The Wall Street Journal opened a sharp confrontation with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his statements on the third anniversary of the October 7 attack, accusing him of ignoring Hamas's role in the war and distorting the image of what is happening in Gaza, citing a report by journalist Eli Leon in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv. The report said the U.S. newspaper's editorial held that Mamdani described Israeli operations in Gaza as “ongoing genocide,” “apartheid,” and “war crimes,” without referring to estimates concerning the dead.