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Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs pushed back Monday against claims by senior Israeli security officials that all of the hostages could have been brought home much earlier in the Gaza war, arguing that such an agreement would have required Israel to completely withdraw from Gaza, abandon the Philadelphi Corridor and guarantee that it would not resume the war.

Fuchs, who also serves as secretary of the Security Cabinet, said he had participated in the most restricted hostage-negotiation discussions since the Oct. 7 massacre and was therefore personally familiar with the proposals and conditions that were considered behind closed doors.

“As Cabinet Secretary and Secretary of the Security Cabinet, I participated in all of the most restricted hostage negotiations since October 7 and assisted in the ongoing effort led by the prime minister, with the help of President Trump, until the return of all the hostages,” Fuchs wrote.

His remarks came amid renewed debate over whether Israel passed up opportunities during the war to secure the release of all the captives. The controversy has resurfaced during Israel’s national remembrance period, with former senior defense officials criticizing decisions made by the political leadership during the hostage negotiations.

Fuchs said he was particularly disturbed to hear such claims coming from security officials who had themselves been present for the sensitive discussions.

“It greatly disturbed me to hear, in the midst of the days of remembrance, claims from senior security officials who were in those discussions that it was possible to return all of the hostages at an earlier stage of the war,” Fuchs wrote.

According to Fuchs, those officials were fully aware that Hamas’s terms for a comprehensive agreement at that stage went far beyond a hostage-prisoner exchange. He said bringing everyone home would have required Israel to end its military campaign and relinquish positions that the government considered essential to preventing Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities.

“Those senior officials know very well that the return of all the hostages at an earlier stage was conditioned on a complete IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including from the Philadelphi Corridor, with international guarantees not to return to the war, and the significance would have been victory for Hamas and defeat for Israel after the October 7 massacre,” Fuchs wrote.

The statement amounted to a direct rebuttal of arguments made by former defense officials, including former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, that opportunities existed earlier in the war to secure the release of additional hostages and that decisions by the government delayed a broader agreement.

The dispute over the Philadelphi Corridor — the narrow strip along the Gaza-Egypt border — became one of the most contentious issues in the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly argued that maintaining Israeli control there was essential to preventing Hamas from rearming through smuggling routes from Egypt.

Critics of the government countered that the insistence on retaining forces along the corridor complicated negotiations at crucial moments and placed the hostages at additional risk. The government maintained that abandoning the area without adequate security arrangements could allow Hamas to rebuild and eventually recreate the conditions that led to Oct. 7.

Fuchs himself publicly addressed the issue during the January 2025 hostage agreement. At the time, he said the framework included continued Israeli deployment along the Philadelphi Corridor during its initial phase and preserved Israel’s ability to return to fighting if negotiations over subsequent stages failed to produce terms consistent with Israel’s war objectives.

Monday’s statement, however, focused on earlier proposals for the release of all the hostages, which Fuchs said came with substantially different conditions: complete Israeli withdrawal and guarantees that the war would permanently end.

Fuchs argued that accepting those conditions would have allowed Hamas to survive the war while presenting the Oct. 7 attack as having forced Israel to withdraw from Gaza in exchange for the people abducted during the massacre.

He contrasted that scenario with what he described as the results ultimately achieved under Netanyahu’s strategy.

“Thanks to the proper management of the campaign by the prime minister, Israel is in a deep security zone in Gaza, with dozens of outposts in enemy territory, including the Philadelphi Corridor,” Fuchs wrote.

He also pointed to the eventual return of the hostages and the changed security situation along the Gaza border as evidence supporting the government’s approach.

“The living hostages returned to their homes and the fallen were brought to Jewish burial,” Fuchs said, adding that the Gaza border communities — now referred to as the Tekuma region — have returned to working their fields, “with IDF outposts behind the fence instead of Hamas tunnels.”

The competing accounts reflect one of the most bitter debates to emerge from the war: whether Israel could have brought the hostages home sooner by accepting an earlier agreement, or whether doing so would have required ending the campaign on terms that left Hamas in power and Israel without the ability to resume military operations.

{Matzav.com}

[Videos below.] A late-night attempt by Israeli military police to arrest a yeshiva bochur classified as a draft evader ended with his release after hundreds of chareidim rushed to the scene, blocked the roadway and prevented authorities from taking him into custody.

The dramatic confrontation unfolded at 20 Ya’ar Yerushalayim Street in Modiin-Maccabim-Reut, near Modiin Illit. According to reports from the Tzeva Shachor organization, military police arrived at the young man’s home shortly before midnight. The bochur, Yair, is reportedly scheduled to get married in just several weeks.

His rov, Rav Dor Salti, said the young man’s parents, who were abroad, had learned two days earlier that military police were searching for their son and contacted him about the situation.

“Two minutes before midnight, military police soldiers knocked on the door and his sister opened it. They didn’t let him change his clothes, because he was already in pajamas,” Rav Salti said.

Word of the arrest attempt spread rapidly, and within a short period dozens of protesters began arriving from nearby Modiin Illit and surrounding communities. Their numbers soon swelled into the hundreds as demonstrators sought to prevent the military police from removing the bochur from the building.

Stormy confrontations erupted both inside the building and outside it as the crowd surrounded the area. Demonstrators repeatedly shouted, “Yair, we are with you,” while others moved into the roadway and blocked traffic.

As the standoff continued, protesters sitting and standing in the street began singing “Utzu eitzah vesufar,” as additional people continued arriving at the scene.

Police said during the incident that officers from the Modiin station were responding to a public disturbance that had developed during a military police operation to arrest a draft evader. Large numbers of police officers were dispatched to extract the military personnel from the area and restore order.

As the situation escalated, the Central District Police declared the incident a district-level emergency requiring an intensified response. Large contingents of Israel Police, Yasam riot-control officers and Border Police personnel from the Central District and the Shfela region were summoned to the scene.

At the same time, negotiations reportedly began between police officials and activists from Tzeva Shachor, the organization that mobilizes in response to arrests of bnei yeshivos over military-service issues.

According to reports from the scene, an agreement was ultimately reached under which the bochur would be released and the demonstrators would disperse.

Military police subsequently released Yair, bringing the hours-long confrontation to an end without his being taken into military detention.

Following his release, the bochur traveled to the entrance of Modiin Illit, where supporters gathered around him and celebrated the outcome of the standoff.

{Matzav.com}

An Israeli medical student who helped subdue and handcuff the Omani terrorist who allegedly tried to crash a Flydubai passenger jet into Israel has revealed new details of the extraordinary struggle aboard the aircraft, including a moment when passengers debated whether they needed to kill the attacker because they feared he remained armed with a knife.

Adar Hayot, who was aboard Flydubai Flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, was among the passengers who rushed into the cockpit after Captain Smit Machchhar, despite suffering severe injuries, managed to open the cockpit door during the Sept. 30 attack.

Hayot described the enormity of what happened — and how narrowly the passengers escaped death.

“It is very difficult to process, as a passenger who was on the plane, that in the situation where I was lucky, I am alive — and in any other situation, I am dead,” Hayot said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13.

Inside the cockpit, Hayot found Machchhar badly wounded after being attacked by co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national who investigators say struck the captain repeatedly with the cockpit’s emergency crash axe while attempting to seize control of the Boeing 737 MAX.

“There was a pool of blood around his head, and I turned him over, but it was impossible to do that because the terrorist was still on his feet,” Hayot recalled. “In order to turn Smit over, we had to move the terrorist — and he still had not been neutralized.”

With al-Hammami still posing a potential threat, another passenger produced plastic zip ties. Hayot used them to restrain the attacker tightly enough that he would be unable to break free.

“Then I saw that he didn’t have a knife. I tightened the zip ties so that no matter how much he resisted — he would not be able to free himself,” Hayot said.

But before the passengers were certain that al-Hammami had been disarmed, Hayot said they faced a chilling question: whether they might have to kill him to protect themselves and everyone else aboard the aircraft.

“We were afraid he had a knife. We debated whether we needed to kill him — but we didn’t really have a way to do it,” he said.

Other passengers have described the confusion that erupted after the cockpit was breached, saying they initially did not know whether additional members of the Flydubai crew might be involved in the attack. At one point, a confrontation reportedly broke out when crew members objected to the way passengers were handling the subdued al-Hammami.

“You are not God, you cannot kill him,” flight attendants told the Israeli passengers, according to passenger testimony.

“We just wanted him not to kill us,” one of the passengers responded.

Despite the passengers’ fears, they ultimately took steps to keep al-Hammami alive, including placing an oxygen mask over his face so that he could survive and later be questioned by investigators.

The UAE investigation has since determined that the other foreign pilots aboard the aircraft did not cooperate with al-Hammami at any stage of the attack. Two off-duty pilots who were traveling aboard the flight ultimately took control of the aircraft and safely diverted it to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Investigators now believe al-Hammami’s plot was planned long before he boarded Flight 1073. According to officials familiar with his interrogation, he specifically sought employment with an airline that operated flights to Israel.

“I checked which of them flew to Tel Aviv. That’s why I chose Flydubai. I planned it even before I was hired,” al-Hammami reportedly told investigators.

Investigators have also learned that al-Hammami allegedly contemplated carrying out an attack aboard an earlier flight to Tel Aviv but backed out of that plan. Authorities are examining reports that he abandoned the earlier attempt because someone he knew was aboard that flight.

An Israeli investigative team traveled to the United Arab Emirates over the weekend to participate in the interrogation and investigation alongside Emirati authorities and security personnel from other countries. Investigators are examining whether al-Hammami had previously flown into Israel as a crew member and whether he had conducted reconnaissance ahead of the attack.

The current assessment among Israeli investigators is that al-Hammami likely acted alone, although authorities continue examining whether he received assistance, direction or encouragement from another party. No conclusive evidence has been publicly presented tying him to Iran or another foreign government or terrorist organization.

The investigation has simultaneously exposed troubling questions about the procedures that allowed Omani nationals — including aviation personnel — to enter Israel despite Oman having no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.

Official figures presented in Israel show that at least 10 Omani citizens entered the country in 2022, followed by 29 in 2023, nine in 2024 and 11 in 2025, with additional Omani nationals entering during 2026.

Separate reporting has indicated that dozens of Omani pilots and crew members have landed at Ben Gurion Airport aboard Flydubai flights in recent years, prompting an examination of whether the arrangements governing those flights were properly followed.

Under the aviation arrangements in question, aircrew members from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel were reportedly supposed to possess diplomatic passports issued by a country that does maintain relations with Israel. The repeated arrival of Omani personnel has therefore raised questions about whether that requirement was enforced and which Israeli authority was responsible for verifying compliance.

Israeli officials have acknowledged that they cannot currently state with certainty that the required procedure was followed in every case.

“The working assumption is that it did not happen, but we cannot say that with certainty,” the Transportation Ministry acknowledged.

The controversy has deepened amid revelations that Israel received information about the Flydubai flight’s crew, including names and nationalities, yet al-Hammami was not flagged before the aircraft departed Dubai. Conflicting accounts have emerged over which Israeli government or security body was responsible for checking that information and when the relevant lists were received.

The security questions are particularly serious because al-Hammami had reportedly already been identified as a concern while working for Oman Air. Authorities say he was removed from flying duties for a period after extremist material was discovered in his possession, yet he was subsequently able to obtain employment with Flydubai and fly the route to Israel.

{Matzav.com}