News Digest — 8/10/26
Lebanese Report Rules Out September Negotiations With Israel
Direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon are unlikely to resume next month, with any potential future sessions delayed until after the summer, according to a Lebanese diplomatic source cited Sunday night (9th) by the Hezbollah-linked Lebanese outlet Al Mayadeen.
The diplomatic official stated that Washington and Jerusalem have refused to widen the established pilot zones until tangible advancement occurs in the initial two designated areas. Additionally, American and Israeli officials have demanded Hezbollah’s full retreat from the strategic Ali al-Taher ridge.
The source noted that representatives from Beirut dismissed Israeli assertions attributing every blast in southern Lebanon to strikes against military installations.
The disclosures follow a diplomatic round last week at the US Embassy in Rome. Following those sessions, a Lebanese representative informed Reuters on Friday (7th) that Israeli and Lebanese negotiators had assembled a restricted list of potential third-party nations that could deploy security forces to supervise Hezbollah’s disarmament.
The representative noted that Washington retains the final authority to choose which governments will participate. While the Lebanese official declined to name the shortlisted candidates or specify the size of the roster, previous statements from another Lebanese source and two foreign diplomats revealed that both US and Israeli envoys vetoed France from consideration.
The discussions in Rome represented the latest effort to implement a US-brokered framework finalized on June 26. The agreement links a step-by-step withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese soil to independent monitoring of Hezbollah’s disarmament.
Hezbollah is not a party to the accord and continues to refuse to lay down its arms.
Syria Dismantles ISIS Cell Near Golan Heights, Arrests 9 Suspects
It was confirmed on Sunday (9th) that Syrian security forces arrested nine suspected ISIS members in Khan Arnavah in Quneitra Province near the Israeli border, breaking up a cell accused of gathering weapons, transporting explosives and moving operatives through the area.
Syrian internal security forces captured the group’s leader, Musab Khalil al-Sheikh, also known as “The Chinese,” during the operation. Authorities also seized weapons, ammunition and components used to make explosive devices.
The cell operated in an area adjacent to the demilitarized zone near the Golan Heights.
Its activities included handling logistics, transporting components for improvised explosive devices and facilitating the movement of ISIS operatives.
Security forces in Syria’s southern governorates have remained on heightened alert to prevent additional terrorist activity.
The arrests follow a separate counterterrorism operation last month in which Syrian authorities stopped a major weapons-smuggling attempt near the Iraqi border. An investigation reportedly determined that the shipment was intended for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Authorities intercepted a truck carrying 150 explosive drones, long-range missiles and anti-tank missiles, preventing the weapons from reaching their destination.
The developments come two weeks after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa told Al Jazeera that Damascus was avoiding military action against Israel because Syria had no interest in such a confrontation.
Al-Sharaa said his government was working with other countries toward a security agreement with Israel that could potentially lead to a broader peace agreement. He maintained however, that Syria would not relinquish its claim to the “occupied Golan.”
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and applied Israeli law there in 1981. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty over the territory in 2019, while most of the international community considers it occupied Syrian territory.
Israel has said retaining control of the Golan Heights is necessary for its security, citing threats from Syria as well as Iran and Iran-aligned forces operating there.
Israel has also argued that relinquishing the territory could allow hostile forces to establish positions overlooking communities in northern Israel.
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Threatens ‘Illegitimate’ Israel After Inking Pact With Saudis, Turkey
Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif On Saturday (8th) told a news outlet in his country that “Israel is a threat to the entire Muslim world,” and called for “a united military front” against it, just a day after Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a joint defense agreement.
“In the context of Israel, all Muslim countries must unite. I have no doubt about this,” Asif said.
“Israel is a product of the Balfour Declaration, which was established in the 1940s as an illegitimate state, and it could pose a direct threat to any of the countries in the region,” he continued , referring to the 1917 British declaration of support for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel, setting the stage for Israeli independence three decades later. Pakistan was simply established on the basis of a British declaration in 1947, just a year before the founding of Israel.
Asif, who has in the past called Israel “evil and a curse for humanity,” and a “cancerous state,” told the interviewers that his fierce opposition to Israel will not change even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated in this year’s elections, which are set for October 27.
“No matter who comes to power in Jerusalem – whether its former premier Naftali Bennet or any other leader – the differences are only marginal.” Asif said.
“Their attitude towards the Palestinians and their anti-Islamic mindset will not disappear. They continue to incite Muslim countries against each other,” he charged, “and as long as the Palestinian issue is not permanently resolved, the Islamic world must stand against them as one.”
There was no immediate Israeli reaction to Asif’s threat. After his since-deleted social media post earlier this year labeling Israel “cancerous,” in which he also called “to get rid of European Jews [sic],” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his “call for Israel’s annihilation is outrageous,” particularly coming from a member of a government “that claims to be a neutral arbiter for peace,” referring to Islamabad’s role as a mediator in talks between Washington and Tehran on ending the US-Israel war against Iran. Israel is not a party to those negotiations.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel. It voted against the establishment of modern Israel at the UN in 1947, does not recognize Israeli sovereignty, and says it will not do so until a Palestinian state is established along the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. During a visit to India in 2018, Netanyahu said: “We are not enemies of Pakistan and Pakistan should not be our enemy either.”
The same year, the Mossad spy agency seized a trove of nuclear documents from a Tehran warehouse (2018), detailing Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons, which reporters from the New York Times who viewed the archives said was carried out with foreign assistance, “Much [of which] was clearly from Pakistan.”
Separately Saturday (8th), Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the trilateral pact that Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed a day earlier is technically the same as NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense agreement, meaning that an attack on any of the three countries would be considered an attack on them all.
Speaking to the state run Anadolu news agency, Fidan said a committee of ministers similar to that within NATO would be formed as part of the alliance, as well as a general secretariat based in Saudi Arabia. Egypt could potentially join the pact once certain technical matters are resolved, he said.
Fidan said that the allies would decide through consultations what degree, form, and format of support they would ask for in the event of an attack, but that no country would be considered a threat as long as a member state is not attacked.
Turkey, which has NATO’s second-largest army, has said the pact was open to expansion to other regional countries and did not seek to replace any existing alliances.
“NATO is a giant military alliance where there are 32 countries. We have started here as three countries and we have to take very humble but concrete steps,” Fidan said, adding efforts to finalize the pact had been underway for two years and eight months.
UNESCO Joins Palestinians In Rewriting Jewish History In Judea And Samaria – – David M. Weinberg
Judea and Samaria, Israel’s biblical heartland, are rich with Jewish national heritage sites. Since the start of the Oslo process, the Palestinian Authority has acted to destroy archaeological sites in Judea and Samaria – purposefully plundering Jewish antiquities, razing historical Jewish sites, and working in international institutions to erase the Jewish/Israeli identity of such places.
In 2026, the PA submitted a long list of undeniably Jewish historical sites to the World Heritage List at UNESCO, rebranding the sites as “Palestinian” or “Islamic” heritage locations while expunging any Jewish association with them. UNESCO has essentially become a willing partner in a campaign of systematic Jewish identity erasure, amounting to cultural genocide.
According to UNESCO, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is not really the Temple Mount. In 2018, UNESCO passed a series of resolutions (proposed by PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas) declaring Jerusalem an exclusively Muslim heritage city and criminalizing Israel’s custodianship of the city. At Palestinian urging, UNESCO also declared the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron as “State of Palestine” heritage.
In July, at the behest of the PA, UNESCO declared Sebastia – the capital of the biblical kingdom of Israel – as a Palestinian associated World Heritage site. Now UNESCO is considering the declaration of 22 additional properties in Judea and Samaria as Palestinian cultural assets including Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found; Herodian National Park, the fortress built by King Herod, and Solomon’s pools and the aqueduct leading to King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. All the sites are in Israeli-controlled territory and none bear a historical or cultural connection under any plausible claim to “Palestinian Heritage.”
The writer is managing senior fellow at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy
Has “Never Again” Blinded Us? – Barry Mallinger
I am a grandchild of Holocaust survivors – barely survivors – who stepped out of the camps into a world emptied of everyone they had ever loved. In the last three years, atrocities beyond imagination have been inflicted on us. Again and again we have watched parents bury their children. They tried to erase our entire nation. They tried to kill our faith and everything we bring to the world. And yet we rose again. We flourished, and we carried our dead forward by naming our sons and daughters after them and by making the world a better place.
“Never Again” rests on a hope. We believed the world would learn that no one could confront the pile of shoes, the children’s faces, the naked corpses, and remain unchanged. But only those who already felt some bond to Jews were capable of caring. Millions did not. Billions did not. The world walked through our museums and remained largely unmoved, or moved only briefly, never long enough to restrain antisemitism.
We wanted to believe morality could be taught. But not for the Jewish question. Pain does not create affinity, affinity must already exist for empathy to take root. And without the affinity, without some prior sense of connection to Jews as living people, whatever response we think we see is not empathy, it is a grimace.
We went decades in the belief that if we exposed everything, if we spared nothing, truth itself would end antisemitism. It would compel compassion. It never did. Antisemitism was not waiting for enlightenment. It was waiting for permission. For years now, the world has behaved as if there were a statute of limitations on the moral freeze that followed the Holocaust, as if the restraint purchased by our six million dead had quietly expired. After the October 7 pogrom, there was no pause in Jew-hatred, not even for one day.
Antisemitism does not respond to evidence. It does not submit to reason. Hitler did not murder Jews because of what they believed, how they lived, or what they owned. He murdered the poor and the rich, the pious and the secular, the assimilated and the insular, the newborn and the elderly. There was no argument that could have saved them. There never is.
