Iraq 

IRGC Attacks Iraqi Kurdistan

Throughout this week, the IRGC continued to launch artillery and drone strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan after deadly attacks last week. “The Iranian forces launched artillery fire and drone strikes” on bases used by exiled Iranian group Komala in the Mount Halgurd area, near the Iranian border,” said Atta Nasser, an official from Komala, describing an operation last Saturday. The strikes “destroyed some outposts, without causing casualties among our ranks,” he added. The IRGC’s Ground Forces announced continued attacks on Tuesday as well. These attacks are meant to deflect from the protests that have enveloped Iran in recent weeks. They fit a narrative that Iranian officials have been pushing of foreign-engineered protests despite the groundswell of domestic hostility towards the Islamic Republic.

Israel, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories 

Fears of Escalation with Hezbollah as Lebanon-Israel Maritime Border Deal Flounders 

Lebanon submitted a list of changes to the proposed U.S.-mediated maritime border demarcation deal with Israel, possibly derailing an agreement between the two countries on border demarcation and extraction of offshore hydrocarbon resources. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid immediately rejected the changes proposed by Lebanon to the maritime border agreement upon learning of their substance. Per Lapid, these updated Lebanese demands constituted new and significant changes to the draft presented by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, who is mediating the deal, which was presented to Israel and Lebanon last week and which all sides agreed was meant to be close to the final version of an agreement settling the maritime border and resource dispute between the two countries. Therefore, after Lebanon submitted its comments on the draft on Tuesday, Lapid instructed the Israeli negotiating team to reject them.  

A senior diplomatic source said that one of the Lebanese demands that Lapid rejected was that Total Energy, the French petroleum giant that holds the license to develop the Kana gas field, buy out the portion of the reservoir in Israeli waters, whereas the proposal that Israel agreed to accept stated that Total would pay royalties to Israel for the gas extracted from its waters. Exploration has not yet begun in Kana and the amount of gas in the reservoir is unknown so an immediate buyout could fall short of the actual value of the gas in Israeli waters.

Another element that Lapid rejected was Lebanon’s refusal to accept the “buoy line” as a border. The line in question is an obstacle extending 5 km. into the sea from Rosh Hanikra, along the border with Lebanon. The government has argued the line was vulnerable because Israel had established it unilaterally as a zone necessary for it to have freedom of action for its security, and the agreement with Lebanon would enshrine that line in international law.

The “buoy line” is what Lapid’s government has presented as the primary achievement of the negotiations over Israeli security. However, in the ensuing days, Lebanon asked to change the language describing the “buoy line” to avoid accepting it as an international border. 

Even as Israel rejects those demands, it “will extract gas from the Karish rig at the moment that it will be possible,” the source stated. The Security Cabinet, which discussed the latest developments in the talks with Lebanon, concurred that progress at Karish should continue as planned.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz quickly moved to place the IDF on high alert in anticipation of an escalation on the northern border, in light of Hezbollah’s months-long threats against the Jewish state over maritime border demarcation. 

Meanwhile, on the Lebanese side of the border Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, gave a speech last weekend that addressed the maritime border demarcation agreement in which he sounded a less bellicose tone than he has over the past few months. Nasrallah’s recurring threats against Israel, and his organization’s ostensible willingness to follow through with them, have added a sense of urgency to Jerusalem’s negotiations with Beirut over maritime border demarcation. In this speech, Nasrallah called the U.S.-mediated draft proposal a “very important step,” and that the emerging deal opens up “new and promising horizons for the people of Lebanon by rescuing the country from the crisis into which it has fallen.” Per his usual line, Nasrallah also stressed that the progress toward resolving the dispute resulted from Lebanon’s “strength,” as opposed to the “generosity” of the United States and Israel.  

Hamas Funneled Terror Funds Through Gazans with Israeli Entry Permits 

The IDF and Shin Bet thwarted a Hamas terrorism financing scheme using Gazans who were entering Israel for humanitarian reasons or with work permits and student activists at the Birzeit University in the West Bank, the IDF's Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced on Thursday. The terrorist movement used the financing scheme to transfer funds from the Gaza Strip to Hamas members in Turkey and to finance terrorist activities in the West Bank and Turkey. A group of student activists at Birzeit University were arrested in the case after they were caught in possession of credit cards that were used to transfer illegal funds from the Hamas leadership in Gaza to Hamas officials in Turkey.  

The money was smuggled out of Gaza using people who entered Israel for humanitarian reasons or with the aim of looking for work. The students at Birzeit University then withdrew the money from ATMs in Ramallah and used the funds for terrorist purposes, including to fund Hamas activists who belong to the Islamic Bloc, which is comprised of student cells who work for Hamas at educational institutions in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.

Syria 

Hamas Delegation to Visit Syria This Month Aiming to Revive Ties 

Hamas delegation will visit Syria later this month, two sources told Reuters on Thursday, in a move by the Palestinian Islamist group to rebuild ties after shunning President Bashar al-Assad for years over the brutality of his regime during the Syrian Civil War. Hamas leaders publicly endorsed the 2011 street uprising against Assad's dynastic rule, and vacated their Syria headquarters in Damascus in 2012, a move that irked their common ally, Iran. Hamas's relations with Iran were never severed as a result, but tensions between them would soon subside, with Hamas officials praising the Islamic Republic for help with building up their Gaza arsenal of longer-range rockets, which they have used in fighting Israel, as early as the 2014 Gaza-Israel Conflict.  

Regarding the reported visit to Damascus, a senior Hamas official said the visit would take place after a Hamas delegation concludes an Oct. 10 trip to Algeria to discuss reconciliation with the rival Palestinian Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. A second source, a Palestinian official familiar with the issue, confirmed the details of the Syria trip. A Palestinian source in Syria denied that a visit would take place, while Hamas officials in Gaza, the coastal enclave where the group has ruled since 2007, declined to comment. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

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