Week of June 23, 2026

Currently, there is a fleet of seventy-two American military planes taking up parking spaces for civilian aircraft at Ben Gurion Airport. These refueling tankers have been stationed in the Middle East because of US military build-up in the region due to the war with Iran this past spring. With the signing of the current ceasefire, Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev sent a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu emphasizing the urgent need to relocate these planes immediately. The tankers are taking up parking positions, leading to limited flight operations for civilian aircraft and possibly causing the cancelation of 2.4 million ticketed passengers during the peak summer travel months. Regev requested the immediate relocation of thirty aircraft to locations outside Israel or to Israeli Air Force bases. Now, with the ceasefire, the US is preparing to move 20 percent of the refueling tankers and cargo planes from Ben Gurion.

Please pray for solutions and quick changes so tourists and families can fly easily in and out of Israel.

Israeli officials fear that Iran intends to prolong the negotiation process and delay reaching any final agreements with the US. During the sixty-day ceasefire, Israeli intelligence assessments indicate that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, does not want to reach a final agreement. Iran’s hopes are for continued control of the Strait of Hormuz, release from economic sanctions, and a financial boost from the US. There is also concern that Iran will use this lengthy time to continue to build nuclear weapons.

Israeli defense officials also are not pleased with the secrecy behind the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). It has been signed electronically, but there is still talk about a signing ceremony in Switzerland. Few have been able to read the MoU in its entirety.

Please pray for wise negotiations and commitment. Please pray Iran does not use this time to build nuclear warheads.

Large food distributors and retailers in Israel have generated millions of shekels in sales in Gaza—though they prefer to keep their business out of the public eye for concerns of public boycott, fear of aiding Hamas’s rebuilding, or being swept into threats of smuggling.

Systems are now in place to prevent the smuggling of illegal products. “But there are quite a few cases where smuggling is discovered only when the truck is unloaded at the inspection point at Kerem Shalom,” the source said. “That can happen if, on the way from the warehouse to the inspection point, a driver allows someone to add goods to the shipment, or if the supplier ordered goods from a source in the West Bank and the smuggled item was inserted there.”

Besides smuggling, the food supply was threatened by countless instances in which Hamas took control of the supplies entering Gaza. Hamas would then sell it for exorbitant prices, take supplies for themselves, or create a monopoly of selling only to their approved merchants.

In January 2025, Israel was required to increase the number of trucks entering Gaza to 600 a day due to the ceasefire, so systems had to be put into place to stop Hamas’s smuggling and control of food. After the ceasefire was signed, Israel created a new distribution system to work only with ten food traders that were approved by Shin Bet.

These ten Israeli companies are part of the process to ensure the food reaches the people, not Hamas. Once the trucks arrive at the warehouse in Gaza, “We were required to set up a fenced area surrounded by cameras and 24-hour security, and to use magnetometers to inspect the goods to make sure nothing outside the approved product list was inserted into the pallets,” a company official said.

Please pray that Israel would continue to work on its process for distributing food in Gaza so that more Palestinian civilians will have affordable access to food, and so innocents will not go hungry. Pray that God would protect the food supply from Hamas, so that they will no longer steal it from their own people or resell it to them at an unaffordable price.

Recently, the team of Chosen People Ministries in Tel Aviv, along with our partners in Australia with Celebrate Messiah, hosted a fabulous reunion of travel friends and backpackers. During the evening, memories were shared, which reignited the special bonds that are created while traveling. Our staff and our Aussie hosts thoroughly enjoyed seeing a variety of friends from only a few weeks ago, or from months, years, and even over a dozen years ago. The impact of experiencing hospitality and the conversations had while traveling last a lifetime! Each traveler had a great time staying in host homes or at the hosting center located in a surfing town. At the end of the night, one young man said he wants to understand more about the Lord, a subject frequently brought up while he was traveling.

Please pray for continued conversations and meet-ups for Israelis to talk about and process the testimonies heard, spiritual conversations had, and moments when the Lord spoke to them while they traveled.

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