More Gaza hospitals suspend operations as Israel hunts Hamas/node/2407636/middle-east
More Gaza hospitals suspend operations as Israel hunts Hamas
People stand over a crater following an Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on November 12, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)
More Gaza hospitals suspend operations as Israel hunts Hamas
Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside
Battles around Gaza’s largest Al-Shifa hospital leave many trapped
Updated 13 November 2023
Reuters
GAZA/JERUSALEM: Two more major hospitals in Gaza closed to new patients on Sunday, with staff saying that Israeli bombardment plus lack of fuel and medicine meant more babies and others could die.
Hospitals in the north of the Palestinian enclave are blockaded by Israeli forces and barely able to care for those inside, medical staff said. Israel says it is homing in on Hamas militants in the area and the hospitals should be evacuated.
Gaza’s largest and second largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and Al-Quds, said they were suspending operations. With more people killed and wounded daily but half of the territory’s hospitals now out of action, there are ever fewer places for the injured.
Newborns are placed in bed after being taken off incubators in Gaza's Al Shifa hospital after power outage, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, in Gaza City, Gaza November 12, 2023. (REUTERS)
“My son was injured and there was not a single hospital I could take him to so he could get stitches,” said Ahmed Al-Kahlout, who was fleeing south in accordance with Israeli advice while fearing that nowhere in Gaza was safe.
A plastic surgeon in Shifa said bombing of the building housing incubators had forced them to line up premature babies on ordinary beds, using the little power available to turn the air conditioning to warm.
“We are expecting to lose more of them day by day,” said Dr. Ahmed El Mokhallalati.
Israel says Hamas has placed command centers under and near the hospitals and it needs to get at them to free around 200 hostages the militants took in Israel in an attack just over a month ago. Hamas has denied using hospitals in this way.
On Sunday, a Palestinian official briefed on talks over the release of hostages said Hamas had suspended the negotiations because of the way Israel had handled Shifa hospital.
There was no immediate comment from either Hamas or Israel.
’NO ONE IS ALLOWED IN, NOBODY IS ALLOWED OUT’
Israel’s military said it had offered to evacuate newborn babies and had placed 300 liters of fuel at Shifa’s entrance on Saturday night, but that both gestures had been blocked by Hamas.
Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of Shifa, said reports of refusing to leave the diesel were “lies and slander.” Ashraf Al-Qidra, spokesperson for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said that of 45 babies in incubators at Shifa, three had already died.
Israeli army soldiers attend an armed first response group training session in the Druze village of Hurfeish, which has garnered the name "Tsahal village" (a Hebrew-language acronym for the "Israel Defence Forces"), near the border with Lebanon in northern Israel on November 10, 2023. (AFP)
Shifa was out of reach for the newly wounded, said Mohammad Qandil, a doctor at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in south Gaza, who is in touch with colleagues there.
“Shifa hospital now isn’t working, no one is allowed in, nobody is allowed out,” he said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Al-Quds hospital was also out of service, with staff struggling to care for those already there with little medicine, food and water.
“Al Quds hospital has been cut off from the world in the last 6-7 days. No way in, no way out,” said Tommaso Della Longa, spokesperson for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Men check the bodies of people killed in bombardment that hit a school housing displaced Palestinians, as they lie on the ground in the yard of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 10, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
Three UN agencies expressed horror at the situation in the hospitals, saying it had in 36 days registered at least 137 attacks on health care facilities, resulting in 521 deaths and 686 injuries — including 16 dead and 38 wounded medics.
“The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair,” it said, saying half of Gaza’s hospitals were now closed.
With the humanitarian situation across Gaza worsening, 80 foreigners and several injured Palestinians crossed into Egypt in the first evacuations since Friday, four Egyptian security sources said.
Poland said 18 of them were its citizens, and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News American citizens would be moved out of Gaza during Sunday.
AID DELIVERIES BY TRUCK AND PARACHUTE
At least 80 aid trucks had also moved from Egypt into Gaza by Sunday afternoon, two of the sources said. Jordan said earlier it had air-dropped a second batch into a field hospital.
Very little aid has entered Gaza since Israel declared war on Hamas more than a month ago after militants rampaged through southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
White phosphorus fired by Israeli army to create a smoke screen, is seen on the Israel-Lebanon border in northern Israel, November 12, 2023. (REUTERS)
Palestinian officials said on Friday that 11,078 Gaza residents had been killed in air and artillery strikes since then, around 40 percent of them children.
Disease is spreading among evacuees packed into schools and other shelters and surviving on tiny amounts of food and water, international aid agencies say.
Speaking from inside Gaza City, Jamila, 54, said she and her family could hear the roar of tanks nearby.
“During the day, people try to look for essential items such as bread and water, and at night people try to stay alive,” she said. “We hear explosions throughout the night, sometimes we can tell that some of these explosions are exchanges of fire between the resistance fighters and the Israeli forces.”
Palestinian health officials said 13 people had been killed in an Israeli air strike on a house in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Sunday.
Residents reported increased fighting around Al-Shati refugee camp, by the coast in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it had killed a number of militants there and called on civilians to use a four-hour pause to evacuate south.
The Gaza fighting has reignited conflict on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, which has seen the worst cross-border clashes since 2006.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, said it attacked Israeli army troops near the Dovev Barracks on Sunday, inflicting casualties.
The Israeli military said earlier that anti-tank missiles fired by militants had hit a number of civilians, adding that it was retaliating with artillery fire.
The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said one of its members near the town of Al-Qawzah in southern Lebanon had been wounded by a bullet overnight.
Pager and walkie-talkie blasts targeting Hezbollah across Lebanon raise questions, stoke Middle East tensions
Communication devices exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, killing at least 15 people and injuring thousands
Suspected Israeli attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that Hezbollah has almost no choice but to respond
Updated 37 min 25 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: At precisely 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, an estimated 3,000 pagers carried by Hezbollah members beeped several times before exploding simultaneously, killing at least 12 people and injuring thousands more across Lebanon and parts of Syria.
At least eight of the dead were reportedly members of Iran-backed Hezbollah, and the many wounded included Mojtaba Amini, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, who may have lost at least one eye.
But clips from security cameras in shops in Beirut and other locations, circulated on social media, illustrated the dangerously indiscriminate nature of the attack.
Many civilians going about their day also fell victim to the blasts as pagers exploded in supermarkets, on the streets, and in cars and homes. Among the dead were two children who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Fleets of ambulances ferried a reported 2,700 wounded to hospitals across Lebanon, where overwhelmed medics struggled to cope with multiple victims suffering serious wounds, mainly to their hips, where pagers are generally worn on belts, and to hands and eyes.
On Wednesday afternoon, further blasts were reported across Lebanon, this time reportedly involving hand-held radios, causing at least three further fatalities and a hundred more wounded, according to Lebanese state media.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack. But on Wednesday a US official told AP that Israel had briefed Washington on the attack after it had been carried out and, with no other feasible suspect in the frame, there is little doubt that it was the handiwork of Mossad, Israel’s lethally inventive foreign intelligence agency.
It is also clear that, figuratively and literally, the pager attack was both designed and timed to send a message.
The opportunity to use pagers as an offensive weapon arose in February when Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly warned members to stop using cell phones, which are easily bugged and traced and have been linked with many assassinations executed by missile attacks.
According to a senior Lebanese security source quoted by The Times of Israel, Hezbollah then ordered 5,000 pagers, which were imported into Lebanon earlier this year.
Initial speculation was that Israel had somehow infected the pagers with code designed to cause lithium batteries inside them to overheat and explode. However, it has since emerged that the pagers used only ordinary AAA batteries.
Besides, the near-instantaneous and synchronized detonations, apparently triggered by incoming messages, suggest the pagers had all been fitted with a small amount of explosive and a miniature electronic detonator.
On Tuesday, a senior Lebanese security source told Reuters: “The Mossad injected a board inside of the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means, even with any device or scanner.”
On Wednesday, Gold Apollo, the Taiwanese firm whose brand name was found on the pagers used in the attack, denied involvement, saying the AR-924 models widely identified after the blasts had been made under license by a Budapest-based company, BAC Consulting KFT.
Hsu Ching-kuang, head of Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, speaks to the media outside the company's office in New Taipei City on Sept. 18, 2024, saying his company had nothing to do with the pager explosion attack in Lebanon. (AFP)
In a statement issued at 1:40 p.m. Taiwan time on Wednesday, Gold Apollo said: “This model is produced and sold by BAC. Our company only provides the brand trademark authorization and is not involved in the design or manufacturing of this product.”
Images of BAC’s headquarters — a modest, semi-detached building on Szonyi Street in the north of Budapest — have spread on social media, but BAC has yet to comment. Its website went offline on Wednesday and the profile of its owner and managing director was deleted from LinkedIn.
It is, however, extremely unlikely that any genuine company would knowingly take part in such an operation, risking Hezbollah’s wrath, knowing full well that the devices would be easily traced back to it. This has provoked some speculation that BAC, established only in 2022, might have been a front company operated by Israeli intelligence.
Combo image showing a walkie-talkie (right frame) that was exploded inside a house in Baalbek, east Lebanon, on Sept. 17, 2024, and a man holding a walkie talkie device after he removed the battery following the pager explosions. (AP/AFP)
A more likely scenario is that the batch of pagers ordered by Hezbollah were intercepted en route to Lebanon by Israeli agents — most probably at a port or airport, where typical customs and shipping delays may have given agents, working with local collaborators, enough time to meddle with the devices.
Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a major transport hub on the River Danube and is home to Csepel Freeport, the country’s principal port.
Wherever the devices were tampered with, “the use of pagers bears the hallmark of Israel weaponizing digital technology to achieve political ends,” Ibrahim Al-Marashi, associate professor in the Department of History at California State University San Marcos, told Arab News.
Social media photo showing a pager battery that exploded during an apparent Israeli attack on Sept. 17, 2024 against users of the device in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
Israel has “form” in such warfare. In 2010, “a code known as Stuxnet, snuck into a USB drive, caused Iranian centrifuges to accelerate to the point that they destroyed themselves.”
In 1996, Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash was killed when explosives hidden inside his cell phone were triggered remotely by Israeli agents.
“The advantage of the most recent attack in Lebanon is that it allows Israel to strike from a distance while claiming plausible deniability, avoiding a US rebuke at a time when Washington has pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike Hezbollah,” said Al-Marashi.
But the pager attack, he warned, could lead to a dangerous escalation.
Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on Sept.17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon. (AFP)
“Hezbollah does have the ability to weaponize the digital in retaliation, raising the possibility that violent non-state actors might even pursue artificial intelligence to retaliate against their adversaries.”
Given the complexities of the operation, and the sheer workload involved in sabotaging thousands of devices, there is little doubt that the attack would have been weeks, if not months, in the planning.
But it is the timing of the attack that sends the most worrying signal.
The day after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, its ally Hezbollah began firing missiles into northern Israel — a near-daily bombardment that has increased steadily in intensity, forcing the evacuation of thousands of Israelis from the border region.
Lebanese army soldiers stand guard in Beirut on September 17, 2024, after an Israeli pager device attack against the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on September 17. (AFP
After a meeting of its Security Cabinet on Monday night, barely 12 hours before the pagers were detonated, Netanyahu’s office announced that “the Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes. Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.”
At the same time, reports suggested Netanyahu was on the brink of buckling to the extremist elements in his cabinet by sacking his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has criticized him for having no postwar plan for Gaza, and replacing him with Gideon Saar, leader of the New Hope — The United Right party.
On Wednesday, the day after the pager attack, reports in Israeli and other media, citing anonymous US and Israeli officials, suggested it had been planned originally as “an opening blow in an all-out war against Hezbollah.”
Relatives mourn Fatima Abdallah — a 10-year-old girl killed in Israel's pager device attack — during her funeral in the village of Saraain in the Bekaa valley on September 18, 2024. (AFP)
According to The Times of Israel, a Hezbollah operative “had come to suspect the devices had been tampered with.” He was killed before he could alert his superiors, but the decision was taken to detonate the pagers before the plot was uncovered.
The question now is whether Israel is poised to follow up the pager attack, perhaps as was planned, with an all-out assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“We have been teetering on the brink of a wider war for many months now,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told Arab News.
“Hezbollah and Iran have made it clear they don’t want this broader conflict to erupt, but Israel cannot end the war in Gaza without addressing the security crisis on its northern borders with Iran, Lebanon and Syria.
Mourners carry the coffin of Mohammed Mahdi, son of Hezbollah legislator Ali Ammar, who was killed Tuesday after his handheld pager exploded, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 18, 2024. (AP)
“In order to address this security imbalance, which puts at risk the safety of the broader population but also that of those displaced since the war began, Israel is trying to target and degrade the ‘Axis of Resistance’ to stave off further threats,” she said, referring to the loose network of Iranian proxies throughout the region.
“But this strategy could certainly push the groups and Iran to respond and eventually draw in regional states and above all the US.”
Most Israelis, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of the nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, “will tell you that war with Hezbollah is inevitable, but a large percentage say: ‘Not now.’
“The priorities for many are a ceasefire in Gaza, release of the hostages and dialing down the tension in Lebanon. Hezbollah can wait,” he told Arab News.
“Hezbollah, actively backed by Iran, is a much greater threat to Israel than Hamas and the general perception is that there will eventually be a war with Hezbollah, but Israelis know this will be much different than what we have witnessed in the past. It would mean years of war and vast devastation.
“But Netanyahu has a vested interest in the perpetuation of the war, which would be good for Netanyahu but intolerable for Israel.”
I'm saying: Netanyahu is the duly elected Israeli PM elected by means of a deeply flawed, but legitimate system.
He is also the greatest threat to the 3rd Jewish Commonwealth.
What happens next, added Seidemann, “is not only an Israeli decision. Will the US provide the munitions and the rest of the world the legitimization to pursue a protracted war in Lebanon?
“The bottom line is that right now, anything can happen.”
For Al-Marashi, “there are a lot of variables in regard to further escalation that make predictions difficult, more difficult than at any time in analyzing systemic conflicts in the Middle East.
“Despite US sanctions on Iran, news emerged over the weekend that Iran has launched a satellite into space and allegedly has provided ballistic missiles to Russia.
“Second, the Houthis in Yemen have overcome a technical hurdle, launching a ballistic missile against Israel and having it hit Israeli soil, meaning Israel’s system that intercepts such missiles failed.
An Israeli firefighter works to put out a blaze after rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in Kiryat Shmona, Israel, on Sept. 18, 2024. (REUTERS)
“From that perspective, both Israeli adversaries have demonstrated they can overcome technical hurdles, signaling to Israel that it is not invulnerable.”
Were a regional war to escalate, he added, “it would put US positions in Bahrain and Iraq in the crosshairs of the Axis of Resistance. Biden, seeking to ensure a Kamala Harris victory in the US election, is most likely going to pressure Israel not to escalate matters prior to the election.
“At the same time, if war in the Middle East helped Donald Trump, that would work to the advantage of Netanyahu, who would prefer a Trump presidency.”
The Middle East, said Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, “has been teetering on the edge of a wider escalation for much of this past year, with the risk of nation-states going directly to war with one another growing.”
An armored personnel carrier of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrols along al-Khardali road along the Israel-Lebanon border on September 17, 2024. (PhotAFP)
It was, he told Arab News, important to keep in mind the two core drivers of events — “a regime in Iran that operates with a revolutionary ideology that seeks to upend the state order of the Middle East, and an increasingly right-wing Israeli government that rejects a two-state solution and is unable to see the historic opportunity it has in opening relations with key Arab states if it took steps to define a clear end to this war that leads to a State of Palestine.”
In this context, “the US and outside actors such as Europe, China, and Russia can play important roles in trying to shape the trajectory of events in the region, but the main drivers are the regional actors themselves.
“One interesting pivotal grouping is the Arab Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, who do not want to see a wider regional escalation with Iran but do want to advance a two-state solution.”
Right now, however, even as uncertainty remains about Israel’s next move, much depends on how Hezbollah will respond to the extraordinary blow it suffered on Tuesday.
The attack, described by a Hezbollah official as “the targeting of an entire nation,” has been condemned as “an extremely concerning escalation” by Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon.
Pained by casualties inflicted today due to more explosions of devices, I can only reiterate my appeal for restraint. Further escalatory actions risk devastating consequences. I again acknowledge the medical teams working under enormous stress to save lives and treat the wounded.
In the past year, Hezbollah has suffered the loss of more than 400 fighters, including senior commander Fuad Shukr, to Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon.
But the pager attack represents an embarrassing security breach on such a scale that if it is to save face, Hezbollah’s leadership has almost no choice but to respond with more than the usual daily delivery of a handful of rockets.
Hashim Safieddine, a Shiite Muslim cleric and the head of Hezbollah's Executive Council, speaks during the funeral of persons killed after hundreds of paging devices exploded in a deadly wave across Lebanon the previous day, in Beirut's southern suburbs on September 18, 2024. (AFP)
After Israel’s multiple airstrikes in southern Lebanon last week and now the pager attack, “we are more on the precipice of a regional war than ever,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.
“We will have to see how Hezbollah will retaliate now, and the level of that response will determine where this goes. But these episodes are an indication that things are heating up and we are close to the precipice.”
As for Netanyahu, after almost a year of fighting in Gaza, the fear now is that his answer to growing domestic criticism over the apparent absence of a postwar plan may be an even more nightmarish scenario — more war, only this time in Lebanon.
Tunisia presidential candidate gets prison term, still on ballot: lawyer
Updated 19 September 2024
AFP
TUNIS: Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was handed a 20-month prison term for charges related to forging voter endorsements Wednesday but will still stand in next month’s election, his lawyer told AFP.
Zammel, a former lawmaker and head of a small liberal party, is one of only two candidates approved by Tunisia’s electoral authority ISIE to challenge President Kais Saied in the October 6 poll.
One of Zammel’s lawyers, Abdessatar Messaoudi, said a court in the northwestern city of Jendouba issued the sentence which the defense team “will appeal.”
Messaoudi said the ruling was not final and does not prevent 43-year-old Zammel from remaining on the presidential ballot.
“He is still a presidential candidate, and his team will keep campaigning,” the lawyer said.
“Nothing can put an end to his candidacy apart from death.”
In the 2019 election that brought Saied to power, businessman Nabil Karoui made it to the second round behind bars.
Zammel, a businessman who was little-known to the general public before his presidential bid, was arrested on September 2 on suspicion of forging endorsements.
He was released on September 6, but was almost immediately arrested again on similar accusations.
Saied, 66, the incumbent and frontrunner, was democratically elected but orchestrated a sweeping power grab in 2021 and has since ruled by decree.
ISIE earlier this month announced the final list of approved candidates: Saied, Zammel and former lawmaker Zouhair Maghzaoui, 59, who had supported the president’s power grab.
The election board dismissed the presidential bids of three other hopefuls despite court orders in their favor.
Human Rights Watch accused ISIE of having “intervened to skew the ballot in favor of Saied,” with at least eight prospective candidates prosecuted, convicted or imprisoned in the run-up to the election.
“Holding elections amid such repression makes a mockery of Tunisians’ right to participate in free and fair elections,” said the New York-based advocacy group.
The European Union has said Zammel’s arrest and the exclusion of the three candidates demonstrated “a continued limitation of the democratic space” in Tunisia.
A war with Hezbollah may be looming. Is Israel prepared?
Israeli media reported Wednesday that the government has not yet decided whether to launch a major offensive in Lebanon
Updated 19 September 2024
AP
JERUSALEM: With Israel’s defense minister announcing a “new phase” of the war and an apparent Israeli attack setting off explosions in electronic devices in Lebanon, the specter of all-out combat between Israel and Hezbollah seems closer than ever before.
Hopes for a diplomatic solution to the conflict appear to be fading quickly as Israel signals a desire to change the status quo in the country’s north, where it has exchanged cross-border fire with Hezbollah since the Lebanese militant group began attacking on Oct. 8, a day after the war’s opening salvo by Hamas.
In recent days, Israel has moved a powerful fighting force up to the northern border, officials have escalated their rhetoric, and the country’s security Cabinet has designated the return of tens of thousands of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel an official war goal.
Here’s a look at how Israel is preparing for a war with Lebanon: Troops drawn from Gaza to the northern border
While the daily fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated on several occasions, the bitter enemies have been careful to avoid an all-out war.
That appears to be changing — especially after pagers, walkie-talkies, solar equipment and other devices exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 20 and wounding thousands in a sophisticated attack Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“You don’t do something like that, hit thousands of people, and think war is not coming,” said retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, who leads Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of hawkish former military commanders. “Why didn’t we do it for 11 months? Because we were not willing to go to war yet. What’s happening now? Israel is ready for war.”
As fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has fortified forces along the border with Lebanon, including the arrival this week of a powerful army division that took part in some of the heaviest fighting in Gaza.
The 98th Division is believed to include thousands of troops, including paratrooper infantry units and artillery and elite commando forces specially trained for operations behind enemy lines. Their deployment was confirmed by an official with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.
The division played a key role in Gaza, spearheading the army’s operations in the southern city of Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold. The offensive inflicted heavy losses on Hamas fighters and tunnels, but also wreaked massive damage, sent thousands of Palestinians fleeing and resulted in scores of civilian deaths. Israel says Hamas endangers civilians by hiding in residential areas.
The military also said it staged a series of drills this week along the border.
“The mission is clear,” said Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin, who heads Israel’s Northern Command. “We are determined to change the security reality as soon as possible.” A ‘new phase’ of war
The military movements have been accompanied by heightened rhetoric from Israel’s leaders, who say their patience is running thin.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday night declared the start of a ” new phase” of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah. “The center of gravity is shifting to the north by diverting resources and forces,” he said.
He spoke a day after Israel’s Cabinet made the return of displaced residents to their homes in northern Israel a formal goal of the war. The move was largely symbolic — Israeli leaders have long pledged to bring those residents home. But elevating the significance of the aim signaled a tougher stance.
After meeting Wednesday with top security officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “We will return the residents of the north securely to their homes.”
Netanyahu delivered a similarly tough message with a top US envoy sent to the region this week to soothe tensions.
An official with knowledge of the encounter told The Associated Press that the envoy, Amos Hochstein, told Netanyahu that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help return evacuated Israelis back home.
Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, told Hochstein that residents cannot return without “a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The statement said that while Netanyahu “appreciates and respects” US support, Israel will “do what is necessary to safeguard its security.” Is war inevitable?
Israeli media reported Wednesday that the government has not yet decided whether to launch a major offensive in Lebanon.
Much, it seems, will depend on Hezbollah’s response. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is expected to deliver a major speech on Thursday.
But public sentiment in Israel seems to be supportive of tougher action against Hezbollah.
A recent poll by the Israeli Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, found that 67 percent of Jewish respondents thought Israel should intensify its response to Hezbollah. The majority believed Israel should launch a deep offensive that includes striking Lebanese infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of pressure from the society to go to war and win,” said Avivi, the retired general. “Unless Hezbollah tomorrow morning says, ‘OK, we got the message. We’re pulling out of south Lebanon,’ war is imminent.”
Such a war would almost certainly prove devastating to both sides.
Already, more than 500 people have been killed in Lebanon by Israeli strikes since Oct. 8, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and other armed groups but also more than 100 civilians. In northern Israel, at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed by strikes from Lebanon.
Israel inflicted heavy damage on Lebanon during a monthlong war against Hezbollah in 2006 that ended in a stalemate. Israeli leaders have threatened even tougher action this time around, vowing to repeat the scenes of destruction from Gaza in Lebanon.
But Hezbollah also has built up its capabilities since 2006. Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles, some believed to have guidance systems that could threaten sensitive targets in Israel. It has also developed an increasingly sophisticated fleet of drones.
Capable of striking all parts of Israel, Hezbollah could bring life in Israel to a standstill and send hundreds of thousands of Israelis fleeing.
White House warns against ‘escalation’ in Mideast after Lebanon blasts
Updated 18 September 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: The White House on Wednesday warned all sides against escalation in the Middle East after two days of blasts in Lebanon, widely attributed to Israel, on hand-held devices targeting militant group Hezbollah.
“We still don’t want to see an escalation of any kind. We don’t believe that the way to solve where we’re at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“We still believe that the best way to prevent escalation, to prevent another front from opening up in Lebanon, is through diplomacy,” Kirby said.
Iran, which supports Hezbollah, had held back from major retaliation after an attack inside Tehran that killed the visiting political leader of Hamas.
Israel has been engaging in regular skirmishes with Hezbollah since the October 7 attack by Hamas, also backed by Iran’s clerical state.
Asked if Israel was adhering to international humanitarian law in the blasts on pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon, Kirby replied: “As we have said from the very beginning, Israel has a right to defend itself.”
“How they do so matters to us, and we don’t shy away from having those kinds of conversations with the Israelis as appropriate,” he said, without confirming Israeli involvement.
As for the United States, Kirby echoed previous statements denying involvement: “We were not involved in yesterday’s incidents or today’s in any way.”
Iran condemns attacks in Lebanon involving exploding communications devices
“The terrorism of the Zionist regime causes aversion and disgust,” MoHajjerani said
Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the explosion of his pager on Tuesday
Updated 18 September 2024
Reuters
DUBAI: Iran condemned attacks in Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday that involved exploding communications devices, government spokesperson Fatemeh MoHajjerani said in a post on the X social media platform on Wednesday, offering help to the wounded.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon killing at least three people and more than 100 injured, further stoking tensions with Israel a day after similar explosions launched via the group’s pagers which caused 12 fatalities.
“The terrorism of the Zionist regime causes aversion and disgust. Iran strongly condemns yesterday’s criminal explosion of communication devices and today’s criminal explosion of walkie-talkies, which resulted in the death and injury of hundreds of Lebanese civilians,” MoHajjerani said.
Earlier in the day, according to state media, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian had said: “The incident in Lebanon shows once again that Western countries and the United States, despite claiming to seek a ceasefire, fully support the crimes, massacres and blind terrorism of the Zionist regime in practice.”
Tehran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was injured in the explosion of his pager on Tuesday, and shared on Wednesday a message of solidarity to Lebanon on his X account.
Iran’s Minister of Health Mohammadreza Zafarqandi said a team of Iranian ophthalmologists and nurses were dispatched to Lebanon on Wednesday and that several injured Lebanese would be transferred to various hospitals in Tehran.
