Lebanon has right to defend its land amid systematic Israeli escalation, Mikati tells army officers

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati speaks during an interview with Reuters at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, October 14, 2021. (REUTERS)
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati speaks during an interview with Reuters at the government palace in Beirut, Lebanon, October 14, 2021. (REUTERS)
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Updated 02 August 2024
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Lebanon has right to defend its land amid systematic Israeli escalation, Mikati tells army officers

Lebanon has right to defend its land amid systematic Israeli escalation, Mikati tells army officers
  • Hezbollah artillery breaks silence, targets Israeli military sites
  • Israeli airstrike kills mother and 3 children

BEIRUT: Lebanon is determined to defend its land and sovereignty, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Friday.

“We will not hesitate to do so, no matter the sacrifices,” he said.

Mikati described the regional developments as “worrisome,” signaling increased danger levels.

He said that “nothing indicates that Israeli arrogance will stop.”

Mikati met with senior officers in the Lebanese army command and cautioned that “the regional developments are concerning.”

He stressed that the army “remains the firm guarantee for the unity of Lebanon, its territory, people, and establishments, making it a national obligation for everyone to unite around the army institution.”

Mikati said that in response to the ongoing and severe Israeli escalation, “we affirm our right to defend our land, sovereignty, and dignity using all available means.”

He stated that he had informed “friendly and brotherly countries that we are advocates of peace, not war.

“We seek permanent stability through Israel’s commitment to implementing UN Resolution 1701 in all its provisions. No Israeli aggression will deter us from that.”

Mikati emphasized the importance of deploying the army in cooperation with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon to prevent violations of “our internationally recognized borders. This is essential for ensuring stability and security for the people in the south.”

He added: “Our right to utilize the resources in our waters is absolute and not open to negotiation.”

Mikati also met with the ambassadors of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, France, the UK, China, and Russia) and the representatives of the non-permanent member states present in Lebanon (Algeria, Japan, Switzerland, and South Korea).

The meeting came against the backdrop of escalating confrontations between Israel and Hezbollah, which reached their peak on Tuesday with the assassination of senior Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in the heart of the southern suburb of Beirut.

Mikati’s media office stated that the assembled ambassadors affirmed Lebanon’s “commitment to implementing UN resolutions, especially Resolution 1701, as a top priority in the region.”

Lebanon has also filed a complaint with the UN Security Council against Israel for its aggression against the southern suburb of Beirut.

It said Israel’s dangerous escalation affected a densely populated residential area in violation of international law and the UN Charter.

In the southern town of Shamaa, a funeral procession was held for a Syrian mother and her three children — Fatima Al-Raja Al-Hajj and her sons Suleiman, Mohammed, and Ahmed Al-Hajj — who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home on Thursday night.

The death toll of Syrian civilians who have been killed during the confrontations in the south since Oct. 8 has risen to 18.

The airstrike coincided with Hezbollah holding the funeral procession for Shukr in the southern suburb of Beirut.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday evening during Shukr’s funeral to respond to his assassination.

He said that Israel “should expect the revenge of the honorable” and that “we have entered a new phase on all support fronts (for Hamas in the Gaza Strip).”

He said Israel “has crossed red lines and has no idea of the kind of aggression it has committed.”

The Israeli army on Friday launched airstrikes and targeted border towns with artillery fire, including Rab El-Thalathine, Dhayra, and Blida, as well as the outskirts of Naqoura and Tayr Harfa.

Hezbollah announced a series of targets that were within the rules of engagement.

It targeted the deployment of Israeli soldiers in the Dhayra site, the Al-Sammaqa site in the occupied Lebanese Kfarchouba Hills and the Bayad Blida site with artillery shells.

The party launched dozens of Katyusha rockets on the Matzuva settlement in the wake of the Israeli attack on Shamaa.

 


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Israel rescuers say man killed after rocket fire from Lebanon

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Israel rescuers say man killed after rocket fire from Lebanon

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JERUSALEM: Israeli first responders said a man was killed on Thursday after rocket fire from Lebanon hit the northern Galilee region.
“Emergency medical technicians and paramedics have reported a 30-year-old male with no signs of life and have declared him deceased,” the Magen David Adom emergency medical service said.


US envoy to meet Israel’s Netanyahu on Thursday: spokesman

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Updated 21 November 2024
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US envoy to meet Israel’s Netanyahu on Thursday: spokesman

US envoy to meet Israel’s Netanyahu on Thursday: spokesman
  • Israeli media outlets reported that Amos Hochstein had arrived in Israel on Wednesday evening

JERUSALEM: US envoy Amos Hochstein, seeking to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war, will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, the premier’s office said.

The announcement by spokesman Omer Dostri came after Israeli media outlets reported that Hochstein had arrived in Israel on Wednesday evening and held talks with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

The meeting between Hochstein and Netanyahu was scheduled to take place at 12:30 p.m. (1030 GMT), according to a statement from the Israeli leader’s Likud party.

In Beirut on Wednesday, the US envoy met twice with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, who has led mediation efforts on behalf of the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group.

Wednesday’s meeting “made additional progress, so I will travel from here in a couple hours to Israel to try to bring this to a close if we can,” Hochstein told reporters in the Lebanese capital.

Hochstein had said on Tuesday that an end to the war was “within our grasp.”

Ahead of his arrival, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said: “In any agreement we will reach, we will need to keep the freedom to act if there will be violations.”


Dozens feared dead in Gaza after Israeli strikes

Dozens feared dead in Gaza after Israeli strikes
Updated 21 November 2024
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Dozens feared dead in Gaza after Israeli strikes

Dozens feared dead in Gaza after Israeli strikes
  • The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll from the resulting war has reached 43,985 people, the majority civilians

Dozens of people were killed or unaccounted for after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, a hospital director and the civil defense agency said Thursday.
One strike on a residential area near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.
The process of retrieving the bodies and wounded continues, he said, adding: “Bodies arrive at the hospital in pieces.”
Another strike was reported in a neighborhood of Gaza City.
“We can confirm that 22 martyrs were transferred (to hospital) after a strike targeted a house” in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
Since Hamas conducted its October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, Israel has been fighting a war in Gaza, which the militant group rules.
It vows to crush Hamas and to bring home the hostages seized by the group during the attack.
Israel is also fighting Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both groups are backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
On Thursday, US envoy Amos Hochstein will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a truce in the war in Lebanon.
Hochstein’s meetings in Lebanon this week appeared to indicate some progress in efforts to end that war.
On the Gaza front, the United States vetoed on Wednesday a UN Security Council push for a ceasefire that Washington said would have emboldened Hamas.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the death toll from the resulting war has reached 43,985 people, the majority civilians. The United Nations considers the figures reliable.


In October last year, Hezbollah began cross-border attacks on Israel in support of its ally Hamas.
In late September, Israel expanded the focus of its war from Gaza to Lebanon, vowing to fight Hezbollah until tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by the cross-border fire are able to return home.
With Hochstein in Lebanon, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Wednesday said that any ceasefire deal must ensure Israel still has the “freedom to act” against Hezbollah.
In a defiant speech, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem threatened to strike Israeli commercial hub Tel Aviv in retaliation for attacks on Lebanon’s capital.
“Israel cannot defeat us and cannot impose its conditions on us,” Qassem said in his televised address.
In Lebanon, Hochstein met with officials including parliament speaker Nabih Berri, an ally of Hezbollah.
On Tuesday, Hochstein said the end of the war was “within our grasp,” and on Wednesday, he said the talks had “made additional progress.”
Since expanding its operations from Gaza to Lebanon in September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds.
More than 3,544 people in Lebanon have been killed since the clashes began, authorities have said, most since late September. Among them were more than 200 children, according to the United Nations.
Israel has also recently intensified strikes on neighboring Syria, the main conduit of weapons for Hezbollah from its backer Iran.
In the latest attack, a Syria war monitor said 71 pro-Iran fighters were killed in strikes on Palmyra in the east of the country.
Those killed in Wednesday’s strikes included 45 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups, 26 foreign fighters, most of them from Iraq, and four from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the monitor said.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.


On Thursday, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah’s main bastion, following an evacuation call by the Israeli military.
Strikes also hit south Lebanon, including the border town of Khiam where Israeli troops are pushing to advance, according to the agency.
On Wednesday, Israel said three soldiers had been killed in combat in southern Lebanon — bringing the total fallen to 52 since the start of ground operations on September 30.
The Lebanese army said Israeli fire killed one of its soldiers in the area, after it announced the deaths of three other personnel in a strike.
While not engaged in the ongoing war, the Lebanese army has reported 18 losses since the start of the escalation on September 23.
The Israeli military later said, without mentioning the deaths, that it was looking into reports of Lebanese soldiers wounded by a strike on Tuesday.
“We emphasize that the (Israeli military) is operating precisely against the Hezbollah terrorist organization and is not operating against the Lebanon Armed Forces,” the military told AFP in a statement.
Hezbollah was the only armed group in Lebanon that did not surrender its weapons following the 1975-1990 civil war.
It has maintained a formidable arsenal and holds sway not only on the battlefield but also in Lebanese politics.
The United States, Israel’s top military and political backer, has been pushing for the UN Security Council resolution that ended the last Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006 to form the basis of a new truce.
Under Resolution 1701, Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only armed forces deployed in south Lebanon.


71 fighters killed in Israel strikes on Syria’s Palmyra

71 fighters killed in Israel strikes on Syria’s Palmyra
Updated 6 min 24 sec ago
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71 fighters killed in Israel strikes on Syria’s Palmyra

71 fighters killed in Israel strikes on Syria’s Palmyra

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes killed 71 pro-Iran militants in the Syrian city of Palmyra, with more than a third of them identified as fighters from Iraq and Lebanon, a monitor said Thursday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those killed in Wednesday’s strikes included 45 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups, 26 foreign fighters, most of them from the Iraqi Al-Nujaba movement, and four from Lebanon’s Hezbollah armed group.
The strikes targeted three sites in the city renowned for its ancient ruins, including one that hit a meeting of pro-Iranian groups with leaders from Al-Nujaba and Hezbollah.
The Observatory, which is based in Britain and relies on a network of sources on the ground across Syria, had previously put the toll from the Israeli strikes on Palmyra at 61 dead.
Syria said the Israeli strikes on the central city killed 36 people and wounded more than 50 others, in the latest toll issued by the defense ministry.
“The Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of the Al-Tanf area, targeting a number of buildings in the city of Palmyra,” it said on Wednesday.
The strikes targeting Palmyra — a modern city adjacent to Greco-Roman ruins — are the deadliest in Syria since a year of cross-border clashes between Israel and Hezbollah intensified in late September.
In a separate statement, the Syrian foreign ministry condemned “in the strongest terms the brutal Israeli aggression against the city of Palmyra, which reflects the continuing crimes of Zionism against the countries of the region and their peoples.”
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.
Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was taken over and pillaged by Daesh terrorists at the height of the Syrian civil war.
The director general of Antiquities and Museums in Syria, Nazir Awad, told AFP the city’s temples “did not suffer any direct damage” during the latest strikes.
“We need to conduct a survey on the ground to confirm these observations,” he added.