Israel strikes on Beirut cause panic on the streets as Lebanese army spreads across the country

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Updated 28 September 2024
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Israel strikes on Beirut cause panic on the streets as Lebanese army spreads across the country

Israel strikes on Beirut cause panic on the streets as Lebanese army spreads across the country

BEIRUT/DUBAI/LONDON: A series of Israeli airstrikes rocked Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday evening, erasing a residential block in the Haret Hreik neighborhood and reverberating across the Lebanese capital, rattling windows and sending a thick plume of dark smoke into the sky.

The Israeli army’s spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed the “precise strikes” hit the central headquarters of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, believed to be located beneath residential buildings, the AP news agency reported.

The blasts caused nationwide panic and plunged the surrounding area into chaos. Paramedics from Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Authority rushed to the scene alongside relatives of the buildings’ residents.

Others in the southern suburbs rushed into their cars and fled towards Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad confirmed that “some of the targeted buildings were inhabited.”

At least two people have been killed, and hospitals in the area received more than 50 wounded from nearby buildings, including three in critical condition. Rescue teams urgently appealed for blood donations.

The Lebanese state-run National News Agency said six tall buildings in Haret Hreik have been reduced to rubble in the biggest blast to hit the capital in the past year.

Targeting Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, who was suspected to be in a bunker underneath the buildings, the Israeli military used F-35 aircraft and dropped 2,000 tons of explosives on the area, according to Israeli media.

Mohanad Hage Ali, the deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, told Arab News that “Israel has moved from the precision killings phase into dynamite or blast fishing; the end justifies the means.”

“They can kill hundreds to reach a target,” he continued. “This is why it is more likely a high-value target was there (in the targeted block) – this is why they (the Israeli military) took the decision.”

Israeli broadcaster Kan 11 initially reported an on-screen headline saying Nasrallah was “harmed,” but quickly followed with Israeli assessments indicating he is dead.

However, the Iranian news agency Tasnim reported that a security source confirmed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and the group’s executive council head, Hashim Safi Al-Din, were unharmed.

Iran’s embassy in Beirut described the Israeli strike as a “serious escalation that changes the rules of the game,” threatening that there will be repercussions.

“The Israeli regime once again commits a bloody massacre, targeting heavily populated residential neighborhoods while spewing false justifications to try and cover up its brutal crimes,” the embassy wrote on the social platform X.

“There is no doubt that this reprehensible crime and reckless behavior represent a serious escalation that changes the rules of the game, and that its perpetrator will be punished appropriately.”  

Analysts believe the strike on Haret Hreik reflects Israel’s dismissal of traditional wartime norms, marking the start of a new phase in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

“Such a strike signals a disregard for the limitations typically observed in warfare, including proportionality and ethical considerations as it is a civil populated area as Tel Aviv a city with military basis,” Rafe Jabari, a researcher on the political sociology of Arab states, told Arab News.

 “The scale of the destruction implies that the Israeli government is not constrained by these principles of International Law,” he added.

Jabari also believes “the strategy being employed suggests that Israel believes that war is the solution to end further conflict.”

 

He explained that “airstrikes are the strategic weapons used by Israel before the invasion of the Lebanese territories as happened in the Gaza Strip.

“The Israeli army is using destruction and terrors to eliminate any opposition to its occupation and colonization policy.”

“However, this approach is wrong,” Jabari continued. “Rather than achieving lasting peace, the continuation of such military actions is likely to provoke further instability and insecurity across the region.”

“Instead of bringing about an end to hostilities, this escalation will fuel the conditions for more wars and destruction in the future including this one.”

Likewise, Beirut-based political analyst Nader Ezzedine said: “By targeting Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, regardless of the outcome, Israel has chosen to break all established conflict rules and red lines that had been observed in its previous wars with Hezbollah.”

He told Arab News that “whether the outcome of this strike results in Nasrallah’s death or his survival, it will have significant ramifications for the conflict.”

“Hezbollah initially tried to adhere to certain rules in the hopes that an agreement can be reached to end the war in Gaza and Lebanon,” he added. “However, after this strike, I no longer believe this war will have any rules or limits.”

However, Ezzeddine believes that while the strike may have dealt a significant blow to Hezbollah and undermined its fighters’ morale, “it will not end the war but will likely intensify the fighting even further.”

“This strike will not end the conflict if Israel aimed to do so by killing Nasrallah,” he said. “Instead, it will certainly cause a huge escalation.”

He also expects this strike to be followed by an Israeli ground invasion, while Hezbollah may escalate its attacks against Israel.

Middle East expert Jabari noted that “we are witnessing an open war worse than the one in 2006. The Israeli army and government are choosing weapons as a means of negotiation instead of political and diplomatic endeavors.”

On Wednesday, Sep. 25, Israel’s military chief Herzi Halevi told troops that its airstrikes in Lebanon aimed to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure to pave the way for a possible ground incursion, CNN reported.

These comments came after the Israeli army intercepted a missile that Hezbollah said it had shot at the headquarters of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Qubaisi, who reportedly led the group’s missile and rocket force.

Reports of Friday’s strikes came less than an hour after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the UN General Assembly, in which he vowed to continue his military operation in Lebanon despite a US ceasefire proposal demanding a 21-day pause in the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon, which it says aims to eliminate Hezbollah, has killed within a few days 720 Lebanese people, many of them women and children, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Since October 8, after Israel launched its onslaught on Palestine’s Gaza Strip, Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging cross-border fire. But in the last week, Israel dramatically intensified its airstrikes in Lebanon, claiming the goal is to end Hezbollah’s 11 months of attacks on its territory.


UN chief: Renewed hostilities in Gaza must be avoided at all costs

UN chief: Renewed hostilities in Gaza must be avoided at all costs
Updated 10 sec ago
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UN chief: Renewed hostilities in Gaza must be avoided at all costs

UN chief: Renewed hostilities in Gaza must be avoided at all costs
  • Hamas on Monday announced it would stop releasing Israeli hostages until further notice
  • It claimed Israeli violated ceasefire agreement in Gaza, raising the risk of reigniting the conflict
GENEVA: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Hamas to continue with the planned release of hostages on Tuesday, a day after the Palestinian militant group announced its intention to halt the exchange.
“We must avoid at all costs the resumption of hostilities in Gaza that would lead to an immense tragedy,” he said in a statement.
Hamas on Monday announced it would stop releasing Israeli hostages until further notice over what it called Israeli violations of a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, raising the risk of reigniting the conflict.

Govts need to regulate AI tech, says Klaus Schwab at World Governments Summit

Govts need to regulate AI tech, says Klaus Schwab at World Governments Summit
Updated 38 min 25 sec ago
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Govts need to regulate AI tech, says Klaus Schwab at World Governments Summit

Govts need to regulate AI tech, says Klaus Schwab at World Governments Summit
  • World Economic Forum founder urges education to counter ‘fear’
  • Govts have ‘big responsibility’ in shaping ethical regulations, rules

DUBAI: Governments need to provide an ethical regulatory framework for the artificial intelligence sector, and provide public education to counter fears of the emerging technology.

This is according to the World Economic Forum’s Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab who was speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on Tuesday.

“We are living in a transition into a new time that will change everything. How we communicate, how we work and how we live,” he said.

“Governments have to be an agent of change in lighting speed … They need to provide the necessary infrastructure to sustain change at this rate.”

Schwab urged governments to work together to create what he said was the necessary ethical policies around new technologies so they can serve humankind.

“What we are seeing today as international efforts, is not enough. We need a coordinated global process to make sure that those technologies are constructive,” he added.

“Many people are afraid of the future because the progress is so fast. Not understanding new technologies can create fear. It is our job to educate and allow people to understand this technology, so it is not feared,” he explained.

He added that AI should not be treated and regulated like nuclear technology. “It is an enabling technology, governments have a big responsibility in shaping these regulations and rules.

“Government people today have to be governance architects to create a systems approach to define a system-oriented attitude,” he said.

Schwab added: “The future is shaped by us, so let’s look with optimism into the future. Let’s look at our future with constructive optimism.”


People’s ‘trust’ is key to a state’s success, says World Governments Summit chairman

People’s ‘trust’ is key to a state’s success, says World Governments Summit chairman
Updated 11 February 2025
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People’s ‘trust’ is key to a state’s success, says World Governments Summit chairman

People’s ‘trust’ is key to a state’s success, says World Governments Summit chairman
  • UAE’s Mohammad Al-Gergawi opens summit in Dubai
  • Hopes for a ‘better future’ for governments, humanity

DUBAI: Trust is the foundation of a government’s success, according to the chairman of the World Governments Summit, the UAE’s Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammad Al-Gergawi.

“Trust in government (worldwide) stands only at 52 percent,” Al-Gergawi said on Tuesday, quoting findings from the Edelman Trust Barometer, on the opening day of the World Governments Summit 2025 in Dubai.

He emphasized the need to ensure that strong relationships are built between governments and the people they serve.

He said the world has undergone 25 years of unprecedented transformation with new challenges arising.

“We are stepping into an entirely new era in the history of human civilization,” he said.

Al-Gergawi said the global economy grew from $34 trillion in 2000 to $115 trillion in 2024, and international trade expanded from $7.1 trillion to $33 trillion during the same period.

Rising competition in technology and artificial intelligence has led to techno-political wars such as currently between DeepSeek and OpenAI, he added.

“In 2000, technological warfare and military robots existed only in science fiction. Today wars are fought with drones, autonomous weapons and AI.”

“Governments that understand the past deeply are the ones who are able to build a better future,” he added.

“I hope this summit will create a better landscape for the future of governments and humanity,” he said.

The World Governments Summit is a global, nonprofit organization “dedicated to shaping the future of governments,” according to its website.

The summit “explores the agenda of the next generation of governments, focusing on harnessing innovation and technology to solve humanity’s universal challenges.”

In attendance are more than 30 heads of states and government, delegations from 140 governments, and representatives from more than 80 global institutions.


Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad are targeted for alleged war crimes in Gaza

Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad are targeted for alleged war crimes in Gaza
Updated 11 February 2025
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Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad are targeted for alleged war crimes in Gaza

Some Israeli soldiers traveling abroad are targeted for alleged war crimes in Gaza

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: An Israeli army reservist’s dream vacation in Brazil ended abruptly last month over an accusation that he committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Yuval Vagdani woke up on Jan. 4 to a flurry of missed calls from family members and Israel’s Foreign Ministry with an urgent warning: A pro-Palestinian legal group had convinced a federal judge in Brazil to open a war crimes investigation for his alleged participation in the demolition of civilian homes in Gaza.
A frightened Vagdani fled the country on a commercial flight the next day to avoid the grip of a powerful legal concept called “universal jurisdiction,” which allows governments to prosecute people for the most serious crimes regardless of where they are allegedly committed.
Vagdani, a survivor of Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on an Israeli music festival, told an Israeli radio station the accusation felt like “a bullet in the heart.”
The case against Vagdani was brought by the Hind Rajab Foundation, a legal group based in Belgium named after a young girl who Palestinians say was killed early in the war by Israeli fire as she and her family fled Gaza City.
Aided by geolocation data, the group built its case around Vagdani’s own social media posts. A photograph showed him in uniform in Gaza, where he served in an infantry unit; a video showed a large explosion of buildings in Gaza during which soldiers can be heard cheering.
Judges at the International Criminal Court concluded last year there was enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity for using “starvation as a method of warfare” and for intentionally targeting civilians. Both Israel and Netanyahu have vehemently denied the accusations.
Since forming last year, Hind Rajab has made dozens of complaints in more than 10 countries to arrest both low-level and high-ranking Israeli soldiers. Its campaign has yet to yield any arrests. But it has led Israel to tighten restrictions on social media usage among military personnel.
“It’s our responsibility, as far as we are concerned, to bring the cases,” Haroon Raza, a co-founder of Hind Rajab, said from his office in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It is then up to authorities in each country — or the International Criminal Court — to pursue them, he added.
The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Eden Bar-Tal, last month said fewer than a dozen soldiers had been targeted, and he dismissed the attempted arrests as a futile public relations stunt by “terrorist organizations.”
Universal jurisdiction is not new. The 1949 Geneva Conventions — the post Second World War treaty regulating military conduct — specify that all signatories must prosecute war criminals or hand them over to a country who will. In 1999, the United Nations Security Council asked all UN countries to include universal jurisdiction in their legal codes, and around 160 countries have adopted them in some form.
“Certain crimes like war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity are crimes under international law,” said Marieke de Hoon, an international law expert at the University of Amsterdam. “And we’ve recognized in international law that any state has jurisdiction over those egregious crimes.”
Israel used the concept to prosecute Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. Mossad agents caught him in Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Israel where he was sentenced to death by hanging.
More recently, a former Syrian secret police officer was convicted in 2022 by a German court of crimes against humanity a decade earlier for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail. Later that year, an Iranian citizen was convicted by a Swedish court of war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
In 2023, 16 people were convicted of war crimes through universal jurisdiction, according to TRIAL International, a Swiss organization that tracks proceedings. Those convictions were related to crimes committed in Syria, Rwanda, Iran and other countries.
In response to Brazil’s pursuit of Vagdani, the Israeli military has prohibited soldiers below a certain rank from being named in news articles and requires their faces to be obscured. It has also warned soldiers against social media posts related to their military service or travel plans.
The evidence Hind Rajab lawyers presented to the judge in Brazil came mostly from Vagdani’s social media accounts.
“That’s what they saw and that’s why they want me for their investigation,” he told the Israeli radio station Kansas “From one house explosion they made 500 pages. They thought I murdered thousands of children.”
Vagdani does not appear in the video and he did not say whether he had carried out the explosion himself, telling the station he had come into Gaza for “maneuvers” and “was in the battles of my life.”
Social media has made it easier in recent years for legal groups to gather evidence. For example, several Daesh militants have been convicted of crimes committed in Syria by courts in various European countries, where lawyers relied on videos posted online, according to de Hoon.
The power of universal jurisdiction has limits.
In the Netherlands, where Hind Rajab has filed more than a dozen complaints, either the victim or perpetrator must hold Dutch nationality, or the suspect must be in the country for the entirety of the investigation — factors likely to protect Israeli tourists from prosecution. Eleven complaints against 15 Israeli soldiers have been dismissed, some because the accused was only in the country for a short time, according to Dutch prosecutors. Two complaints involving four soldiers are pending.
In 2016, activists in the UK made unsuccessful attempts to arrest Israeli military and political leaders for their roles in the 2008-09 war in Gaza.
Raza says his group will persist. “It might take 10 years. It might be 20 years. No problem. We are ready to have patience.”
There is no statute of limitations on war crimes.


Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan

Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan
Updated 11 February 2025
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Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan

Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II as he escalates pressure on his Gaza resettlement plan
  • King Abdullah II’s visit is happening at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza
  • Jordan, home to more than 2 million Palestinians, flatly rejected Trump’s plan to relocate civilians from Gaza

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump will host Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday as he escalates pressure on the Arab nation to take in refugees from Gaza — perhaps permanently — as part of his audacious plan to remake the Middle East.
The visit is happening at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza as Hamas, accusing Israel of violating the truce, has said it is pausing future releases of hostages and as Trump has called for Israel to resume fighting if all those remaining in captivity are not freed by this weekend.
Trump has proposed the US take control of Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with Palestinians in the war-torn territory pushed into neighboring nations with no right of return.
He suggested on Monday that, if necessary, he would withhold US funding from Jordan and Egypt, longtime US allies and among the top recipients of its foreign aid, as a means of persuading them to accept additional Palestinians from Gaza.
“Yeah, maybe. Sure, why not?” Trump told reporters. “If they don’t, I would conceivably withhold aid, yes.”
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinians and, along with other Arab states, has flatly rejected Trump’s plan to relocate civilians from Gaza.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said last week that his country’s opposition to Trump’s idea was “firm and unwavering.”


In addition to concerns about jeopardizing the long-held goals of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Egypt and Jordan have privately raised security concerns about welcoming large numbers of additional refugees into their countries even temporarily.
When asked how he’d persuade Abdullah to take in Palestinians, Trump told reporters, “I do think he’ll take, and I think other countries will take also. They have good hearts.”
The king is also meeting with top Trump administration officials during his visit, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He is the third foreign leader to hold an in-person meeting with Trump since his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Trump announced his ideas for resettling Palestinians from Gaza and taking ownership of the territory for the US during a press conference last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump initially didn’t rule out deploying US troops to help secure Gaza but at the same time insisted no US funds would go to pay for the reconstruction of the territory, raising fundamental questions about the nature of his plan.
After Trump’s initial comments, Rubio and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump only wanted Palestinians relocated from Gaza “temporarily” and sought an “interim” period to allow for debris removal, the disposal of unexploded ordnance and reconstruction.
But asked in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Monday if Palestinians in Gaza would have a right to return to the territory under his plan, he replied, “No, they wouldn’t.”