SAFED, Israel: On a clear day, the view south from Safed, high in the mountains of northern Israel, stretches uninterrupted across orange groves and orchards to the Sea of Galilee.
But all eyes in the historic city have been trained more recently on the jagged hills just a few kilometers (miles) away to the north — and the border with Lebanon.
On Wednesday, an Israeli soldier was killed in a rocket strike in Safed, prompting retaliatory air strikes inside Lebanon that left at least 15 dead, including 10 civilians.
It was the worst single-day civilian death toll in Lebanon since cross-border hostilities began in October, stoking fears of a broader conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
On Thursday, Israeli jets roared overhead, unseen in heavy cloud, as Safed’s Artists’ Colony in the city’s old Arab quarter slowly opened for business.
Further up the valley, locals nervously glanced at the skies, rumbling with thunder and flashes of lightning. Then an explosion echoed over the hills.
Israel’s military later said it had hit a “Hezbollah military structure” in southern Lebanon.
Wrapped up against the cold in Safed — also known as Israel’s “City of Air” — about 900 meters (3,000 feet) above sea level, Arie Buznah said he was used to the flurry in military activity.
“Here in Israel... we’re not living a full, relaxing, peaceful, human, normal life,” the 66-year-old tour guide explained.
“You have to be ready. You have to be alert, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” he told AFP.
This week’s attack — and the reprisal — was a clear sign, said Buznah. “The war is escalating,” he said.
Nearby, Abbi Shachar nodded in approval. “People have been saying to me for weeks upon weeks that it’s about to happen,” she said.
On Wednesday, she was with the youngest of her two daughters, aged seven and 10, when sirens sounded for the incoming rocket attack, sending them to safety in a shelter.
The 47-year-old gallery owner who moved to Safed 30 years ago from Westchester, New York, said she hoped a wider conflict can still be averted.
“I just believe in my heart that something will stop it maybe but if not we’ll have to deal with it,” she added.
Safed is about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Gaza Strip, where Israel is waging war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its deadly October 7 attack against Israel.
Hamas is an ally of Hezbollah, and both are backed by Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
For Buznah, too, the Hamas attack has a particular resonance. It resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures, and around 250 people taken hostage.
Nearly 50 years ago, in May 1974, Buznah was a 16-year-old schoolboy on a hiking trip in Maalot, western Galilee, when Palestinian militants took him and dozens of his classmates hostage.
Israeli commandos eventually stormed the school where they were being held, killing the hostage-takers but not before more than 20 people, most of them children, were killed.
Buznah, his knee grazed by a bullet, escaped through a window.
The latest hostage drama has brought memories flooding back for Buznah but also convinced him of the need to settle the conflict once and for all — both with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“In the Gaza Strip, I would give it (Israeli military action) three to five months, maybe half a year, six months,” he said of the war that has left nearly 29,000 dead, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
“Then we are going to come to Lebanon... We don’t have any other choice.”
Like Shachar, Buznah remembers 2006, when Israel fought Hezbollah in the north until a United Nations-brokered ceasefire brought an uneasy peace.
Lebanon and Hezbollah had not respected UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that halted the war, and instead moved back into the buffer zone on the border within weeks, he said.
The time for negotiating is over, he said. “It’s not going to work, simple as that,” he added.
In Israel’s northern hills, all eyes look to Lebanon
https://arab.news/mff77
In Israel’s northern hills, all eyes look to Lebanon
- All eyes in the historic city have been trained more recently on the jagged hills just a few kilometers away to the border with Lebanon
- Israel’s military later said it had hit a “Hezbollah military structure” in southern Lebanon
Suffering in Gaza ‘almost unparalleled’: Humanitarian chief
- Norwegian Refugee Council secretary-general: Palestinians pushed ‘beyond breaking point’
- Jan Egeland: Gaza rendered ‘uninhabitable’ due Israel’s policies
LONDON: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are experiencing “almost unparalleled” suffering, one of the world’s foremost humanitarian officials has warned following a visit to the enclave, The Guardian reported on Friday.
Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, traveled to Gaza this week, reporting that families, widows and children have been pushed “beyond breaking point” by Israel’s year-long war.
He witnessed “scene after scene of absolute despair” as Palestinian families had been torn apart by attacks, with survivors unable to bury their dead relatives.
Gaza has been rendered “uninhabitable” as a result of Israel’s policies, supported by Western-supplied weaponry, Egeland said.
“This is in no way a lawful response, a targeted operation of ‘self-defence’ to dismantle armed groups, or warfare consistent with humanitarian law,” he added.
“The families, widows and children I have spoken to are enduring suffering almost unparalleled to anywhere in recent history. There is no possible justification for continued war and destruction.”
Since last year, families across the enclave have been repeatedly forced to move from one area to another as a result of Israeli evacuation orders, which now cover 80 percent of Gaza.
The situation is even more dire in northern Gaza, where a month-long Israeli offensive and siege have cut off an estimated 100,000 people from humanitarian aid.
An Israeli brigadier general said this week that there is no intention of allowing the return of Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza.
Such a policy of forcible transfer would amount to war crimes, humanitarian law experts have said.
As aid continues to be cut off from the Palestinian population, the UN has condemned “unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance and orders that are leading to forced displacement.”
Egeland warned of the “catastrophic impact of strangled aid flows” on the Palestinian population, with people left unable to access food or water for days at a time.
The former Norwegian foreign minister and diplomat said: “There has not been a single week since the start of this war when sufficient aid was delivered in Gaza.”
Despite the acute shortage of humanitarian aid, Israel’s parliament this week passed bills banning the UN Relief & Works Agency from operating in the Occupied Territories, designating it as a terrorist organization.
Egeland called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza to prevent the “deadly” situation from worsening, adding: “Those in power on all sides act with impunity, while millions across Gaza and the region pay a terrible price.
“Humanitarians can speak out on what we are seeing, but only those in power can end this nightmare.”
Turkiye’s foreign minister visits Athens to help mend ties between the regional rivals
- Both NATO members, Greece and Turkiye have been at loggerheads for decades over a long series of issues
ATHENS, Greece: Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan arrived Friday in Athens for meetings with his Greek counterpart as part of efforts to ease tension between the two neighbors and regional rivals.
Both NATO members, Greece and Turkiye have been at loggerheads for decades over a long series of issues, including volatile maritime boundary disputes that have twice led them to the brink of war. The two have renewed a diplomatic push for over a year to improve ties.
“Step by step, we have achieved a level of trust so that we can discuss issues with sincerity and prevent crises,” Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said in an interview with Turkiye’s Hurriyet newspaper published Thursday.
The meeting between the two foreign ministers follows a series of high-profile talks between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as part of a relation-mending initiative launched in 2023.
Officials in Athens are expected to raise concerns about rising illegal migration, as Greece has seen an uptick in arrivals. And, despite deep disagreements on Israel and fighting in the Middle East, both foreign ministers are also expected to explore ways to improve regional stability.
The talks will help set the stage for a Greece-Turkiye high-level cooperation council planned for early 2025 in Ankara, Turkiye.
Turkiye’s Erdogan hopes Trump will tell Israel to ‘stop’ war
ANKARA: Turkiye’s President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that he hoped US President-elect Donald Trump will tell Israel to “stop” its war efforts, suggesting a good start would be halting US arms support to Israel.
“Trump has made promises to end conflicts... We want that promise to be fulfilled and for Israel to be told to ‘stop’,” Erdogan told reporters on a return flight from Budapest, according to an official readout.
“Mr. Trump cutting off the arms support provided to Israel could be a good start in order to stop the Israeli aggression in Palestinian and Lebanese lands,” he was cited as saying.
Turkiye has fiercely criticized Israel’s offensives in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and in Lebanon, and has halted trade with Israel as well as applied to join a genocide case against Israel at the World Court. Israel strongly denies the genocide accusations.
Trump’s presidency will seriously affect political and military balances in the Middle East region, Erdogan said, adding that pursuing current US policies would deepen deadlock in the region and spread the conflict.
Nearly 70% of Gaza war dead women and children, UN rights office says
- UN Human Rights Office: Systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law
- The youngest victim whose death was verified by UN monitors was a one-day-old boy, and the oldest was a 97-year-old woman
GENEVA:
The UN condemned on Friday the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.
In a fresh report, the United Nations human rights office detailed the “horrific reality” that has unfolded for civilians in both Gaza and Israel since Hamas’s attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.
It detailed a vast array of violations of international law, warning that many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide.”
“The report shows how civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.
It also pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
“This conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease,” it continued.
“Palestinian armed groups have also conducted hostilities in ways that have likely contributed to harm to civilians.”
The report took on the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians figuring among the now nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
Due to a lack of access, UN agencies have since the beginning of the Gaza war relied on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza.
This has sparked accusations from Israel of “parroting... Hamas’s propaganda messages” but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.
Youngest victim aged one day
The rights office said it had now managed to verify 8,119 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war in Gaza, finding “close to 70 percent to be children and women.”
This, it said, indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction and proportionality.”
Of the verified fatalities, 3,588 of them were children and 2,036 were women, the report said.
“We do believe this is representative of the breakdown of total fatalities — similar proportion to what Gaza authorities have,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP.
“Our monitoring indicates that this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement.
“Tragically, these documented patterns of violations continue unabated, over one year after the start of the war.”
His office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing, and that close to 90 percent had died in incidents that killed five or more people.
The main victims of Israeli strikes on residential buildings, it said, were children between the ages of five and nine, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman.
The report said that the large proportion of verified deaths in residential buildings could be partially explained by the rights office’s “verification methodology, which requires at least three independent sources.”
It also pointed to continuing “challenges in collecting and verifying information of killings in other circumstances.”
Gaza authorities have long said that women and children made up a significant majority of those killed in the war, but with lacking access for full UN verification, the issue has remained highly contentious.
Israel has insisted that its operations in Gaza are targeting militants.
But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely mirrored the demographic makeup of the population at large in Gaza, rather than the known demographic of combatants.
This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.”
Khamenei aide warns against impulsive Iran response to Israel attack
- Israel is engaged in conflicts with the Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon
- Israeli warplanes struck military sites in Iran on October 26 in retaliation for a large Iranian missile attack
TEHRAN: An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned against launching an “instinctive” response to Israeli air strikes on the Islamic republic last month.
Israel, Iran’s sworn enemy, is engaged in conflicts with the Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israeli warplanes struck military sites in Iran on October 26 in retaliation for a large Iranian missile attack on Israel at the start of the month.
“Israel aims to bring the conflict to Iran. We must act wisely to avoid its trap and not react instinctively,” the adviser, Ali Larijani, told state television late Thursday.
Iran said it fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran.
After Israel hit back, it warned Iran against any counterattack, but the Islamic republic has vowed to respond.
“Our actions and reactions are strategically defined, so we must avoid instinctive or emotional responses and remain entirely rational,” Larijani added.
The former parliament speaker also praised Nasrallah for accepting a ceasefire during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war rather than making an “emotional decision.”
On Sunday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said a potential ceasefire between Tehran’s allies and Israel could affect Iran’s response to the Israeli strikes.
