JERUSALEM: A series of diplomatic setbacks, strong condemnation of a recent Gaza strike, and intense protests on Western campuses have left Israelis feeling their country is unfairly isolated.
Israelis expected unwavering support from their allies and the international community after Hamas’s October 7 attack.
But as Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas in Gaza deepened, it seems to have lost the sympathy it initially received after the unprecedented attack.
This loss of support intensified following last week’s Israeli strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah, which killed at least 45 people, according to Gazan officials. The military has denied targeting the camp.
The strike drew condemnations from Istanbul to Beijing and from Washington to Paris.
On social media platform Instagram, more than 47 million posts with the hashtag “All eyes on Rafah” have been recorded since the strike.
But Israelis remain defiant despite the growing isolation.
“I don’t think Israel should care what the world has to say... I support our military 100 percent,” Netanel Aronson, a 24-year-old Israeli-American, told AFP.
“I pray for them every day that they should be safe and come home.”
Rising death toll
At least 36,379 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since October 7, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run territory.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign came after the Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,189 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also took 252 people as hostages, of which 121 are still held in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead.
“It is a tragedy for everyone,” said Nathalie, who declined to give her last name, referring also to the fate of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“Since everybody is connected, we can see what’s happening. We feel that we are hated,” the 50-year-old said.
“We have the feeling that we are accused of being colonialists and imperialists. But we see ourselves as refugees,” she added, echoing the feeling of many Jews who arrived during the creation of Israel in 1948.
The Palestinians call the creation of Israel as the Nakba — or “catastrophe” — when about 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by the war over Israel’s creation.
Last month, Israel faced a series of diplomatic setbacks.
While the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its ongoing offensive in Rafah, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three senior Hamas leaders.
Ireland, Norway and Spain also recognized a Palestinian state in a coordinated decision on Tuesday, while Slovenia’s parliament is due to vote on such a proposal next week.
Declining global support
Political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin said Israelis were aware the war was damaging their global standing.
“(Israelis) think the world is against Israel. They think that many institutions and countries are anti-Semitic, and that there is a double standard,” Scheindlin said.
She regretted the “devastating” impact of the war on Gazans, but said Israelis see the ongoing military campaign as an “existential struggle” for their people.
Scheindlin said Israelis have been demoralized over the setbacks at international tribunals after Israel was accused of committing some of the worst crimes in Gaza.
Such crimes “Israelis believed were only ever committed against them,” she added.
“So, it’s very hard for them to accept this. They fear the isolation.”
Israelis are also countering the social media campaign “All Eyes on Rafah,” with their own that says “If your eyes are on Rafah, then help us find the hostages.”
In a survey by US-based Pew Research Center before the May 26 strike on a camp of displaced people in Rafah, 40 percent of Israelis thought the country would “definitely” achieve its Gaza war goals.
Only four percent of the Jewish majority thought Israel’s military response in the Palestinian territory had gone “too far.”
But for Christians like Annie Dikbikian, the war has only increased “the hatred” on both sides.
“It’s affecting us... as Christians,” said the Jerusalem-based hairdresser, who hoped “peace, love, and respect” would return soon.
‘We are hated’: Israelis feel isolation over Gaza war
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‘We are hated’: Israelis feel isolation over Gaza war
- Israel seems to have lost the sympathy it initially received after the unprecedented attack
- This loss of support intensified following last week’s Israeli strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah
37 killed in two days of Lebanon exploding devices: new toll
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said 37 people were killed and 2,931 wounded in a new toll after hand-held devices used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon, in attacks blamed on Israel.
Abiad said 25 people were killed on Wednesday and 12 on Tuesday, updating an earlier toll of 32 dead overall.
Region ‘closest to war since 1973’: Saudi envoy to UK
- Prince Khalid bin Bandar calls for ‘renewed efforts’ to stop escalation
- ‘The situation on the ground is getting worse and worse,’ he tells Sky News
LONDON: The Middle East is facing its greatest threat of regional war since 1973, the Saudi ambassador to the UK has warned.
On the Sky News program “The World with Yalda Hakim,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar said “renewed efforts” are required to end the bloodshed.
“I’d like to say I was optimistic, but it’s difficult to see where that optimism would come from,” he added.
“The situation on the ground is getting worse and worse ... I think this is the closest we’ve been to a regional war since 1973.”
The Israel-Palestine conflict is at the heart of the tensions, and both sides have a responsibility to avoid escalation, Prince Khalid added.
“The Israeli-Palestinian problem affects people all around the world in a way that very few conflicts have,” he said.
“You see in protests (around the world), everyone is affected and motivated by what’s happening on the ground.
“So Israelis and Palestinians have a responsibility — whether they like it or not — to the world.”
The conflict could have global consequences, requiring the international community to “push harder” in a bid to end the fighting, he said.
“A conflict that spreads beyond where it is, spreads to the region. If it spreads to the region, it spreads to the world, and that’s not a scenario that anybody wants to see,” he added.
“It’s time we put renewed efforts in to stop the fighting … We need more of the international community to push harder.”
His comments come as Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “new phase” in fighting against Hezbollah following the detonation of the Lebanese group’s communication devices this week.
Senior international figures, including the UN secretary-general, have warned that the Israeli attacks could precede a larger operation in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has vowed to respond to the attacks, which killed more than 30 people and injured thousands.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington is assessing how the attacks in Lebanon could affect ceasefire negotiations in the Gaza war.
Hezbollah says 20 members dead, hours after walkie-talkie blasts
- Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is due to give his first televised speech since the attacks on Thursday afternoon
Beirut: Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said 20 of its members were killed, with a source close to the group telling AFP on Thursday that they had died in walkie-talkie blasts blamed on Israel the day before.
The group sent separate death notices for each member from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, saying they had been killed “on the road to Jerusalem” — the phrase used by Hezbollah to refer to fighters killed by Israel.
“The 20 Hezbollah members were killed by walkie-talkie explosions” across Lebanon on Wednesday, the source told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Earlier Wednesday, the health ministry said the second wave of explosions of electronic devices in Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon killed 20 people and left more than 450 people wounded.
Wednesday’s blasts came a day after the simultaneous detonation of pagers used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.
Israel did not comment on the incidents.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah is due to give his first televised speech since the attacks on Thursday afternoon.
Israeli security services arrest Israeli man over alleged Iranian-backed assassination plot
- Man attends at least two meetings in Iran to discuss the possibility of assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
JERUSALEM: Israeli security services said on Thursday they had arrested an Israeli citizen on suspicion of involvement in an Iranian-backed assassination plot targeting prominent people including the prime minister.
It said the person was a businessman with connections in Turkiye who had attended at least two meetings in Iran to discuss the possibility of assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant or the head of the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency.
The arrest took place last month, according to a joint statement by Shin Bet and the Israeli police that highlighted the intelligence war running alongside the escalating conflict on Israel’s border with southern Lebanon.
Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to assassinate a former senior defense official, who was subsequently identified as the former army Chief of Staff and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
The announcement of the arrest came a day after Hezbollah was hit for a second day running by a sophisticated
attack
that detonated communications equipment remotely, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 450.
Israel has not commented directly on the attack but multiple security sources have said it was undertaken by Israel’s spy agency Mossad.
Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
- Hezbollah fired around 20 projectiles into Israel, most of which were intercepted by air defense systems without causing any injuries
- Israeli media reported that a number of Israeli civilians had been wounded by anti-tank missile fire from Lebanon
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel bombed southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot, a day after explosions of Hezbollah radios that came on the heels of blasts in booby trapped pagers, setting the foes hurtling toward war.
The sophisticated attacks on armed group Hezbollah’s communications equipment, which killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000 over two days, sowed disarray in Lebanon, with panicked residents abandoning their mobile phones.
“This isn’t a small matter, it’s war. Who can even secure their phone now? When I heard about what happened yesterday, I left my phone on my motorcycle and walked away,” said Mustafa Sibal on a street near central Beirut.
A distant roar in the skies could be heard in Beirut from what Lebanese state media said was Israeli jets breaking the sound barrier — a sound that has grown increasingly common in recent months.
Israel said its warplanes struck villages in southern Lebanon overnight, and a security source and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported airstrikes near the border resumed on Thursday just after midday.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south. The Lebanese health minister raised the death toll, saying 25 people had been killed and 608 injured in the country’s deadliest day since cross-border fighting erupted between the militants and Israel in parallel with the Gaza war last year.
The previous day, hundreds of pagers — used by Hezbollah to evade mobile phone surveillance — exploded at once, killing 12 people including two children, and injuring more than 2,300.
In a post on X, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stand to stop Israel’s “aggression” and “technological war” against his country.
Israel has not commented directly on the booby-trapped walkie-talkies and pagers, but multiple security sources have said the attacks were carried out by its spy agency Mossad.
Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Palestinian militant group Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
On Thursday Israeli security forces announced that an Israeli businessman had been arrested last month after attending at least two meetings in Iran, where he discussed assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister or the head of the Shin Bet spy agency.
Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Israel has been accused of assassinations including a blast in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas and another in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hezbollah commander within hours of each other in July.
Despite the events of the past few days, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the situation along the frontier had “not changed much in terms of exchanges of fire between the parties.”
“There was an intensification last week. This week it is more or less the same. There are still exchanges of fire. It is still worrying, still concerning, and the rhetoric is high,” the spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, told Reuters.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the Israeli-Lebanon border in parallel with the war Israel has waged in Gaza against Hamas, the Palestinian militant group whose fighters attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Tens of thousands of people have had to flee the Israel-Lebanon border area on both sides. Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to return the evacuated Israelis “securely to their homes.”
Shifting focus
The Israeli military said its overnight air strikes hit Hezbollah targets in Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela in southern Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Khiam.
Israeli media reported that a number of Israeli civilians had been wounded by anti-tank missile fire from Lebanon, but there was no official confirmation.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was moving into a new phase, with more resources and military units now being shifted to the northern border.
According to Israeli officials, the forces being deployed there include the 98th Division, an elite formation including commando and paratroop elements that has been fighting in Gaza.
Hezbollah launched missile barrages on Israel on the day after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, and since then there has been a constant exchange of fire that neither side has allowed to escalate into a full-scale war.
However, tens of thousands have been evacuated on both sides of the border, and there has been mounting pressure in Israel for the government to get the evacuees back home.
