US wants to avoid ‘greater war’ along Lebanon-Israel border, envoy says

US special envoy Amos Hochstein is in the region for talks with top Israeli and Lebanese official to press for de-escalation in border clashes involving Hamas ally Hezbollah. (AFP)
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Updated 18 June 2024
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US wants to avoid ‘greater war’ along Lebanon-Israel border, envoy says

  • US envoy Amos Hochstein: ‘The conflict... between Israel and Hezbollah has gone on for long enough’

BEIRUT: The US is trying to avert a greater war between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, American envoy Amos Hochstein said on Tuesday, following an escalation in cross-border fire between the foes along Lebanon’s southern frontier.

Hochstein described the situation on the border between Lebanon and Israel as “very critical and very dangerous.”

Hochstein, who arrived in Beirut from Tel Aviv, said during a series of meetings with Lebanese officials that “further escalation between Israel and Lebanon must be avoided so we won’t reach an open war. We seek to stop the escalation in order to avoid a major war.”

He said a ceasefire in Gaza might end the war in southern Lebanon and allow displaced people to return to their homes, adding that “the conflict along both sides of the Blue Line has been going on for too long and ending it is in everyone’s interest.”

The situation on the southern front has escalated in the past couple of days with Hezbollah’s recent unprecedented attacks.

A Hezbollah reconnaissance Hudhud-1 drone released on Tuesday detailed footage of the port of Haifa Bay area and the Carmel area specifically, as well as a military manufacturing company and other military bases in Nahariya, Safad and Kiryat Shmona.

Hezbollah said the drone was equipped with the latest photography technology “to identify its targets and the enemy’s gatherings and equipment.”

It added that “the drone is characterized by its small size and radar, which makes it difficult to detect, follow and down with air defense missiles.

“It is also known for its small amount of thermal radiation, reducing its likelihood of being hit by infrared missiles. It is also characterized by its low acoustic fingerprint, making it hard to identify in a battle atmosphere.”

Hochstein met Lebanese army chief Joseph Aoun in the presence of the US Ambassador to Lebanon Lisa Johnson.

The discussions revolved around the general situation in Lebanon and the region, as well as developments on the southern border.

The US is highly concerned that hostilities between Hezbollah and the Israeli army could escalate into an open war.

Aoun visited the Pentagon for the first time last week, where the escalating tensions with Israel were discussed.

After an hour-long meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Hochstein told reporters that his visit “comes under difficult circumstances, and this is why he was dispatched by President Joe Biden to Lebanon.”

He said he had a positive meeting with Berri, where they discussed the proposed deal in relation to Gaza, “which gives an opportunity to end the conflict on both sides of the Blue Line.”

Hochstein added that “the deal proposed by President Biden on May 31, 2024, which includes the release of the hostages and a full and complete ceasefire leading to the end of the war in Gaza, and which was approved by the Israeli side, Qatar, Egypt, the G7 and the UN Security Council, could end the war in Gaza and plan the withdrawal of the Israeli forces. If this is what Hamas wants, it should accept the deal.”

He noted: “A ceasefire in Gaza and/or an alternative diplomatic solution could also bring the conflict across the Blue Line to an end, creating conditions for displaced Lebanese civilians to go home in the south, and for Israeli civilians to go home in their north. The conflict along the Blue Line between Israel and Hezbollah has gone on for long enough. Innocent people are dying. Property is damaged. Families are shattered, and the Lebanese economy continues to decline. The country is suffering for no good reason. It’s in everyone’s interest to resolve it quickly and diplomatically. That is both achievable. And it is urgent.”

Prime Minister Najib Mikati told Hochstein that “Lebanon does not seek escalation, and what is required is to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanon and return to calm and stability on the southern border.” 

He said: “We continue to strive to stop the escalation, establish security and stability, and stop the ongoing violations of Lebanese sovereignty and the systematic killing and destruction committed by Israel. However, the continuous Israeli threats to Lebanon will not prevent us from continuing our efforts to establish calm, which is a priority for us and all of Lebanon’s friends.”

Hochstein said: “We are going through dangerous times and critical moments, and we are working together to find ways to prevent further escalation.”

In Tel Aviv, the head of the National Unity Party, Benny Gantz, told Hochstein: “Time is running out for an internationally mediated arrangement on the northern border with Lebanon.”

Gantz wrote on social media that during his meeting with Hochstein, “I emphasized my commitment to removing the threat Hezbollah to the citizens of northern Israel, regardless of developments on the war in Gaza, and will support any responsible and effective political or military decision on the matter from outside the government.”

Israeli Channel 12 reported: “Israel informed Hochstein that operations in Rafah, Gaza Strip, were nearing completion and the end of operations in Rafah would affect the region and the Lebanon front.”

According to the Israeli army, Hezbollah has fired more than 5,000 rockets, anti-tank shells, and explosive drones into northern Israel since Oct. 8.

Hezbollah halted its hostile operations for 48 hours, despite Israel not stopping its targeting of party members. The latest of these attacks was on Tuesday afternoon when a combat drone targeted a man driving a car to the town of Borgholiyeh, north of the city of Tyre.

Another drone targeted a Hezbollah member driving a vehicle on Monday on the road linking the towns of Selaa and Chehabiyeh in the Tyre area, leading to his death.

Israeli warplanes also conducted violent raids on the town of Chaqra, which hosts displaced people from frontline villages.

Hezbollah announced on Tuesday that it targeted “a Merkava tank inside the Hadab Yarin site with an assault drone, hitting it directly.”


Israel strikes south Beirut after Israeli evacuation call

Updated 52 min 28 sec ago
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Israel strikes south Beirut after Israeli evacuation call

  • Since Tuesday, Israel has carried out several strikes on the city’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT: A strike hit the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut on Saturday, AFPTV footage showed, shortly after the Israeli army issued a new call to evacuate the area.
Since Tuesday, Israel has carried out several strikes on the city’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah.
AFPTV video showed three plumes of smoke rising over the buildings in the area on Saturday morning.
Shortly before the attack, Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X a call for residents of the Haret Hreik suburb to evacuate.
“You are close to facilities and interests belonging to Hezbollah, against which the Israeli military will be acting with force in the near future,” the post said in Arabic, identifying specific buildings and telling residents to move at least 500 meters away.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said “the enemy” carried out three air raids, including one near Haret Hreik.
“The first strike near Haret Hreik destroyed buildings and caused damage in the area,” it said.
Repeated Israeli air strikes on south Beirut have led to a mass exodus of civilians from the area, although some return during the day to check on their homes and businesses.
In southern Lebanon, Israel carried out several strikes on Friday night and early Saturday, according to NNA.
Overnight, Hezbollah also claimed two rocket attacks targeting the headquarters of an infantry battalion in northern Israel.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Lebanese authorities say that more than 3,440 people have been killed since October last year, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire.
The conflict has cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses, with actual structural damage amounting to billions more, the World Bank said on Thursday.


Hamas ready for ceasefire ‘immediately’ but Israel yet to offer ‘serious’ proposal

Updated 16 November 2024
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Hamas ready for ceasefire ‘immediately’ but Israel yet to offer ‘serious’ proposal

  • Hamas official Basem Naim says Oct. 7 attack ‘an act of self defense’
  • ‘I have the right to live a free and dignified life,’ he tells Sky News

LONDON: A Hamas official has claimed that Israel has not put forward any “serious proposals” for a ceasefire since the assassination of its leader Ismail Haniyeh, despite the group being ready for one “immediately.”

Dr. Basem Naim told the Sky News show “The World With Yalda Hakim” that the last “well-defined, brokered deal” was put on the table between the two warring sides on July 2.

“It was discussed in all details and I think we were near to a ceasefire ... which can end this war, offer a permanent ceasefire and total withdrawal and prisoner exchange,” he said. “Unfortunately (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu preferred to go the other way.”

Naim urged the incoming Trump administration to do whatever necessary to help end the war.

He said Hamas does not regret its attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which left 1,200 people dead and prompted Israel’s invasion of Gaza that has killed in excess of 43,000 people and left hundreds of thousands injured.

Naim said Israel is guilty of “big massacres” in the Palestinian enclave, and when asked if Hamas bore responsibility as a result of the Oct. 7 attack, he called it “an act of self defense,” adding: “It’s exactly as if you’re accusing the victims for the crimes of the aggressor.”

He continued: “I’m a member of Hamas, but at the same time I’m an innocent Palestinian civilian because I have the right to live a free and dignified life and I have the right to defend myself, to defend my family.”

When asked if he regrets the Oct. 7 attack, Naim replied: “Do you believe that a prisoner who is knocking (on) the door or who is trying to get out of the prison, he has to regret his will to be? This is part of our dignity ... to defend ourselves, to defend our children.”


Italy protests to Israel over unexploded shell hitting Italian base in Lebanon

Updated 15 November 2024
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Italy protests to Israel over unexploded shell hitting Italian base in Lebanon

  • Tajani said the safety of the soldiers in UNIFIL had to be ensured and stressed “the unacceptability” of the attacks
  • The Italian statement said Saar had “guaranteed an immediate investigation” into the shell incident

ROME: Italy on Friday said an unexploded artillery shell hit the base of the Italian contingent in the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon and Israel promised to investigate.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani spoke with Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar and protested Israeli attacks against its personnel and infrastructure in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, an Italian statement said.
Tajani said the safety of the soldiers in UNIFIL had to be ensured and stressed “the unacceptability” of the attacks.
The Italian statement said Saar had “guaranteed an immediate investigation” into the shell incident.
Established by a UN Security Council resolution in 2006, the 10,000-strong UN mission is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the “blue line” separating Lebanon from Israel.
Since Israel launched a ground campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah fighters at the end of September, UNIFIL has accused the Israel Defense Forces of deliberately attacking its bases, including by shooting at peacekeepers and destroying watch towers.


Lebanon rescuer picks up ‘pieces’ of father after Israel strike

Updated 15 November 2024
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Lebanon rescuer picks up ‘pieces’ of father after Israel strike

  • Karkaba then rushed back to the bombed civil defense center to search for her fellow first responders under the rubble
  • Israel struck the center, the main civil defense facility in the eastern Baalbek area, while nearly 20 rescuers were still inside

DOURIS, Lebanon: Suzanne Karkaba and her father Ali were both civil defense rescuers whose job was to save the injured and recover the dead in Lebanon’s war.
When an Israeli strike killed him on Thursday and it was his turn to be rescued, there wasn’t much left. She had to identify him by his fingers.
Karkaba then rushed back to the bombed civil defense center to search for her fellow first responders under the rubble.
Israel struck the center, the main civil defense facility in the eastern Baalbek area, while nearly 20 rescuers were still inside, said Samir Chakia, a local official with the agency.
At least 14 civil defense workers were killed, he said.
“My dad was sleeping here with them. He helped people and recovered bodies to return them to their families... But now it’s my turn to pick up the pieces of my dad,” Karkaba told AFP with tears in her eyes.
Unlike many first-responder facilities previously targeted during the war, this facility in Douris, on the edge of Baalbek city, was state-run and had no political affiliation.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Friday morning, dozens of rescuers and residents were still rummaging through the wreckage of the center. Two excavators pulled broken slabs of concrete, twisted metal bars and red tiles.
Wearing her civil defense uniform at the scene, Karkaba said she had been working around-the-clock since Israel ramped up its air raids on Lebanon’s east in late September.
“I don’t know who to grieve anymore, the (center’s) chief, my father, or my friends of 10 years,” Karkaba said, her braided hair flowing in the wind.
“I don’t have the heart to leave the center, to leave the smell of my father... I’ve lost a part of my soul.”
Beginning on September 23, Israel escalated its air raids mainly on Hezbollah strongholds in east and south Lebanon, as well as south Beirut after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire.
A week later Israel sent in ground troops to southern Lebanon.
More than 150 rescuers, most of them affiliated with Hezbollah and its allies, have been killed in more than a year of clashes, according to health ministry figures from late October.
Friday morning, rescuers in Douris were still pulling body parts from the rubble, strewn with dozens of paper documents, while Lebanese army troops stood guard near the site.
Civil defense worker Mahmoud Issa was among those searching for friends in the rubble.
“Does it get worse than this kind of strike against rescue teams and medics? We are among the first to... save people. But now, we are targets,” he said.
On Thursday, Lebanon’s health ministry said more than 40 people had been killed in Israeli strikes on the country’s south and east.
The ministry reported two deadly Israeli raids on emergency facilities in less than two hours that day: the one near Baalbek, and another on the south that killed four Hezbollah-affiliated paramedics.
The ministry urged the international community to “put an end to these dangerous violations.”
More than 3,400 people have been killed in Lebanon since the clashes began last year, according to the ministry, the majority of them since late September.


Iran backs Lebanon in ceasefire talks, seeks end to ‘problems’

Updated 15 November 2024
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Iran backs Lebanon in ceasefire talks, seeks end to ‘problems’

  • World powers say Lebanon ceasefire must be based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701
  • Israel demands the freedom to act should Hezbollah violate any agreement, which Lebanon has rejected

BEIRUT: Iran backs any decision taken by Lebanon in talks to secure a ceasefire with Israel, a senior Iranian official said on Friday, signalling Tehran wants to see an end to a conflict that has dealt heavy blows to its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Israel launched airstrikes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, flattening buildings for a fourth consecutive day. Israel has stepped up its bombardment of the area this week, an escalation that has coincided with signs of movement in US-led diplomacy toward a ceasefire.
Two senior Lebanese political sources told Reuters that the US ambassador to Lebanon had presented a draft ceasefire proposal to Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri the previous day. Berri is endorsed by Hezbollah to negotiate and met the senior Iranian official Ali Larijani on Friday.
Asked at a news conference whether he had come to Beirut to undermine the US truce plan, Larijani said: “We are not looking to sabotage anything. We are after a solution to the problems.”
“We support in all circumstances the Lebanese government. Those who are disrupting are Netanyahu and his people,” Larijani added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Hezbollah was founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, and has been armed and financed by Tehran.
A senior diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, assessed that more time was needed to get a ceasefire done but was hopeful it could be achieved.
The outgoing US administration appears keen to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon, even as efforts to end Israel’s related war in the Gaza Strip appear totally adrift.
World powers say a Lebanon ceasefire must be based on UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which ended a previous 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel. Its terms require Hezbollah to move weapons and fighters north of the Litani river, which runs some 20 km (30 miles) north of the border.
Israel demands the freedom to act should Hezbollah violate any agreement, which Lebanon has rejected.
In a meeting with Larijani, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged support for Lebanon’s position on implementing 1701 and called this a priority, along with halting the “Israeli aggression,” a statement from his office said.
Larijani stressed “that Iran supports any decision taken by the government, especially resolution 1701,” the statement said.
Israel launched its ground and air offensive against Hezbollah in late September after almost a year of cross-border hostilities in parallel with the Gaza war. It says it aims to secure the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis, forced to evacuate from northern Israel under Hezbollah fire.
Israel’s campaign has forced more than 1 million Lebanese to flee their homes, igniting a humanitarian crisis.

FLATTENED BUILDINGS
It has dealt Hezbollah serious blows, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and other commanders. Hezbollah has kept up rocket attacks into Israel and its fighters have been battling Israeli troops in the south.
On Friday, Israeli airstrikes flattened five more buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs known as Dahiyeh. One of them was located near one of Beirut’s busiest traffic junctions, Tayouneh, in an area where Dahiyeh meets other parts of Beirut.
The sound of an incoming missile could be heard in footage showing the airstrike near Tayouneh. The targeted building turned into a cloud of rubble and debris which billowed into the adjacent Horsh Beirut, the city’s main park.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets attacked munitions warehouses, a headquarters and other Hezbollah infrastructure. Ahead of the latest airstrikes, the Israeli military issued a warning on social media identifying buildings.
The European Union strongly condemned the killing of 12 paramedics in an Israeli strike near Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley on Thursday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said.
“Attacks on health care workers and facilities are a grave violation of international humanitarian law,” he wrote on X.
On Thursday, Eli Cohen, Israel’s energy minister and a member of its security cabinet, told Reuters prospects for a ceasefire were the most promising since the conflict began.
The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu was rushing to advance a Lebanon ceasefire with the aim of delivering an early foreign policy win to his ally US President-elect Donald Trump.
According to Lebanon’s health ministry, Israeli attacks have killed at least 3,386 people through Wednesday since Oct. 7, 2023, the vast majority of them since late September. It does not distinguish between civilian casualties and fighters.
Hezbollah attacks have killed about 100 civilians and soldiers in northern Israel, the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and southern Lebanon over the last year, according to Israel.