TIBERIAS, Israel: Yarden Gil opens a reinforced metal door to enter the northern Israeli kindergarten where she works, which doubles as an underground shelter against rockets fired by Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
She is among tens of thousands displaced from the border area by the ever-present threat of Hezbollah attacks and, increasingly, the fear of an all-out war against the powerful Iran-backed militant group.
Gil, 36, and her family have left their home in Yiftah, a kibbutz community just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Lebanese border. She said there they lived so close to the border that they could often hear incoming rockets before the sirens started wailing.
They now live in a single room in a hotel 50 kilometers (30 miles) to the south, near the city of Tiberias on the shores of the lake known as the Sea of Galilee.
“We really don’t have independence here,” said Gil, charging that the Israeli government is “not doing enough for us to be able to go back to our home and be secure.”
Dozens of northern Israeli communities have been rendered ghost towns as the Israeli military and Hezbollah have traded near-daily cross-border fire, ending a period of relative calm since a 2006 war.
The spike in violence during the ongoing Gaza conflict has re-ignited fears of a wider war between long-term foes Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
The border clashes have killed at least 93 civilians in Lebanon and nearly 390 others, mostly fighters, according to an AFP tally.
Eleven civilians and 15 soldiers have been killed on the Israeli side, according to the military.
Israel said early last week it had approved military plans for an offensive in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah responded with a warning that nowhere in Israel would be safe in the event of war.
With Israel focused on the Gaza war after Hamas’s surprise October 7 attack, a return home is all that is on the minds of evacuees from northern communities languishing in hotels turned state-funded shelters, away from home.
The authorities have repeatedly extended accommodation arrangements, which are now set to expire in August.
Some evacuees have moved out of the hotels, to elsewhere in Israel or abroad.
“That’s our new reality: instability,” said Iris Amsalem, a 33-year-old mother of two from the border community of Shomera who is now staying in a Galilee hotel.
“We want peace. We want security.”
Only a few Israelis have remained on the border, defended by civilian units and military forces.
Deborah Fredericks, an 80-year-old retiree staying at a five-star hotel with hundreds of other evacuees, played the tile-based game of Rummikub next to a gleaming pool and palm trees in front of the lake.
“It’s really funny because I’m in the middle of a war but I’m on holiday,” she said.
“I want to go back, but it won’t be for a while. It’ll be when they say I can. You can’t do anything about it.”
Others feel they have been abandoned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as it prioritizes the Gaza war.
“No one communicates with us, no one! No one came to see us!” said Lili Dahn, a resident of the border town of Kiryat Shmona, in her 60s.
Gil, the kindergarten teacher, said parents had to set up their own schooling for their children after they fled their kibbutz, which has suffered damage from rockets and in fires caused by the strikes.
“The government is responsible for our security and I expect them to be more interested in what happened to us,” she said, adding that some of her fellow kibbutzniks have moved as far away as Canada and Thailand.
Netanyahu has pledged to return security, and civilians, to the north.
Some evacuees said they believe a war against Hezbollah is only a matter of time.
Sarit Zehavi, a former Israeli army intelligence official who lives near the border, said her greatest fear was that a potential ceasefire would allow Hezbollah “to preserve its capabilities and launch the next massacre,” like Hamas did.
Gil’s husband, Ewdward, 39, also said he feared a similar assault to the October 7 attack on southern Israel.
“It happened in the south,” he said. “Who’s telling me that now it won’t happen in the north?“
Helene Abergel, a 49-year-old Kiryat Shmona resident who is living at a Tel Aviv hotel, said: “A war must happen to push Hezbollah away from the border.”
In her family’s single room, Gil had a defiant message for Hezbollah.
“They can break our houses,” she said. “They can burn our fields. But they cannot kill our spirit.”
Away from home, Israeli evacuees wait as Hezbollah tensions spike
https://arab.news/c6twj
Away from home, Israeli evacuees wait as Hezbollah tensions spike
- The spike in violence during the ongoing Gaza conflict has re-ignited fears of a wider war between long-term foes Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally
A boy in Gaza was killed by an Israeli airstrike, as his father held him and wouldn’t let go
Omar, who was playing outside near his home, had been killed Tuesday in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli airstrike
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: He wouldn’t let go.
Nael Al-Baghdadi held his 12-year-old son, Omar, and held him tight. But it was already too late. Omar, who was playing outside near his home, had been killed Tuesday in the Gaza Strip by an Israeli airstrike.
In the photo made by Associated Press photographer Abdel Kareem Hana after the strike, Al-Baghdadi’s eyes are shut. He holds his son, whose small body rests limply in his arms. His right hand and right shirt sleeve are streaked with blood. Grief is etched upon the father’s face, but more than that there is an expression of deep love for the child he has just lost. So much love that he insisted on holding Omar, uninterrupted, until the child could be shepherded hours later to his grave.
Omar and his three friends were playing soccer in the street near their house in the Bureij refugee camp around noon Tuesday, under a blistering sun, when the Israeli airstrike hit and sent the street into a swirl of dust, blood and chaos. Al-Baghdadi was already in nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah with his injured brother. His cousin ran toward the wreckage, found Omar and took him to an ambulance.
From there, he called the father and broke the news: His son had been killed; be ready to receive him. According to Al-Baghdadi, he met the ambulance when it rolled into the hospital, picked up his son’s body and carried it to the morgue, weeping all the way.
He refused to put his son on the ground inside the morgue, holding him gently until he was shrouded and the funeral prayer was performed before a quick burial.
One image, one moment — a child lost, a father’s grief, an excruciating goodbye.
Hamas says mediators have not yet provided updates on Gaza ceasefire talks
- It also accused Israel of “stalling” to gain time and thwart the current round of talks
CAIRO: Hamas said in a statement on Thursday that mediators have not yet provided the group with any updates regarding Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
It also accused Israel of “stalling” to gain time and thwart the current round of talks.
“The occupation continues its policy of stalling to buy time to foil this round of negotiations, as it has done in previous rounds,” the Islamist faction added.
The Hamas comments come as Qatari and Egyptian mediators, backed by the United States, have stepped up efforts this week to conclude a ceasefire deal aimed at ending the nine-month war in Gaza and releasing Israeli hostages held by Hamas and many Palestinians jailed in Israel.
Iranian court orders US to pay $6.7 billion after sanctions allegedly stopped special bandage supply
Iranian court orders US to pay $6.7 billion after sanctions allegedly stopped special bandage supply
- Epidermolysis bullosa is a rare genetic condition that causes blisters all over the body and eyes
- The young who suffer from the disease are known as ‘butterfly children’ as their skin can appear as fragile as a butterfly’s wing
TEHRAN: An Iranian court on Thursday ordered the US government to pay over $6.7 billion in compensation over a Swedish company stopping its supply of special dressings and bandages for those afflicted by a rare skin disorder after Washington imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
The order by the International Relations Law Court in Tehran comes after Iran last year seized a $50 million cargo of Kuwaiti crude oil for American energy firm Chevron Corp. in the Strait of Hormuz amid tensions with the West, something it later said came over the court action for those suffering from Epidermolysis bullosa.
A report Thursday by the state-run IRNA news agency described the $6.7 billion order as being filed on behalf of 300 plaintiffs, including family members of victims and those physically and emotionally damaged. IRNA said about 20 patients died after the Swedish company’s decision.
Epidermolysis bullosa is a rare genetic condition that causes blisters all over the body and eyes. It can be incredibly painful and kill those afflicted. The young who suffer from the disease are known as “butterfly children” as their skin can appear as fragile as a butterfly’s wing.
The order comes as US judges have issued rulings that call for billions of dollars to be paid by Iran over attacks linked to Tehran, as well as those detained by Iran and used as pawns in negotiations between the countries — something Iran has responded to with competing lawsuits accusing the US of involvement in a 2017 Daesh group attack. The United Nations’ highest court also last year rejected Tehran’s legal bid to free up some $2 billion in Iranian Central Bank assets frozen by US authorities.
In 2018, then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, apparently sparking the Swedish company to withdraw from the Iranian market. Iran now says it locally produces the bandages.
The nuclear deal’s collapse also escalated tensions between Iran and the US, sparking a series of attacks and ship seizures. Iran seized the Marshall Islands-flagged ship carrying the Chevron oil last year. The ship, called the Advantage Sweet, began transmitting its position for the first time since the seizure on Wednesday, potentially signaling the vessel is preparing to depart Iran.
Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, has maintained that the Advantage Sweet was “seized under false pretenses.” It since has written off the cargo as a loss.
Iran’s acting foreign minister says indirect talks with US ongoing via Oman
- Efforts being made to leave “suitable grounds” for negotiations for the new Iranian government that will take office in the next few weeks.
DUBAI: Iran is still conducting indirect nuclear talks with the United States via Oman, Iran’s Etemad newspaper on Thursday quoted Iran’s acting foreign minister as saying.
Ali Bagheri Kani’s reported comments followed remarks on Monday in which a White House spokesperson said the United States was not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran under the newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
“Indirect talks are being conducted through Oman but the negotiation process is confidential and its details cannot be recounted,” Bagheri Kani was quoted as saying.
Efforts were being made to leave “suitable grounds” for negotiations for the new Iranian government that will take office in the next few weeks.
Pezeshkian, a low-profile moderate who won Iran’s run-off presidential vote last week, has said he will promote a pragmatic foreign policy and ease tensions with the six powers that have been involved in now-stalled nuclear talks to revive a 2015 nuclear pact.
However, foreign policy in Iran is ultimately decided by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who warned last month prior to elections that “one who thinks that nothing can be done without the favor of America will not manage the country well.”
Pezeshkian is taking office at a time of growing Middle East tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and over cross-border fire between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which have exacerbated disputes between Tehran and Washington.
In a letter to Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, Pezeshkian reiterated on Wednesday Tehran’s continued support for Palestinians against “the occupation of the Zionist regime (Israel).”
Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah and Sunni Muslim Hamas are part of a group of Iranian-backed factions in the region known as the Axis of Resistance.
Bodies trapped in Gaza City under Israeli assault as mediators push for truce
- Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was destroyed during the first weeks of fighting last year
CAIRO: Residents of Gaza City were trapped in houses and bodies lay uncollected in the streets under an intense new Israeli assault on Thursday, even as Washington pushed for a peace deal at talks in Egypt and Qatar.
Hamas militants say a massive Israeli assault on Gaza City this week could wreck efforts to finally end the war just as negotiations have entered the home stretch.
Home to more than a quarter of Gaza’s residents before the war, Gaza City was destroyed during the first weeks of fighting last year, but hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to homes in the ruins. They have now once again been ordered out by the Israeli military.
The Gaza health ministry said it had reports of people trapped and others killed inside their houses in the Tel Al-Hawa and Sabra districts of Gaza City, and rescuers could not reach them.
The Civil Emergency Service said it estimated that at least 30 people had been killed in the Tel Al-Hawa and Rimal areas and it could not recover bodies from the streets there.
Despite army instructions on Wednesday to residents of Gaza City that they can use two “safe routes” to head south, many residents refused to heed the order. Some posted a hashtag on social media: “We are not leaving.”
“We will die but not leave to the south. We have tolerated starvation and bombs for nine months and we are ready to die as martyrs here,” said Mohammad Ali, 30, reached by text message.
Ali, whose family has relocated several times within the city, said they had been running short of food, water and medicine.
“The occupation bombs Gaza City as if the war was restarting. We hope there will be a ceasefire soon, but if not then is God’s will.”
FIGHTING IN RAFAH
Israel launched its assault on the Gaza Strip last year after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border fence into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s assault has killed more than 38,000 according to medical authorities in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said Israeli forces had quit the Shejaia suburb east of Gaza after over two weeks of a new military invasion, in which dozens of people were killed and residential districts were destroyed.
At the southern edge of the enclave in Rafah near the border with Egypt, where tanks have been operating in most of the city since May, residents said the army continued to blow up houses in the western and central areas, amid fighting with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other smaller factions.
Palestinian health officials said four people were killed, including a child, in an Israeli air strike in Tel Al-Sultan in western Rafah.
The Israeli military said earlier on Thursday around five rockets fired from the Rafah area were successfully intercepted.
The negotiations in Qatar and Egypt follow important concessions last week from Hamas, which agreed that a truce could begin and some hostages released without Israel first agreeing to end the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces opposition within his rightwing cabinet to any deal that would halt the war until Hamas is vanquished, says a deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until it meets all its objectives.
Two Hamas officials contacted by Reuters had no immediate comment on the content of the ongoing talks, led by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States.
“There will be a meeting today between Hamas and the mediators to check on what responses they have received from the occupation,” said one Palestinian official close to the mediation, without elaboration.
