BEIRUT: Urgent calls for foreign nationals to leave Lebanon grew on Sunday with France warning of “a highly volatile” situation as Iran and its allies ready their response to high-profile killings blamed on Israel.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war broke out in October, announced its fighters had fired a barrage of rockets at Israel’s north overnight.
The Israeli military said 30 projectiles were launched from Lebanon, with most of them intercepted.
With Israel on high alert anticipating major military action from Tehran-aligned armed groups including Hezbollah and Hamas, medics and police said two people were killed on Sunday in a stabbing attack in a Tel Aviv suburb.
The assailant, a Palestinian from the occupied West Bank, was “neutralized” by police and taken to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Israeli forces meanwhile kept bombarding the Gaza Strip, witnesses and officials in the besieged Hamas-ruled territory said, with no end in sight to the nearly 10-month Israeli agression on Gaza.
France, Canada and Jordan were among the latest governments to issue calls for their citizens to leave Lebanon.
“In a highly volatile security context,” French nationals were “urgently asked” to avoid traveling to Lebanon, and those already in the country “to make their arrangements now to leave... as soon as possible,” the foreign ministry in Paris said.
The United States and Britain have issued similar warnings.
Several Western airlines have suspended flights to the region.
On Sunday Qatar Airways said that “in light of recent developments in Lebanon,” the Doha-Beirut route “will operate exclusively during daylight hours” at least until Monday.
The killing Wednesday of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, hours after the Israeli assassination of Hezbollah’s military chief in Beirut, has triggered vows of vengeance from Iran and the so-called “axis of resistance” of Tehran-backed armed groups.
Israel, accused by Hamas, Iran and others of carrying out the attack that killed Haniyeh, has not directly commented on it.
Israel’s agression on the Gaza strip has killed at least 39,550 people, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Haniyeh, Hamas’s political chief, was the group’s lead negotiator in efforts to end the war.
His killing raised questions about the continued viability of efforts by Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators to broker a truce and exchange of hostages and prisoners.
On the ground in Gaza, fighting continued on Sunday.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said eight bodies had been recovered from a residential building in north Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp after an Israeli air strike.
Medics at central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said at least five people were killed and 16 wounded in an Israeli drone strike on tents housing displaced Palestinians at the medical complex, with a separate attack on a house nearby in the same area killing three.
On Saturday, an Israeli strike on a school turned displacement shelter killed at least 17 people, the civil defense agency said. Israel claims the facility was used by militants.
An AFP correspondent reported Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling early Sunday in and around Gaza City, while witnesses said there was more shelling, gunfire and at least two air strikes on the territory’s south.
The Israeli military said its air forces had struck “approximately 50 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” in the past 24 hours.
Israeli ally the United States said it would move warships and fighter jets to the region to protect US personnel and defend Israel.
Analysts have told AFP that a joint but measured action from Iran and its allies was likely, while Tehran said it expects Hezbollah to hit deeper inside Israel and no longer be confined to military targets.
US President Joe Biden, asked by reporters if he thought Iran would stand down, said: “I hope so. I don’t know.”
On Sunday, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi will visit Tehran to meet his Iranian counterpart, his ministry said.
Haniyeh’s killing “has brought the Middle East to its moment of greatest peril in years,” the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank said in a report issued on Saturday.
“The risk of a spiralling conflagration is high,” with the potential for a miscalculation that would trigger a war “without constraints... likely greater now than it was in April,” it added.
On April 13, Iran launched its first ever direct attack on Israeli soil, firing a barrage of drones and missiles — most of which were intercepted — after a strike killed Revolutionary Guards at Tehran’s consulate in Damascus.
The ICG said that securing “a long overdue ceasefire” in Gaza was “the best way of meaningfully reducing tensions in the region.”
Hamas officials but also some analysts as well as protesters in Israel have accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prolonging the war to safeguard his ruling hard-right coalition.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told his cabinet he was “making every effort” to return the hostages and was prepared “to go a long way” to do so.
Foreign nationals told to leave Lebanon
https://arab.news/bmxnw
Foreign nationals told to leave Lebanon
- France, Canada and Jordan were among the latest governments to issue calls for their citizens to leave Lebanon
- Several Western airlines have suspended flights to the region
Prospect of Lebanon ceasefire leaves Gazans feeling abandoned
The Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing missiles at Israel in solidarity with Hamas after the Palestinian militant group attacked Israel in October of 2023, triggering the Gaza war.
Hostilities in Lebanon have drastically escalated in the last two months, with Israel stepping up airstrikes and sending in ground forces to Lebanon’s south and Hezbollah sustaining rocket fire on Israel.
Now Israel looks set to approve a US plan for a ceasefire with Hezbollah when its security cabinet meets on Tuesday, while Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib expressed hope that a ceasefire would be reached by Tuesday night.
While diplomacy focuses on Lebanon, Palestinians feel let down by the world after 14 months of conflict which has devastated the Gaza Strip and killed more than 44,000 people. “It showed Gaza is an orphan, with no support and no mercy from the unjust world,” said Abdel-Ghani, a father of five who only gave a first name.
“I am angry against the world that has failed to bring one solution to the two regions,” Abdel-Ghani. “Maybe, there will be another deal for Gaza, maybe.”
An Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire without a deal for Gaza would be a blow to Hamas, whose leaders had hoped the expansion of the war into Lebanon would pressure Israel to reach a comprehensive ceasefire. Hezbollah had insisted that it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ends, but it dropped that condition.
“We had high hopes that Hezbollah would remain steadfast until the end but it seems they couldn’t,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman, who like most Gazans has been displaced from his home. “We are afraid the Israeli army will now have a free hand in Gaza.”
While a Lebanon deal could leave some Hezbollah commanders in place after Israel killed the heavily armed group’s veteran leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas completely.
“We hoped the expansion of the war meant one solution for all, but we were left alone in the face of the monstrous (Israeli) occupation,” said Zakeya Rezik, 56, a mother of six.
“Enough is enough, we are exhausted. How many more had to die before they stopped the war? Gaza war must stop, the people are being wiped out, starved, and bombed every day.”
Three bodies recovered from capsized tourist boat off Egypt’s Red Sea coast, 13 missing
CAIRO: Three bodies have been recovered from a capsized tourist boat that sank off Egypt’s Red Sea coast on Monday, and 13 people were still reported missing, Red Sea Governor Amr Hanafi told Reuters on Tuesday.
Israel expected to approve ceasefire with Hezbollah: Israeli official
- EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Tuesday that Israel has no reason to refuse a ceasefire with Lebanon along the lines proposed by France and the United States
- UN demands ‘permanent ceasefire’ in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel
JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Israel looks set to approve a US plan for a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Tuesday, a senior Israeli official said, clearing the way for an end to the conflict that has killed thousands of people since it was ignited by the Gaza war 14 months ago.
Israel’s security cabinet is expected to convene later on Tuesday to discuss and likely approve the text at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official said.
EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Tuesday that Israel has no reason to refuse a ceasefire with Lebanon along the lines proposed by France and the United States.
“There is not an excuse for not implementing a ceasefire... No more excuses. No more additional requests. Stop this fighting. Stop killing people,” Borrell said at a G7 foreign ministers meeting near Rome.
As truce talks intensified, Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli strikes killed at least 31 people on Monday, mostly in the south.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the security cabinet “will decide on Tuesday evening on the ceasefire deal.”
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the talks were progressing but not finalized.
“We believe we’ve reached this point where we’re close,” he said, adding “we’re not there yet.”
Meanwhile the UN rights chief is gravely concerned over the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and wants a “permanent ceasefire” there and in war-ravaged Gaza, his spokesman said Tuesday.
“The only way to end the suffering of people on all sides is a permanent and immediate ceasefire on all fronts: in Lebanon, in Israel and in Gaza,” Jeremy Laurence, a spokesman for Volker Turk, told reporters in Geneva.
While Israel presses its offensive on Palestinian militants Hamas in Gaza, the United States and France have led efforts to broker a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel is battling the Iran-backed Hezbollah on a second front.
France reported “significant progress” in ceasefire talks, and Italy, which holds the rotating presidency of the G7 group of nations, expressed “optimism” over a truce in Lebanon.
US news outlet Axios reported the draft agreement includes a 60-day transition period.
Israeli forces would withdraw, the Lebanese army would redeploy near the border, and Hezbollah would move heavy weapons north of the Litani River, said Axios.
A US-led committee would oversee implementation, with provisions allowing Israel to act against imminent threats if Lebanese forces fail to intervene, it added.
News of the security cabinet meeting came as the Israeli military said it carried out a wave of strikes on Monday, including on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that Israel has repeatedly bombed since late September when it escalated its air campaign in Lebanon.
The latest strikes hit around two dozen Hezbollah targets across Lebanon in one hour, the military said. A statement said “command centers, and intelligence control and collection centers, where Hezbollah commanders and operatives were located,” were targeted.
The strikes followed intense Hezbollah fire over the weekend, including some attacks deep into Israel.
Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was likely to endorse the US ceasefire proposal.
Asked in New York about the possible truce agreement, Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said “we are moving forward on this front,” adding the cabinet would meet to discuss it.
The war in Lebanon followed nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah. The Lebanese group said it was acting in support of Hamas after the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Lebanon says at least 3,768 people have been killed in the country since October 2023, most of them in the past few weeks.
On the Israeli side, the Lebanon hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.
The initial exchanges of fire forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes, and Israeli officials have said they are fighting so the residents can return safely.
Some northern residents expressed fears as to whether that was possible under a ceasefire.
“In my opinion, it would be a serious mistake to sign an agreement as long as Hezbollah has not been completely eliminated,” said Maryam Younnes, 29, a student from Maalot-Tarshiha.
“It would be a mistake to sign an agreement as long as Hezbollah still has weapons.”
Dorit Sison, a 51-year-old teacher displaced from Shlomi, said: “I don’t want a ceasefire, because if they do it along the lines that they’ve announced, we’ll be in the same place in five years.”
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir warned on X that reaching a Lebanon ceasefire deal would be a “historic missed opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah.”
Ben Gvir has repeatedly threatened to bring down the government if it agrees to a truce deal with Hamas in the Gaza Strip or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Efforts this year by mediators to secure a truce and hostage-release deal in the Gaza war have failed.
Qatar early this month said it was suspending its mediation role until the warring sides showed “seriousness.”
With an intensive Israeli military operation in besieged north Gaza continuing, remaining residents were left “scavenging among the rubble” for food, said Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Such scavenging puts Gazans at risk of encountering unexploded and unused ordnance that can be found in many populated areas of the territory, the Danish Refugee Council said.
Israeli airstrikes intensify in Lebanon amid rumors of imminent ceasefire agreement
- Latest attacks cause further destruction in areas stretching from border region to distant areas as far north as Bekaa and beyond
- Israel escalates attacks to put pressure on Lebanese authorities whenever peace talks advance, says deputy speaker of Lebanese parliament
BEIRUT: Israeli attacks on targets in Lebanon intensified on Monday, as rumors circulated in Tel Aviv and Beirut about the possibility of a ceasefire agreement within two days.
US envoy Amos Hochstein has been leading complex negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese authorities with the aim of ending the conflict, which began on Sep. 23 with Israeli airstrikes, followed by ground incursions into border areas on Oct. 1.
Since then, Israel has assassinated senior Hezbollah leaders, and the confirmed death toll from the fighting stands at about 3,800. This figure does not include Hezbollah members killed on the battlefield, the numbers of which are difficult to ascertain because of intense shelling in southern areas.
The escalating war has also resulted in the destruction of thousands of residential and commercial buildings in areas stretching from the south of the country to the southern suburbs of Beirut and northern Bekaa. Tensions continue to run high as the population lives in fear of the intense airstrikes, with ambulances and fire trucks remaining on standby in all regions.
MP Elias Bou Saab, the deputy speaker of Lebanon’s parliament, said: “We are optimistic about a ceasefire and there is hope. But nothing can be confirmed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. What might put pressure on him is the battlefield.”
Israeli aggression intensifies whenever peace negotiations move closer to an agreement, he added, in an attempt to put pressure on Lebanese authorities.
“We insist on our position regarding the inclusion of France in the committee overseeing the ceasefire implementation,” said Bou Saab.
“We did not hear anything about Israel’s freedom of movement in Lebanon, and we still speak only about UN Resolution 1701, with no additions and with an implementation mechanism.”
Resolution 1701 was adopted by the Security Council in 2006 with the aim of resolving the conflict that year between Israel and Hezbollah. It calls for an end to hostilities, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon, the withdrawal of Hezbollah and other forces from parts of the country south of the Litani River, and the disarmament of Hezbollah and other armed groups.
News channel CNN quoted a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister as saying talks were moving toward a ceasefire. Another regional source told the network: “The agreement is closer than ever. However, it has not been fully finalized yet.”
Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Herzog, said an agreement “could happen in a few days” but “there are still some sticking points that need to be resolved.”
The Israeli Broadcasting Authority quoted the country’s education minister as saying that Hochstein has the green light to proceed with an agreement. It added that a deal with Lebanon had been finalized and Netanyahu was considering “how to explain it to the public.”
Also on Monday, diplomat Dan Shapiro from the US Department of Defense held meetings with senior Israeli officials that focused on the members of a proposed committee to monitor the ceasefire, most notably the participation of France, and the details of a monitoring mechanism to be led by the US.
One report suggested Washington had agreed to provide Israel with a guarantee it would support any military action in response to threats from Lebanon and to disrupt any Hezbollah presence along the border.
According to news website Axios, the draft agreement for a ceasefire includes a 60-day transitional period during which the Israeli army would withdraw from southern Lebanon, to be replaced by the Lebanese army in areas close to the border, and Hezbollah would move its heavy weapons from the border region to areas north of the Litani Line.
Against this backdrop of peace negotiations, the continual Israeli airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut intensified on Monday, following 10 strikes the previous evening. The attacks targeted Haret Hreik, Hadath, Ghobeiry, Bir Al-Abed and Sfeir.
Hundreds of buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and as Arab News visited targeted areas, residents said “there have never been any Hezbollah offices in these structures, neither now nor in the past, and the buildings are mainly for residential purposes.”
A lawyer called Imad said the apartment building in the Hadath area in which he lived collapsed when it was hit by an airstrike.
“It is unbelievable that they use Hezbollah as a pretext to destroy our homes, which we purchased through financial loans to provide shelter for our families. They intend to annihilate us all,” he said.
The Israeli army said on Monday that an airstrike that hit the Basta area of central Beirut early on Saturday had “targeted a command center affiliated with Hezbollah.”
Efforts to help the injured and recover the bodies of the dead continued at the scene of the attack until Sunday evening. The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 29 people were killed and 67 wounded.
The Israeli army also carried out numerous airstrikes in southern Lebanon, mainly targeting the cities of Tyre and Nabatieh. Ten people were killed, including a woman and a member of the Lebanese army, and 17 injured in three airstrikes on Tyre.
Also in Tyre, an Israeli drone killed a motorcycle rider in a parking lot near the Central Bank of Lebanon. And three civilians were killed by an airstrike in the town of Ghazieh, south of Sidon.
From the southern border to the northern banks of the Litani River, no area has been spared from Israeli airstrikes, which have extended as far north as the city of Baalbek, and the town of Hermel close to the border with Syria.
In the east, back-and-forth operations between the Israeli army and Hezbollah continued as the former attempted to gain control over the town of Khiam. Its forces advanced, supported by Merkava tanks, from the southern outskirts under the cover of airstrikes and artillery bombardment, moving into the center of the town and toward Ebel Al-Saqi and Jdidet Marjeyoun.
The Israeli army also deployed tanks between olive groves in the town of Deir Mimas after an incursion into the town last week. It began advancing toward the Tal Nahas-Kfar Kila-Qlayaa triangle. Elsewhere, Hezbollah and Israeli forces clashed in the western sector of the Maroun Al-Ras-Ainata-Bint Jbeil triangle.
Hezbollah said it targeted Israeli army positions on the outskirts of the towns of Shamaa and Biyada. Israeli forces carried out house-demolition operations in Shamaa.
Hezbollah also continued to launch attacks against northern Israel. The group said its rockets “reached the Shraga base, north of the city of Acre, and targeted an Israeli army gathering in the settlement of Meron.”
Israeli medical services said one person was injured in Nahariya by falling fragments from a rocket.
Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry says war death toll at 44,235
- Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 777 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry
GAZA CITY: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 44,235 people have been killed in more than 13 months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.
The toll includes 24 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which said 104,638 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
