BEIRUT: Lebanon accused Israel of targeting journalists in a “deliberate” attack that killed three people in the country’s south on Friday, calling the incident a “war crime.”
Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the strike “targeting journalists” was “a war crime committed by Israel without any deterrent or international voice to halt the ongoing atrocities.”
He added that the “deliberate aggression aims to intimidate the media and obscure the crimes and destruction being perpetrated.”
Mikati said he had directed the Foreign Ministry “to include this latest crime in a series of documented files of Israeli crimes to be submitted to relevant international authorities, with the hope that global conscience will intervene to stop the ongoing violence.”
Al-Mayadeen TV channel confirmed the deaths of broadcast technician Mohammed Rida and camera operator Ghassan Najjar, while Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV mourned the death of camera operator Wissam Qassim in the Israeli strike on a hotel in Hasbayya.
Several other people including media personalities Zakaria Fadel, Hussein Hoteit, and Ali Chaib were injured in the blast.
Survivors appeared on their respective TV channels covered in dirt in the aftermath, stressing that they did not have any weapons and that there “weren’t any armed people” at the hotel.
They added that they only had “their cameras and microphones and that their movement was clear to everyone,” according to Al-Jadeed correspondent Mohamed Farhat and Al-Mayadeen reporter Fatima Ftouni, who showed her shrapnel-torn protective shield.
The number of journalists, technicians, and photographers caught by Israeli hostilities since Oct. 8, 2023, has risen to 13.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firas Abiad said Israeli strikes killed more than 160 rescuers and health workers in the past year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
At a press conference on Friday, Abiad said 55 attacks on hospitals had been recorded, including 36 direct hits.
Eight hospitals were forcibly closed down, while seven are partially operating.
The attacks resulted in “the martyrdom of 12 health workers, the injury of 60 people and the damage of 24 vehicles,” Abiad said.
According to the minister, the latest Israeli attacks targeted “201 emergency response teams, bringing the total of casualties in the health and hospital sector to 163 martyred and 272 injured.”
He said 51 emergency response centers, 158 ambulances, 57 fire trucks, and 15 rescue vehicles have been targeted.
“Two weeks ago, eight paramedics were martyred in the triangle of Odaisseh-Taybeh-Rab El-Thalathine. Their bodies are still in three ambulances due to the enemy’s refusal to allow the retrieval of their bodies. In addition, six firefighters are still under the rubble in Baraachit,” Abiad said.
The Israeli military has targeted health workers, claiming that Hezbollah “uses ambulances to transport members and weapons.”
Avichay Adraee, spokesperson for the Israeli military, warned on Friday that troops could target medical personnel carrying out their duty of helping the injured in southern Lebanon.
Adraee called on medical personnel to “avoid engaging with Hezbollah members and cooperating with them. Otherwise, necessary action will be taken against any vehicle transporting armed people regardless of its type.”
Adraee’s warning came as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon said that its peacekeepers withdrew from a watchtower in one of its posts near Dhayra in south Lebanon on Tuesday, after Israeli forces fired at it.
UNIFIL senior leadership announced in a statement on Friday that “peacekeepers on duty at a permanent observation post near Dhayra were observing Israeli soldiers conducting house clearing operations nearby.”
The statement added: “Upon realizing they were being observed, the soldiers fired at the post.”
UNIFIL clarified that the duty guards “withdrew following the incident to avoid being shot.”
It also pointed out that the Israeli military had “repeatedly demanded that UNIFIL vacate its positions along the Blue Line and has deliberately damaged camera, lighting, and communications equipment at some of these positions.”
UNIFIL added: “Despite the pressure exerted on the mission and our troop-contributing countries, peacekeepers remain in position and on task.
“We remind the Israeli army and all actors of their obligations to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property. Any deliberate attack on them is a grave violation of international humanitarian law and Resolution 1701.”
These developments were preceded and followed by Israeli raids on the southern suburbs of Beirut and towns in the south, in addition to the shelling of a second border crossing between Lebanon and Syria in the Qaa region in the Bekaa.
The Masnaa border crossing was targeted once again, which limited the movement of cars and trucks between Lebanon and Syria to one crossing in northern Lebanon after the raids blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.
People could only cross the border on foot and under the surveillance of Israeli reconnaissance aircraft.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, launched a series of military operations targeting northern Israel. Israeli media reported that “a state of emergency was declared in Nahariya Hospital due to a security event in Shomera in Western Galilee.”
The party said it hit “a gathering of soldiers who were sheltering inside a place considered to be safe. Additionally, a truck and several vehicles were hit by rockets launched from Lebanon.”
Israeli media reported that “four wounded people were in critical condition, in addition to other injuries of varying degrees, as a result of rockets fired by Hezbollah on the Shomera area.”
Fires were still raging in the morning after Israeli airstrikes on Thursday night in El-Aamroussieh, Haret Hrek, and the Sainte Therese area, reaching Burj Al-Barajneh in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In the south, the Israeli military used
phosphorous bombs to burn forests and olive groves in the border areas in the western sector.
An airstrike on a house in the town of Bazourieh killed three people, whilst clashes between Hezbollah and Israel continued in the towns of Aitaroun, Taybeh, and Marwahin.
Hezbollah said that it targeted Israeli military sites in the settlements of Al-Malikiyah and Al-Baghdadi.
Relief efforts between Lebanon and international partners continued as a UAE ship docked at Beirut Port, delivering 2,000 tons of aid.
This shipment, provided by the UAE, includes food supplies and essential equipment for shelter centers, offering critical support to the people of Lebanon.
The Army Command announced the arrival of a donation from the Malta-Lebanon Organization to the Lebanese Army.
A UNHCR spokeswoman estimated that around one-fifth of the Lebanese population has been displaced from their homes so far.
She said the government-run displacement centers in Lebanon had become overcrowded, and that the number of people fleeing from Lebanon to Syria had reached 430,000.
The Crisis and Disaster Management Room in the Beirut Governorate — in collaboration with the Farah Al-Ataa Association, a civil society organization, successfully relocated displaced people from tents along the Beirut waterfront to a shelter center in the Karantina area.
In the initial phase, more than 400 displaced people were transferred, with the second phase set to be completed in the coming days.
Health workers, journalists bear brunt of Israeli strikes in Lebanon
https://arab.news/83q5d
Health workers, journalists bear brunt of Israeli strikes in Lebanon
- Mikati denounces ‘Israeli aims to intimidate media and obscure their crimes’
- UN peacekeepers say Israeli troops fired at Lebanon post
WEF panel stresses correlation between environmental degradation and security
DUBAI: “Safeguarding Nature, Securing People” was the title of a panel gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday which discussed the connected issues of environmental degradation and security.
The discussion also highlighted the impact of land degradation, droughts, and extreme weather events on human and national security.
Ibrahim Thiaw, undersecretary-general of the UN and executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, moderated the session and opened by saying that in many countries, security concerns were focused on “national security, armed forces and intelligence services, but we know that the environment is also affecting us deeply.”
Ilwad Elman, chief operating officer of the Elman Peace Centre, said that only recently had we “begun to draw the strong correlation and the intersection of the two crises of human security and (that) caused by environmental stressors and environmental aggregation” and added: “In Somalia, “we find ourselves right at the nexus of that.”
She added that food and water insecurity posed not only environmental challenges but also had a “direct linkage to the desperation that yields young people particularly to be motivated to join armed groups” — not because they agreed with the ideology, but “to be able to survive.”
Elman explained the Elman Peace Centre works on “sustainable peace building” and “the rehabilitation and reintegration of young people.”
It focuses on climate resilience even though that is not its main mandate because “the environments we’re sending people back to are changing so rapidly our peace building interventions were not sustainable,” she said.
Such crises are not only limited to developing countries. Ukraine, which supplies food to 400 million people globally, was unable to do so due to the war, according to the country’s Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food Vitalii Koval.
Some 60 percent of Ukraine’s income comes from agrarian food exports, which has been drastically impacted. This, combined with the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, has had disastrous consequences for the country, he said.
Koval added: “It is very important that the world community should elaborate new mechanisms to respond, and these mechanisms need to be immediate — not tomorrow, not sometime in the future, (but) today.”
Conflicts undoubtedly exacerbate environmental stressors, but the opposite is also true.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir said: “Land degradation leads to conflicts, leads to violence, leads to extremism, leads to terrorism, leads to migration, leads to political instability, and leads to all of us paying an extremely high price to deal with the consequences of an issue that, had we paid attention to at the outset, would have cost us a fraction of the resources.”
The link between environmental degradation and security was “very clear, but we have not been paying sufficient attention to it,” he added.
Both Al-Jubeir and Elman said environmental and land degradation were not issues limited to desert or developing countries.
They pointed out the wildfires in California and the impact of such issues on declining water levels on Germany’s Rhine river and the Panama Canal. Drought has meant lower water levels, which means fewer ships can pass through, resulting in delays and increased shipping costs.
Elman also highlighted how the “discourse of climate change has only recently shifted from a very Global North perspective, overlooking the lived realities, the indigenous best practices and solutions from communities on the ground. Resources are distributed in a way that is, I would say, still very imperialistic.”
For example, Elman addressed a meeting of the UN Security Council on the effects of climate change on international peace and security in 2021. The resolution, put forth by Ireland and Niger, was vetoed despite 111 member states being in favor of it.
And so, she said, there was a need for “spaces that are able to move the agenda forward and recognize it as a security threat of global impact, and if the Security Council is not the place for that, other avenues need to be explored.”
Al-Jubeir responded: “If it’s not efficient enough, you do it unilaterally.”
Multilateralism was great for talks, he added, but “if those talks do not lead to concrete results, there should be nothing in the way of preventing countries who have the means to engage with other countries directly and put in place mechanisms that actually work.”
As an example, he said Saudi Arabia launched the Middle East Green Initiative that brought together over 22 countries in the region to help them adopt a circular carbon economy, along with other funding and knowledge-sharing programs that ensured a comprehensive approach.
Why is Israel launching a crackdown in the West Bank after the Gaza ceasefire?
- Prominent human rights groups call it a form of apartheid since the over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have all the rights conferred by Israeli citizenship
In the days since a fragile ceasefire took hold in the Gaza Strip, Israel has launched a major military operation in the occupied West Bank and suspected Jewish settlers have rampaged through two Palestinian towns.
The violence comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic pressure from his far-right allies after agreeing to the truce and hostage-prisoner exchange with the Hamas militant group. US President Donald Trump has, meanwhile, rescinded the Biden administration’s sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
It’s a volatile mix that could undermine the ceasefire, which is set to last for at least six weeks and bring about the release of dozens of hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, most of whom will be released into the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Escalations in one area frequently spill over, raising further concerns that the second and far more difficult phase of the Gaza ceasefire — which has yet to be negotiated — may never come.
A rampage and a military raid
Dozens of masked men rampaged through two Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank late Monday, hurling stones and setting cars and property ablaze, according to local Palestinian officials. The Red Crescent emergency service said 12 people were beaten and wounded.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, carried out a raid elsewhere in the West Bank that the military said was in response to the hurling of firebombs at Israeli vehicles. It said several suspects were detained for questioning, and a video circulating online appeared to show dozens being marched through the streets.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military launched another major operation, this time in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, where its forces have regularly clashed with Palestinian militants in recent years, even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the war there.
At least nine Palestinians were killed on Tuesday, including a 16-year-old, and 40 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The military said its forces carried out airstrikes and dismantled roadside bombs and “hit” 10 militants — though it was not clear what that meant.
Palestinian residents have reported a major increase in Israeli checkpoints and delays across the territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz cast the Jenin operation as part of Israel’s larger struggle against Iran and its militant allies across the region, saying “we will strike the octopus’ arms until they snap.”
The Palestinians view such operations and the expansion of settlements as ways of cementing Israeli control over the territory, where 3 million Palestinians live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering cities and towns.
Prominent human rights groups call it a form of apartheid since the over 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have all the rights conferred by Israeli citizenship. Israel rejects those allegations.
Netanyahu’s far-right partners are up in arms
Netanyahu has been struggling to quell a rebellion by his ultranationalist coalition partners since agreeing to the ceasefire. The agreement requires Israeli forces to withdraw from most of Gaza and release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners — including militants convicted of murder — in exchange for hostages abducted in the Oct. 7 attack.
One coalition partner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, resigned in protest the day the ceasefire went into effect. Another, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened to bolt if Israel does not resume the war after the first phase of the ceasefire is slated to end in early March.
They want Israel to annex the West Bank and to rebuild settlements in Gaza while encouraging what they refer to as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians.
Netanyahu still has a parliamentary majority after Ben-Gvir’s departure, but the loss of Smotrich — who is also the de facto governor of the West Bank — would severely weaken his coalition and likely lead to early elections.
That could spell the end of Netanyahu’s nearly unbroken 16 years in power, leaving him even more exposed to longstanding corruption charges and an expected public inquiry into Israel’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack.
Trump’s return could give settlers a freer hand
Trump’s return to the White House offers Netanyahu a potential lifeline.
The newly sworn-in president, who lent unprecedented support to Israel during his previous term, has surrounded himself with aides who support Israeli settlement. Some support the settlers’ claim to a biblical right to the West Bank because of the Jewish kingdoms that existed there in antiquity.
The international community overwhelmingly considers settlements illegal.
Among the flurry of executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in office was one rescinding the Biden administration’s sanctions on settlers and Jewish extremists accused of violence against Palestinians.
The sanctions — which had little effect — were one of the few concrete steps the Biden administration took in opposition to the close US ally, even as it provided billions of dollars in military support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza, among the deadliest and most destructive in decades.
Trump claimed credit for helping to get the Gaza ceasefire agreement across the finish line in the final days of the Biden presidency.
But this week, Trump said he was “not confident” it would hold and signaled he would give Israel a free hand in Gaza, saying: “It’s not our war, it’s their war.”
Qatar, Egypt, US using Cairo hub to monitor Gaza ceasefire
- Negotiators tackling disputes, violations in bid to prevent escalation
- Qatari official says ‘we’re banking on the support’ of Trump administration
LONDON: Negotiators from Qatar, Egypt and the US are operating a hub in Cairo to monitor and protect the ceasefire in Gaza amid concerns over violations, The Guardian reported.
US President Donald Trump took credit for the ceasefire deal, but said he was not confident that it would hold.
Majed Al-Ansari, an adviser to the Qatari prime minister and spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday: “If it wasn’t for (Trump) this deal wouldn’t be in place right now, so we’re banking on the support of this administration.”
Violations of the ceasefire, the first stage of which is set to last six weeks, have already been reported. On Monday, medics in Gaza said eight people had been struck by Israeli fire.
Negotiations on the second phase are expected to prove more challenging, and will begin early next month.
The hub aims to smooth communication between Israel and Hamas amid a dearth of trust. Timed hostage and prisoner releases have been spaced out to allow for coordination and time to solve disputes.
The deal “gives us enough time to exchange lists, agree on them, deal with any issues with the lists which might arrive and deal with any breaches,” Al-Ansari said.
Breaches are reported to the hub, which operates around the clock, and mediators speak to liaisons from Israel and Hamas in an attempt to prevent escalation.
“This is what has been happening in the last 48 hours. We got calls about possible breaches, we dealt with them immediately and the ceasefire held in place,” Al-Ansari said.
Libyan PM uncertain US policy on Libya will shift under Trump
DAVOS: Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Al-Debeibeh on Wednesday said that opinions are mixed on whether a new US administration under President Donald Trump would shift its approach to the Libyan situation.
Panel moderator Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, editor of Foreign Affairs, asked Al-Debeibeh to reflect on Trump’s return and if his new term as president would affect Libya’s stability.
“I believe not only Libya fears the return of Trump, many others, including Europeans, have somehow reservations and different views about how to perceive (it),” he told a panel on global security at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Al-Debeibeh said Libya’s ongoing political crisis cannot be solved only from the point of view of security.
“Our institutions are still weak,” he said. “If we only focus on security, this is not the best recipe to solve the problems we have. Like many examples, in Syria lately and Afghanistan, we (in Libya) reject the idea of security-(based) solutions only.
“There are alternatives that we need to look into, such as reviving our heritage, our economic fabric, and this is precisely what is going to be the building blocks leading to a long-lasting stability here.
“If Mr Trump, the new American administration or whoever is in charge, if they really want Libya to be stable, then they shall look to find other ways to help us, not only through security, because otherwise, we are going back to square one.
“Unfortunately, when the diagnosis is wrong, then the result is wrong.
“If we focus on security only, this is going to backfire at the end of the day.”
Al-Debeibeh pointed to the fragility of state institutions and challenges to rebuilding a new Libya. But he said that his country is recovering slowly through the national unity government, and has managed to reestablish state institutions and services, today more than any time before.
“I have to tell you things are not rosy, but we somehow managed to recover to normal life in Libya and I would very much like thank the international community for backing us.”
He said the main challenge remains in the work to democratize Libyan society, saying that “democracy is the only solution.”
However, foreign intervention in Libya is a big challenge, because there are “powers who want to intervene, they want to impose their own agenda for many reasons.”
Yet, his country still needs to establish democratic institutions, a constitution that reflects Libyan society and to hold a referendum on the draft constitution.
“We have enough of weapons, we need stability to begin with, we need to stabilize the economy because it is the way to stabilize the political situation. We have oil, we want foreign companies to come to invest in a win-win situation. So, the more the economy is stable, the more we have a stable country.”
