JERUSALEM: Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has withdrawn a threat to quit the government if Israel does not return to fighting in Gaza, several Israeli news sites reported on Monday.
Earlier this month, Smotrich opposed a ceasefire deal that aims to secure the release of nearly 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, arguing it endangered Israeli security and stopped Israel from achieving its war goals.
Hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party resigned from Netanyahu’s cabinet over the deal.
Smotrich stopped short of resigning but said if Israel agreed to a full end to the war before achieving its aims in Gaza — which include the complete destruction of Hamas — he and his party, Religious Zionism, would also leave the coalition.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Smotrich to stay in the coalition to keep the right wing government intact and the finance minister agreed, Israel’s Yediot reported on Monday.
Under the multi-phase ceasefire deal, 33 Israeli hostages held in Gaza will be released before negotiations begin to agree the release of the remaining 65 and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Israel is due to release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of the ceasefire deal.
Some of the families believe the second stage will not be implemented and that their relatives risk being abandoned. They have staged a series of protests against the current deal.
Israel’s far-right finance minister withdraws threat to quit coalition over ceasefire deal
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Israel’s far-right finance minister withdraws threat to quit coalition over ceasefire deal
- Hard-line National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and two other ministers from his nationalist-religious party resigned from Netanyahu’s cabinet over the deal
Israeli troops to remain in Jenin refugee camp, defense minister says
- Israel Katz says ‘Jenin refugee camp will not be what it was’
- Palestinian Authority condemns ‘provocative’ comments by Katz
Hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armored vehicles have been fighting sporadic gunbattles with Palestinian militants while carrying out searches in the streets and alleyways for weapons and equipment.
“The Jenin refugee camp will not be what it was,” Katz said during a visit to the refugee camp. “After the operation is completed, IDF forces will remain in the camp to ensure that terrorism does not return.”
He did not give details and a military spokesperson declined to comment.
The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned what it called Katz’s “provocative” statement and called for international pressure on Israel to stop the operation, which has already been condemned by countries including France and Jordan.
Israeli forces went into Jenin immediately after the start of a six-week ceasefire in Gaza, saying it aimed to hit militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which receive support from Iran.
Israel regards the West Bank as one part of a multi-front war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, from Gaza to Lebanon and including the Houthis in Yemen, and it turned its attention to the area immediately after the halt to fighting in Gaza.
At least 17 Palestinians, including six members of armed militant groups and a two-year-old girl, have been killed in Jenin and the surrounding villages during the operation, according to Palestinian officials.
The military said forces had killed at least 18 militants and detained 60 wanted individuals, dismantling over 100 explosive devices and seizing a weapons manufacturing workshop.
An investigation into the death of the girl is still ongoing, a spokesperson said.
Within the camp, dozens of houses have been demolished and roads have been dug up by special armored bulldozers, driving thousands of people from their homes. Water has been cut and Palestinian officials say at least 80 percent of the camp’s inhabitants have been forced to leave their homes.
“It’s terrifying, the explosions the fires, the houses which were demolished,” said Intisar Amalka, a displaced camp resident who said her nephew’s car had been destroyed by an Israeli bulldozer.
The Jenin refugee camp, a crowded township built for descendants of Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out in the 1948 Middle East war around the creation of the state of Israel, has been a center of militant activity for decades and the target of repeated raids by Israeli troops.
Just prior to the latest raid, security forces of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited governance in parts of the West Bank, conducted a weeks-long operation of its own in a bid to reassert control in Jenin.
As the fighting in Gaza has subsided, at least for the moment, Israeli forces have stepped up operations across the area, setting up checkpoints and roadblocks which have made traveling even short distances between towns and villages an hours-long trial for Palestinians.
Elsewhere in the northern West Bank, Israeli forces have been carrying out an operation in Tulkarm, another volatile city where they have clashed repeatedly with militants recently, moving into the city itself as well as into its refugee camp.
The West Bank, a kidney-shaped stretch of land about 100 kilometers (62 miles) long, was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and is seen by Palestinians as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza.
It has seen a surge in violence since the start of the war in Gaza in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, many of them armed gunmen but also including stone-throwing youths or uninvolved civilians, and thousands have been arrested.
Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Israel have also killed dozens of Israelis.
Palestinian Authority warns Israel undermines international legitimacy by banning UNRWA
- Presidency spokesperson says Israel attempts to eliminate the refugee status for millions of Palestinians
- UNRWA ban will prevent millions from accessing health, education, and relief services
LONDON: The Palestinian Authority said on Wednesday that Israeli legislation prohibiting UNRWA — the UN agency that supports relief work for Palestinian refugees — from conducting activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem undermines international legitimacy.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian presidency, said that the banning of UNRWA is part of ongoing Israeli attempts to eliminate the refugee status for millions of Palestinians whose families fled their lands during the 1948 war in what became modern-day Israel.
He said that the Israeli decision coming into effect on Thursday will increase the suffering of nearly 6 million Palestinians who rely on UNRWA’s health, education, and humanitarian relief services in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem.
He added that such a decision challenges international legitimacy, international law, and the UN, the official Palestine News and Information Agency reported.
On Tuesday, the US Ambassador to the UN Dorothy Shea said during a Security Council meeting that her country supports “Israel’s sovereign decision.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA chief, urged international leaders to block the Israeli decision that could undermine UN credibility and erode trust in the international community.
Israel says UN aid agency UNRWA ‘riddled’ with Hamas operatives
- “UNRWA equals Hamas. Israel has made public irrefutable evidence UNRWA is riddled with Hamas operatives,” government spokesman David Mencer said
- “Israel makes clear... if a state funds UNRWA, that state is funding terrorists
JERUSALEM: Israel alleged on Wednesday that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) is full of Hamas operatives and reaffirmed its commitment to end ties with the agency this week.
“UNRWA equals Hamas. Israel has made public irrefutable evidence UNRWA is riddled with Hamas operatives,” government spokesman David Mencer told journalists as Israel prepares to cut ties with the agency on Thursday.
“Israel makes clear... if a state funds UNRWA, that state is funding terrorists.
“UNRWA employs over 1,200 Hamas members, including terrorists who carried out the October 7 massacre,” Mencer alleged. “This isn’t aid, it’s direct financial support for terror.”
Israel, backed by Washington, will cease contact with UNRWA from Thursday, a move that has drawn condemnation from aid groups as well as US allies.
UNRWA’s offices and staff in Israel play a major role in the provision of health care and education to Palestinians, including those living in Gaza, devastated by 15 months of war with Israel.
The agency says it has brought in 60 percent of the food aid that has reached Gaza since the war started with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
But it has long clashed with Israeli officials, who have repeatedly accused it of undermining the country’s security.
UNRWA must cease its operations and evacuate all premises it operates in annexed east Jerusalem on Thursday, the Israeli envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
UN chief Antonio Guterres demanded that Israel retract its order.
“I regret this decision and request that the government of Israel retract it,” he said, stressing that UNRWA was “irreplaceable.”
The agency’s chief Philippe Lazzarini said UNRWA’s capacity “far exceeds that of any other entity.”
He called Israel’s actions against UNRWA a “relentless assault... harming the lives and future of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Israel claims that a dozen UNRWA employees were involved in the deadly 2023 attack, and insists that other agencies can pick up the slack to provide essential services, aid and reconstruction — something the UN and many donor governments dispute.
A series of investigations, including one led by French former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA — but stressed Israel had not provided evidence for its headline allegation.
Under President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House earlier this month, United States has thrown its weight behind the move by ally Israel, accusing UNRWA of overstating the impact of the decision.
Under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, Washington had supported UNRWA continuing its work but withheld funding at the insistence of Congress.
Palestinians in the war-devastated Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, are expected to be hardest hit by the Israeli ban.
UNRWA also provides support for Palestinian refugees around the Middle East.
Lebanon urges action from ceasefire committee to ensure Israel meets obligations
- Attacks resulted in 20 injuries in Nabatieh Al-Fawqa and 10 injuries on the Zawtar-Nabatieh Al-Fawqa road
- Najib Mikati said the aggression was an additional violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a blatant breach of the ceasefire arrangements and the provisions of Resolution 1701
BEIRUT: Najib Mikati, the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon, condemned two Israeli airstrikes on the city of Nabatieh on Tuesday evening.
The attacks resulted in 20 injuries in the strike on Nabatieh Al-Fawqa and 10 injuries from the attack on the Zawtar-Nabatieh Al-Fawqa road, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
The two attacks were the first acts of aggression since the ceasefire came into effect on Nov. 27. The ceasefire was extended, at Israel’s request and with the approval of the US, until Feb. 18.
Mikati said the aggression was “an additional violation of Lebanese sovereignty and a blatant breach of the ceasefire arrangements and the provisions of Resolution 1701.”
He contacted the American head of the five-member committee responsible for overseeing the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, Gen. Jasper Jeffers, urging him to adopt a “firm stance to ensure that Israel fulfills its obligations under international law.”
Since Sunday, residents of border areas have been returning to their towns ahead of the extension of the Israeli withdrawal deadline.
But Israeli forces that infiltrated the region responded by firing shots and using smoke and sound bombs, resulting in dozens of casualties and injuries.
The Israeli army said that it was “redeploying its forces to sites in southern Lebanon to enable the gradual effective deployment of the Lebanese army and to remove Hezbollah.”
The Israeli army said that the two airstrikes on Tuesday night in Nabatieh and its surroundings targeted “a truck and a vehicle belonging to Hezbollah that were transporting weapons in the areas of Shaqif and Nabatieh. The aim of the two raids was to remove a threat. The truck and the vehicle were targeted after the Israeli army monitored them while they were transporting weapons.”
The Israeli army in a statement said that it is “determined to operate in accordance with the agreements between Israel and Lebanon, despite Hezbollah’s attempts to re-enter southern Lebanon” and that it “will take action to eliminate any threats to Israel and its citizens.”
Ori Gordin, commander of the Northern Command in Israel, said: “Hezbollah has been defeated, and if it tries to respond, we will eliminate it and its leadership.”
On Wednesday, Israeli incursions into Lebanese airspace and southern villages continued to prevent civilians from returning to their towns.
Israeli army tanks tried to advance into the Mfailha area west of the town of Mays Al-Jabal, where Lebanese army vehicles and personnel confronted them.
The National News Agency reported that “Israeli enemy forces advanced to a distance of 100 meters from the Lebanese army’s position at the western entrance of Mays Al-Jabal” and that “a bulldozer cleared and raised barriers in the middle of the road after passing UNIFIL’s post, under the protection of a Merkava tank firing ahead of it.”
The Israeli army captured four citizens, including a woman, who were inspecting their home on the outskirts of the town of Maroun Al-Ras. It also opened fire on two other individuals, wounding them as they tried to advance in the town.
Israeli forces detained an ambulance in Maroun Al-Ras that was trying to transport the wounded. The Israeli army later released three of the four captured citizens.
An Israeli drone tried to obstruct the return of residents along the Shaqra-Majdal Selm-Hula road by dropping stun grenades on a gathering, injuring five civilians, while on the Taybeh-Qantara road, an Israeli vehicle fired shots into the air to intimidate residents.
On social media, videos showed Lebanese army personnel touring tunnels south of the Litani River that they had taken over from Hezbollah. The tunnels contained several trucks and manufacturing equipment, but no weapons.
The Lebanese military confirmed that “army units have moved into border areas south of the Litani following the withdrawal of the Israeli enemy, in coordination with the Quintet Committee overseeing the ceasefire agreement.”
The ceasefire agreement calls for “the dismantling of all military infrastructure and sites, as well as the confiscation of all unauthorized weapons that contradict these commitments, starting from the area south of the Litani.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli army continued its scorched-earth strategy by demolishing buildings in the town of Kfarkela and bulldozing homes, ancient trees, and infrastructure in Hula, Mays Al-Jabal, and Markaba.
Residents of Kfarkela set up a tent on the Khardali road at the Deir Mimas-Qlaiaa junction, announcing that they plan to stay there until the Israeli army leaves the area, allowing their return.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks on civilians trying to enter Yaroun resulted in six injuries.
Mohammad Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, said: “The right of our people in Lebanon to confront the occupation and its attacks is a legitimate right that they can exercise at the time and place they deem appropriate.
“The chronic international disregard to Israel’s transgressions and persistence in aggression has led it to act with hostility, disregarding all laws.”
Meanwhile, member of the Kataeb parliamentary bloc, Salim Al-Sayegh, said: “The Israeli airstrike on Nabatieh indicates that the war with Lebanon has not ended; it remains an open war.
“If this truce collapses, we must face its consequences with both bitterness and realism. We have already started dealing with its consequences today, yesterday and possibly tomorrow.”
Al-Sayegh called for “a precise reading of the situation, as there is an attempt to drag Lebanon into an arena for conflict in light of the existing balance of power.
“I fear that this could turn into another round of violence that starts in the south, leading to chaos across Lebanon.”
He emphasized the need to deploy the Lebanese army and establish its authority in disputed areas, before resorting to resistance if the agreement is breached.
UAE president receives Hungarian prime minister in Abu Dhabi
- Leaders discuss strengthening bilateral relations
- Foreign ministers sign several memorandums of understanding
LONDON: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, president of the UAE, welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during his official visit to Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
During their meeting at Qasr Al-Shati in Abu Dhabi, the two leaders discussed strengthening bilateral relations and enhancing cooperation in key areas such as economics, trade, investment and renewable energy.
Their discussions focused on promoting sustainable development and meeting citizens’ aspirations for progress and prosperity, the Emirates News Agency reported.
They observed the announcement of education, investment and renewable energy agreements aimed at enhancing cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Budapest and emphasizing the crucial roles of the UAE-Hungary joint economic committee and the political consultations committee, WAM added.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, UAE minister of foreign affairs, signed and exchanged memorandums of understanding with his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto.
