JERUSALEM: A US envoy was in Israel to press for deescalation with Lebanon, as an Israeli official said Hezbollah had fired more than 5,000 projectiles across the border since the start of the Gaza war.
Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily cross-border fire since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel which triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
US Presidential Special Envoy Amos Hochstein met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his team in Jerusalem days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on a Middle East tour that a Gaza ceasefire was the best way to resolve the Hezbollah-Israel violence.
“I can confirm that (US President Joe) Biden’s envoy... met with our prime minister,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told a press briefing.
It came as Mencer said Hezbollah has fired over 5,000 rockets, anti-tank missiles and explosive UAVs at Israeli territory since hostilities started.
“We are defending against Hezbollah aggression. There is no territorial dispute between Lebanon and Israel,” Mencer said.
Hochstein also met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, with whom he discussed “the relentless attacks and rocket fire from Hezbollah, instigated by Iran, toward Israel’s northern towns and cities,” according to a statement from the presidential office.
Hezbollah says it has carried out more than 2,100 military operations against Israel since October 8, the day after Hamas’s attack, according to a statement released by the militant group last week.
Hezbollah escalated attacks last week after its leading commander Taleb Abdallah was killed in an Israeli strike in the village of Jouaiyya on Tuesday. The Israeli army described him as “one of Hezbollah’s most senior commanders in southern Lebanon.”
That prompted the Iran-backed Lebanese movement to launch targeted strikes on several Israeli army bases, it said.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari on Sunday warned that “Hezbollah’s increasing aggression is bringing us to the brink of what could be a wider escalation — one that could have devastating consequences for Lebanon and the entire region.”
The United Nations has expressed concern about the recent escalation on the Israel-Lebanon border and warned of the danger of miscalculation causing a wider escalation.
Biden envoy in Israel as northern border tensions flare
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Biden envoy in Israel as northern border tensions flare
- Hochstein also met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, with whom he discussed “the relentless attacks and rocket fire from Hezbollah
Israeli settler attack injures Palestinian baby, five arrested
- The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack
- Israeli police said five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair“
JERUSALEM: Israeli security forces announced on Thursday the arrest of five Israeli settlers over their alleged involvement in an attack on a Palestinian home that injured a baby girl in the occupied West Bank.
The eight-month-old infant suffered “moderate injuries to the face and head” in the late Wednesday attack, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
It blamed the attack on “a group of armed settlers,” accusing them of “throwing stones at homes and property” in the town of Sair, north of Hebron.
A statement from the Israeli police said that five suspects had been arrested for their “alleged involvement in serious, violent incidents in the village of Sair.”
Israeli security forces had received reports of “stones being thrown by Israeli civilians toward a Palestinian home,” adding a Palestinian girl was injured.
“The preliminary investigation determined the involvement of several suspects who came from a nearby outpost,” the statement said, referring to Israeli settlements not officially recognized by Israeli authorities.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal by the international community.
Some are also illegal under Israeli law, though many of those are later given official recognition.
Almost none of the perpetrators of previous attacks by settlers have been held to account by the Israeli authorities.
A Telegram group linked to the “Hilltop Youth,” a movement of hard-line settlers who advocate direct action against Palestinians, posted a video showing property damage in Sair.
More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, as do around three million Palestinians.
Violence involving settlers has risen in recent years, according to the United Nations, and October was the worst month since it began recording such incidents in 2006, with 264 attacks that caused casualties or property damage.
The violence in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since 1967, has surged since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, which triggered the Gaza war.
Since the start of the war, Israeli troops and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants as well as dozens of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry.
According to official Israeli figures, at least 44 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations in the same period.
