JERUSALEM: Israel will respond forcefully to any attack on it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and of a senior Hezbollah leader in Beirut.
Netanyahu said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies over the past few days, including Hamas and Hezbollah. But he did not mention Haniyeh’s killing, which has drawn threats of revenge on Israel and fueled further concern that the conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
“Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead. Since the strike in Beirut there are threats sounding from all directions. We are prepared for any scenario and we will stand united and determined against any threat. Israel will exact a heavy price for any aggression against us from any arena,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
Israel’s military announced late on Tuesday it had killed Fuad Shukr, whom it named as Hezbollah’s most senior commander and whom it blamed for an attack at the weekend that left a dozen youngsters dead in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Shukr was an adviser to Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, according to Hezbollah sources and to Israeli officials.
Iran-backed Hezbollah confirmed his death on Wednesday, hours after the Palestinian armed group Hamas announced its leader, Haniyeh, had been assassinated in Teheran.
Although the Tehran attack was widely assumed to have been carried out by Israel, Netanyahu’s government made no claim of responsibility and said it would make no comment on Haniyeh’s killing.
Netanyahu says Israel will exact heavy price for revenge attacks
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Netanyahu says Israel will exact heavy price for revenge attacks
- Netanyahu said Israel had delivered crushing blows to Iran’s proxies over the past few days
- “Citizens of Israel, challenging days lie ahead”
Syria’s leader set to visit Berlin with deportations in focus
- Sharaa is scheduled to meet his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president’s office said
BERLIN: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is expected in Berlin on Tuesday for talks, as German officials seek to step up deportations of Syrians, despite unease about continued instability in their homeland.
Sharaa is scheduled to meet his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president’s office said.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office has yet to announce whether he would also hold talks with Sharaa during the visit.
Since ousting Syria’s longtime leader Bashar Assad in late 2024, Sharaa has made frequent overseas trips as the former Islamist rebel chief undergoes a rapid reinvention.
He has made official visits to the United States and France, and a series of international sanctions on Syria have been lifted.
The focus of next week’s visit for the German government will be on stepping up repatriations of Syrians, a priority for Merz’s conservative-led coalition since Assad was toppled.
Roughly one million Syrians fled to Germany in recent years, many of them arriving in 2015-16 to escape the civil war.
In November Merz, who fears being outflanked by the far-right AfD party on immigration, insisted there was “no longer any reason” for Syrians who fled the war to seek asylum in Germany.
“For those who refuse to return to their country, we can of course expel them,” he said.
- ‘Dramatic situation’ -
In December, Germany carried out its first deportation of a Syrian since the civil war erupted in 2011, flying a man convicted of crimes to Damascus.
But rights groups have criticized such efforts, citing continued instability in Syria and evidence of rights abuses.
Violence between the government and minority groups has repeatedly flared in multi-confessional Syria since Sharaa came to power, including recent clashes between the army and Kurdish forces.
Several NGOs, including those representing the Kurdish and Alawite Syrian communities in Germany, have urged Berlin to axe Sharaa’s planned visit, labelling it “totally unacceptable.”
“The situation in Syria is dramatic. Civilians are being persecuted solely on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliation,” they said in a joint statement.
“It is incomprehensible to us and legally and morally unacceptable that the German government knowingly intends to receive a person suspected of being responsible for these acts at the chancellery.”
The Kurdish Community of Germany, among the signatories of that statement, also filed a complaint with German prosecutors in November, accusing Sharaa of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
There have also been voices urging caution within government.
On a trip to Damascus in October, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that the potential for Syrians to return was “very limited” since the war had destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.
But his comments triggered a backlash from his own conservative Christian Democratic Union party.
