How the Gaza war has impacted the pace of Abraham Accords-style Arab-Israeli normalization

(L-R) Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House in Washington, D.C., on September 15, 2020. (AFP)
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Updated 26 September 2024
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How the Gaza war has impacted the pace of Abraham Accords-style Arab-Israeli normalization

  • The 2020 accords normalized relations between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain, marking a major step in the peace process
  • The Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack and the resulting war in Gaza paused the accords’ momentum, complicating future agreements

LONDON: It is exactly four years since Donald Trump stood on the South Lawn of the White House, flanked by a beaming Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the UAE, each holding a copy of the Abraham Accords Declaration.

The signing of the agreements on Sept. 15, 2020, a process driven by the Trump administration, appeared to be the most significant development in the Arab-Israeli peace process for years.




In the historic Abraham Accords, Bahrain and the UAE recognized Israel’s sovereignty and agreed to normalize diplomatic relations. (AFP/File)

Both Bahrain and the UAE recognized Israel’s sovereignty and agreed to normalize diplomatic relations — the only Arab states to have done so since Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

In so doing, as the one-page declaration signed by all four parties affirmed, they recognized “the importance of maintaining and strengthening peace in the Middle East … based on mutual understanding and coexistence,” and vowed to “seek to end radicalization and conflict and to provide all children a better future.”

A number of “firsts” followed. For the first time, it became possible to call direct to Israel from the UAE, and Emirati ships and planes began to dock and land in Israeli ports and airports. Various trade and business deals were made.




The Abraham Accords ushered in an era of understanding that saw the opening of Abu Dhabi’s Abrahamic Family House, which has been featured in TIME Magazine's annual list of the World’s Greatest Places. (WAM photo)

The region’s major player was missing from the White House photo op that day in 2020, but speculation that Saudi Arabia would soon follow suit and normalize relations with Israel was rife.

Three years later, in a groundbreaking and wide-ranging interview with Fox News, broadcast on Sept. 20, 2023, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave the biggest hint yet that such a historic breakthrough might be afoot.




Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman being interviewed by Bret Baier of Fox News in September 2023. (AN Archives)

“Every day we get closer,” the Saudi crown prince told Bret Baier of Fox News, adding Saudi Arabia could work with Israel, although he added that any such agreement, which would be “the biggest historical deal since the end of the Cold War,” would depend on positive outcomes for the Palestinians.

“If we have a breakthrough of reaching a deal that give the Palestinians their needs and make the region calm, we’re going to work with whoever is there,” he said.

Just over two weeks later, on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and its allies attacked Israel. All bets were off, and the Abraham Accords seemed doomed to go the way of every previous initiative in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process since the Madrid Conference of 1991.




People pay tribute near the coffins of some of the people killed in the October 7 deadly attack by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip, during a funeral in Kfar Harif in southern Israel, on Oct. 25, 2023. (AFP)

But, say some commentators, despite the death and destruction of the past year, it would be wrong to write off the accords completely, and whether or not the process can be resuscitated could depend on which of the two main candidates in the coming US presidential election is handed the keys to the White House by the American electorate on Nov. 5.

“I’m not sure I would describe the accords as being on life support,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International Affairs).

“They are actually weathering this very difficult storm of the Gaza war. That is certainly putting the leadership and the decision-making in the UAE and Bahrain under a microscope, and of course that poses difficult domestic dynamics for these leaders to navigate.

“But at the same time, they remain committed to the Abraham Accords and haven’t shown any willingness to walk back from them or to break diplomatic ties. They in fact are arguing that by having diplomatic ties with Israel, they have a better avenue to support Palestinians and work behind the scenes with the Israelis.”




​This picture taken on March 28, 2024 from Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip shows buildings which have been destroyed by Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hamas militants since the October 7 attack on southern Israel. (AFP)

As for the Israelis, “normalization with Saudi Arabia is not on the cards for now, partly because obviously the Israeli leadership has different priorities right now, and after Oct. 7, the price of normalization became higher.

“And I think the Israeli leadership is calculating that if they wait this out — and perhaps over-anticipating that the Saudis will still be there, which could be a miscalculation — the price that they have to pay for normalization will go down again.

“I think that they’re assuming that the conditions in the region might change, or perhaps if the outcome of the US election leads to a Trump victory, that might alter what they need to do, what commitments they need to make toward the Palestinians that would satisfy the Saudis.”

INNUMBERS

18% Decline in Israel’s overall trade with outside world since eruption of Gaza war in October 2023.

4% Decline in trade between Israel and 7 Arab countries that have normalized ties with it during the same period.

14% Drop in Israel-UAE trade in the last quarter of 2023 following the conflict.

(Source: Abraham Accords Peace Institute)

But for Brian Katulis, senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Middle East Institute in Washington, “it’s a coin toss” whether a Trump or Kamala Harris administration would be most likely to reinvigorate the Abraham Accords.

“As we saw in the candidates’ debate on Tuesday evening, these issues don’t really matter to either of the leaders or the political discourse in America right now,” he said.

“These questions, of the Abraham Accords, of Israel-Palestine or of Iran, don’t really drive the political and policy debate in a major way compared to US domestic issues — immigration, abortion, who we are as a country, inflation.

“When it comes to foreign policy issues, China is much more relevant as a political question.”




Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris participate in a debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)

Although, as the father of the Abraham Accords, Trump might be assumed to be keen to re-engage with an initiative he once saw as a foundation stone of his legacy — in January, a Republican lawmaker nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize — “he’s just so erratic as a leader, and I don’t know that he’ll be focused on it,” Katulis said.

“Harris may actually put more time and thought into it. In the debate, she was the only candidate who talked about a two-state solution, and that’s music to the ears of anyone in places like Saudi Arabia, which have been calling for a state of Palestine forever.”

But Saudi Arabia is unlikely to shift far from the position it took in 2002, when it was the author of the Arab Peace Initiative, which was adopted by the Council of Arab States.

This offered Israel peace and normalization of relations with all 22 Arab states, in exchange for “full Israeli withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land-for-peace principle, and Israel’s acceptance of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

Merissa Khurma, program director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, said: “And of course, the Abraham Accords agreements completely flipped that formula because they offered normalization first.




Israel's revenge attacks against Palestinians in Gaza has not spared houses of worship, making efforts at restoring peace more difficult. (AFP)

“The premise they presented was that it was through these channels of communication that have now been established that we can try to address the thorny issues in the Palestinian-Israeli arena.

“But we all know that the reality on the ground was very different, that settlements and outposts have expanded and with the emergence of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, all of that has been accelerated.

“I’ve spoken to officials and thought leaders in the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, and there’s consensus that the Abraham Accords are, at best, on pause. Someone even said the accords are in a coma and they will need to be resuscitated after the war ends in Gaza.”

Harris, Joe Biden’s vice president, is likely to follow in his administration’s footsteps to some extent when it comes to the Abraham Accords.

“The Biden administration was a bit slow to embrace the model of the accords when they came into office, really, because, you know, they saw it as Trump’s legacy, and they were very partisan in their approach,” said Vakil.

“But they did come around, and they did begin to embrace this idea of integration through normalization. The reality, though — and this is what we’ve seen born out since Oct. 7 — is that without providing a mechanism and commitment to restart a peace process, and one that allows Palestinians to have self-determination, the accords, on their own, cannot deliver Israel’s security or provide the region with that integration, that economic and security integration that they’re seeking.”




Israel's relentless revenge attacks that has killed  more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza to date has only served to derail attempts at restoring peace in the region. (AFP)/File)

A reboot of the agreements in the wake of the cessation of the current hostilities would be an opportunity — if not a precondition — to reconfigure them and put Palestinian demands at the top of the agenda.

“The Abraham Accords was a well-intentioned initiative led by countries in the region that wanted to prioritize their national security and economic interests,” Merissa Khurma said.

“No one can say taking the path of peace is a bad idea. But the heavy criticism from the region and the Arab public in general, which you can see in the polling from 2021 until today, is that in doing so they basically sidelined the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and flipped the formula that was the essence of the Arab Peace Initiative led by Saudi Arabia in 2002.”


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To move forward successfully, said Katulis, whoever becomes America’s next president must “prioritize Palestine and make it a big item on the agenda.”

To do this, they should “go back to good old-fashioned collective diplomacy and form a regional coalition with a new international framework to create the state of Palestine. It’s ripe for the picking, and I would lean into it.”

Katulis added: “I would advise either President Trump or Harris to work by, with and through all of these countries, from Saudi Arabia to Morocco and others, those that have accords and those that want to. I would spend at least six months assembling everything that people have argued since the war started, and what they’d be willing to do, and what they’d be willing to invest, and present to Israel, the Israeli public and its politicians an offer — a state of Palestine that is going to be good for your security and will also insulate you from the threats presented by Iran.




Palestinian demonstrators sit before Israeli border guards in Beit Jala, occupied West Bank on September 3, 2024 in solidarity with a Palestinian family whose land was taken over by armed Israeli settlers planning to build a new outpost, aggravating animosities. (AFP)

“It is important to think practical, to think realistic, and realistic is that the next US president is not going to actually attend to a lot of these issues, so we’ve got to work with and through people diplomatically.

“Use that new energy in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and other places, use the resources they have to actually do some good, and that good should have as its endpoint making an offer to say, this is a state of Palestine which will coexist with Israel.”

That new energy, said Khurma, was evident at the 33rd summit of the Arab League in Bahrain in May.

In the joint declaration issued afterward, the league reiterated “our unwavering position and our call for a just and comprehensive peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine, as well as our support for the call of His Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, for an international peace conference to be convened and for irreversible steps to be taken to implement the two-state solution, in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative and authoritative international resolutions, with a view to establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the basis of the lines of 4 June 1967.”




Palestinian Authority's President Mahmud Abbas holds a placard showing maps of historical Palestine as he meets by video conference with representatives of Palestinian factions gathered at the Palestinian embassy in Beirut on September 3, 2020,. (POOL/AFP)

For whoever becomes the next president of the US, this initiative could be the vital missing component needed to jumpstart the Abraham Accords.

“When they met in Bahrain, the Arab countries revived the Arab Peace Initiative and took it a step further,” Khurma said.

“In the US media, there was very little coverage, but the declaration is very important because it shows that even in the midst of this horrific war, these countries are still willing to revive the Arab Peace Initiative, a peace plan with Israel, and to extend a hand to normalize with Israel, but of course, without leaving the Palestinians behind.”
 

 


US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah

Updated 1 min 47 sec ago
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US, UK warplanes attack Houthi targets in Sanaa, Dhamar, Hodeidah

  • Strikes mostly on military bases, according to media reports
  • Militia supporters rally in Sanaa in show of solidarity with people of Palestine

AL-MUKALLA: American and British warplanes on Friday launched a series of strikes against Houthi targets in several Yemeni cities, the latest round of military operations against the militia in response to its attacks on ships.
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV said the “aggression” planes conducted four strikes on Al-Thawra district in Sanaa, one south of the central city of Dhamar, and seven on Hodeida airport and the Al-Katheeb region in the western city of Hodeidah.
Photographs and videos posted on social media show large, thick balls of smoke billowing from locations in Sanaa and Hodeidah.
Local media said the airstrikes targeted the Houthi’s Al-Saeyanah base in Sanaa, Al-Katheeb naval base in Hodeidah and a military base in Dhamar.
The Aden Al-Ghad news site said three strikes were launched against positions in the Mukayras region of the central province of Al-Bayda, while residents in the southern province of Dhale reported seeing three missiles flying overhead in the direction of the Arabian Sea.
The attacks happened as thousands of Houthi supporters rallied in the streets of Sanaa and other areas to express solidarity with the people of Palestine and Lebanon and opposition to Israel’s war, and to condemn Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Houthi government spokesperson Hashem Sharaf Al-Din condemned the airstrikes, describing them as a “desperate attempt” by the US and UK to pressure the militia into ending its attacks on ships and missile and drone attacks against Israel in support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Since January, the US and UK militaries have launched repeated strikes on Sanaa, Hodeidah, Taiz and other Yemeni areas held by the Houthis, targeting drone and missile launchers, storage facilities and ammunition depots.
The latest followed a spate of Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea over the past week.
On Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck ports, power stations and fuel tanks in Hodeidah after the Houthis fired a ballistic missile at Israel on Saturday.


Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

Updated 31 min 36 sec ago
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Erdogan lashes out at Israel for attack on UN chief

  • Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan said
  • “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused Israel of “shamelessly” attacking UN chief Antonio Guterres by declaring him “persona non grata” for not quickly condemning Iran’s ballistic missile barrage.
Israel “is shamelessly challenging UN Secretary-General Guterres,” Erdogan told an audience at a defense technology fair in the southern province of Adana.
He added that “196 countries in the world will stand by the UN secretary-general” against Israel.
Relations between the UN and Israel have been difficult since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Guterres was declared persona non grata by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, accusing him of failing to specifically condemn Iran’s missile attack on the country this week. Katz called Guterres an “anti-Israel secretary-general who lends support to terrorists, rapists, and murderers.”
“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel does not deserve to step foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said in a statement.
Guterres pointedly condemned Iran’s attack at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
The Security Council on Thursday offered its full support to Guterres.
Without naming Israel, the council’s five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 non-permanent members “underscored the need for all member states to have a productive and effective relationship with the secretary-general.”


US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

Updated 48 min 44 sec ago
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US arranges flights to bring Americans out of Lebanon as others seek escape

  • Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation
  • Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said: “The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans”

WASHINGTON: US-arranged flights have brought about 350 Americans and their immediate relatives out of Lebanon this week during escalated fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, while thousands of others still there face airstrikes and diminishing commercial flights.
In Washington, senior State Department and White House officials met Thursday with two top Arab American officials to discuss US efforts to help American citizens leave Lebanon. The two leaders also separately met with officials from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michigan state Rep. Alabas Farhat and Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, used the White House meeting to “really drive home a lot of important points about the issues our community members are facing on the ground and a lot of the logistical problems that they’re encountering with it when it comes to this evacuation,” Ayoub said.
Some officials and community leaders in Michigan, home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, are calling on the US to start an evacuation. Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said that was not being considered right now.
“The US military is, of course, on the ready and has a whole wide range of plans. Should we need to evacuate American citizens out of Lebanon, we absolutely can,” Singh told reporters.
Israel has opened a pounding air campaign deep into Lebanon and a ground incursion in the country’s south targeting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Iran on Tuesday fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel, leaving the region bracing for any Israeli retaliation and fearing an all-out regional war.
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas, another Iranian-backed militant group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, triggering the war in Gaza.
Other countries, from Greece to the United Kingdom, Japan and Colombia, have arranged flights or sent military planes to ferry out their citizens.
As Israeli bombardments targeting senior Hezbollah leaders shook southern neighborhoods in Lebanon’s capital last week, “We could still see, hear and feel everything” despite fleeing to the mountains outside Beirut, said Nicolette Hutcherson, a longtime humanitarian volunteer living in Lebanon with her husband and three children.
The only seats Hutcherson’s family could find on commercial carriers were for flights weeks away and for thousands of dollars, she said. Ultimately, Hutcherson and her young children joined crowds heading to Lebanon’s Mediterranean marinas, finding spots on pleasure boats turned evacuation ships for the nine-hour ride to Cyprus.
Her husband was able to find a single seat out on a plane days later to join them.
Another American family was mourning Kamel Ahmad Jawad, a resident of metro Detroit’s Dearborn area, who was killed in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. Family members said he stayed to help civilians too old, infirm or poor to flee.
He had been on the phone with his daughter Tuesday when the impact of a strike knocked him off his feet, his daughter, Nadine Kamel Jawad, said in a statement.
“He simply got up, found his phone, and told me he needed to finish praying in case another strike hit him,” she said.
The State Department has been telling Americans for almost a year not to travel to Lebanon and advising them to leave the country on commercial flights for months. It also has made clear that government-run evacuations are rare, while offering emergency loans to aid travel out of Lebanon.
Some Americans said relatives who are US citizens or green-card holders have been struggling for days or weeks to get seats on flights out of Lebanon. Limits on withdrawing money from banks due to Lebanon’s longstanding economic collapse and intermittent electricity and Internet have made it difficult, they said.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a lawyer based in Washington, paid $5,000 to get a female relative on the last seat of a flight out of Beirut on Saturday.
“She was on her way to the airport” when Israeli began one of its first days of intensified bombing, Abou-Chedid said.
By Thursday, some Americans said their loved ones had been able to secure tickets for upcoming flights and were hopeful.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US would continue to organize flights as long the security situation in Lebanon is dire and there is demand.
Miller said Lebanon’s flag carrier, Middle East Airlines, also had set aside about 1,400 seats on flights for Americans over the past week. Several hundred had taken them, he said.
Miller could not speak to the cost of the airline’s flights, over which the US government has no regulatory oversight, but said the maximum fare that would be charged for a US-organized contract flight would be $283 per person.
More than 6,000 American citizens have contacted the US Embassy in Beirut seeking information about departing the country over the past week.
Not all of those have actually sought assistance in leaving, and Miller said the department understood that some Americans, many of them dual US-Lebanese nationals and longtime residents of the country, may choose to stay.
Miller said the embassy is prepared to offer temporary loans to Americans who choose to remain in Lebanon but want to relocate to a potentially safer area of the country. The embassy also would provide emergency loans to Americans who wish to leave on the US-contracted flights.


Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

Updated 04 October 2024
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Israeli bombardment kills 29 people in Gaza, militants renew rocket fire into Israel

  • The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel

CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 29 Palestinians on Friday, medics said, and sirens blared in southern Israel in response to renewed rocket fire from militants in the Palestinian enclave.
The new rocket salvoes indicated that Hamas-led militant factions in Gaza are still able to fire projectiles into Israel despite a year-long Israeli aerial and ground offensive that has turned wide areas of the enclave into wasteland.
On Friday, the Israeli military said sirens sounded in southern Israel for the first time in around two months.
“Almost a year after Oct. 7, Hamas is still threatening our civilians with their terrorism and we will continue operating against them,” it added, referring to the anniversary of Hamas’ cross-border attack that touched off the Gaza war.


Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing

Updated 11 sec ago
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Israeli threats paralyze paramedics’ work, halt two hospitals, close key land crossing

  • transport minister said that the crossing was subject to the authority of the Lebanese state
  • Israeli air raids at night targeted Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, rumored successor to its assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah

BEIRUT: The Israeli military is preventing paramedics, regardless of affiliation, from carrying out relief efforts in Beirut’s southern suburb, as well as in southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese state’s Civil Defense center, located in the Hadath area near Beirut’s southern suburb, received a call purportedly from the Israeli military on Thursday night warning them not to “move any vehicles toward the targeted site,” following a series of airstrikes carried in the Mrayjeh area of the suburb, despite having received distress calls for missing persons.

On Friday morning photojournalists attempting to reach the site of the strikes, which shook Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and were heard as far as Sidon, were targeted by an Israeli combat drone.

Hezbollah said in a statement: “One member of the Civil Defense from the Islamic Health Organization was killed and several others injured while attempting to clear the rubble at the Mrayjeh site, as they were targeted by a drone strike.”

The Israeli targeting extended to paramedics and hospitals in the southern border area, resulting in two hospitals being forced out of service.

Four paramedics from Hezbollah were killed when they were targeted by a drone strike at the entrance to Marjayoun Governmental Hospital in the morning. The hospital administration decided to evacuate staff and halt work.

An Israeli airstrike also targeted a health center in the town of Kherbet Selem, killing two paramedics and wounding several others.

Mays Al-Jabal Hospital announced the suspension of work “due to the Israeli attacks on hospital staff, including the use of internationally prohibited white phosphorus in the vicinity of the hospital, as well as difficulties in securing diesel, electricity, water, food, access for medical and nursing staff and medicines.”

Saint Therese Medical Hospital in the southern suburb of Beirut announced that it was targeted by Israeli airstrikes, causing serious damage to the building, medical equipment and operating rooms. It appealed for help to continue its operations.

The Israeli military carried out more than 12 airstrikes on Mrayjeh. According to Israeli media, it used “fortification-piercing bombs and dropped 73 tons of explosives, in an attempt to assassinate the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, Hashem Safieddine, a potential successor to the party’s former chief Hassan Nasrallah.” The attack was described as “the largest since the assassination of Nasrallah a week ago.”

More than 15 hours after the airstrikes, the fate of Safieddine and those who were meeting with him “in the deepest shelters,” as the Israelis described it, remains unclear. Hezbollah did not issue an official statement.

The Israeli military said: “We are still assessing the damage caused by the airstrikes that targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.”

Israel’s pursuit of Hezbollah extended on Friday morning to cutting off the main artery that connects Lebanon to Syria.

Less than 24 hours after Israel warned Lebanon not to use the Masnaa border crossing for Hezbollah military purposes, Israeli warplanes struck the Lebanese side of the land beyond the police post, creating a deep crater that cut off the road in both directions, completely disrupting traffic.

Thousands of Lebanese and Syrian civilians have fled to Syria to escape the war.

According to security reports, the Israeli military shelled “a Hezbollah tunnel on the border between Syria and Lebanon,” but the report has not been confirmed by either side.

Lebanese Minister of Public Works Ali Hamieh said that the Israeli raid “landed inside Lebanese territory, creating a four-meter-wide crater.”

Reporters in Bekaa said that “warplanes launched three missiles.”

People crossing the border, including women and children, were stuck on the road between the two border points for hours, which forced them to continue their journey on foot.

The Israeli military had previously bombed the Matraba border crossing between Syria and Lebanon in Hermel.

There are six legal crossings between Lebanon and Syria, in addition to dozens of illegal crossings used for smuggling and by Hezbollah.

Israeli raids on Beirut’s southern suburb, southern Lebanon and northern Bekaa continued on Friday, reaching flea markets in Tarya and blocking the main road that connects the village to its neighborhoods.

The raids also targeted Hermel, the surroundings of the Lebanese University in Beirut’s southern suburb, and a warehouse adjacent to Beirut’s airport, without affecting air traffic.

The Israeli military instructed on Friday the residents of over 20 villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately and head north of Al-Awali River.

The warnings created a state of shock among residents, some of whom refused to evacuate and remained in their houses.

In Qlayaa, Father Pierre Al-Rahi of the St. George’s Maronite Church urged residents “not to leave the village despite the threats.

He said: “We are peaceful citizens and there are no military movements or facilities in our area.

“We took a final decision to protect our village from the entry of weapons and we promise not to leave.”

Rmeish — a predominantly Christian village on the southern border — was subject to Israeli hostilities for the first time.

A crisis cell was established next to Beirut’s port to provide shelters for displaced people in the areas of Keserwan and Mount Lebanon.

Hezbollah announced that it carried out several operations against Israeli military posts, including “bombing Krayot, north of Haifa, with a rocket salvo, and the Ilaniya base.”

The militant group also targeted “artillery emplacements in south of Kiryat Shmona, and a Merkava in the surroundings of Malkia with a guided missile.”

Israel’s Army Radio reported that “about 60 missiles were launched from Lebanon toward Israel since the morning.”

The Israeli military published footage of their incursion into the Lebanese border village of Kfarkila, where it found “dozens of weapons left behind by Hezbollah.”

The militant group, however, doubted the authenticity of the footage.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Beirut on a diplomatic mission having received special permission.

Last week, Lebanon prohibited an Iranian plane from landing due to Israel’s direct threats to Beirut air traffic control tower.

Araghchi held several meetings with a number of officials, affirming that “Iran stands with Lebanon and Hezbollah.”

He said: “We aren’t planning on continuing this war unless Israel decided to continue its hostilities.

“If the Israeli side took any measures against us, we will respond, and our response will be fully appropriate and studied.”

Araghchi noted that the Iranian attack against Israel “was an act of self-defense and in response to the attacks on Iranian interests,” adding that “we only hit military and security posts.”