JERUSALEM: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday that the window was closing for a diplomatic solution to the standoff with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon.
Gallant’s remarks came as the White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein visited Israel to discuss the crisis on the northern border where Israeli troops have been exchanging missile fire with Hezbollah forces for months.
“The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out,” Gallant told Austin in a phone call, according to a statement from his office.
As long as Hezbollah continued to tie itself to the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been engaged for almost a year, “the trajectory is clear,” he said.
The visit by Hochstein, who is due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, comes amid efforts to find a diplomatic path out of the crisis, which has forced tens of thousands on both sides of the border to leave their homes.
On Monday, Israeli media reported that the head of the army’s northern command had recommended a rapid border operation to create a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
While the war in Gaza has been Israel’s main focus since the attack by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7 last year, the precarious situation in the north has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could drag in the United States and Iran.
A missile barrage by Hezbollah the day after Oct. 7 opened the latest phase of conflict and since then there have been daily exchanges of rockets, artillery fire and missiles, with Israeli jets striking deep into Lebanese territory.
Hezbollah has said it does not seek a wider war at present but would fight if Israel launched one.
Israeli officials have said for months that Israel cannot accept the clearance of its northern border areas indefinitely but while troops remain committed to Gaza, there have also been questions about the military’s readiness for an invasion of southern Lebanon.
However, some of the hard-line members of the Israeli government have been pressing for action and on Monday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a longtime foe of Gallant, called for him to be sacked.
“We need a decision in the north and Gallant is not the right person to lead it,” he said in a statement on the social media platform X.
Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the exchanges of fire, which have left communities on both sides of the border as virtual ghost towns.
The two sides came close to all-out war last month after Israeli forces killed a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut in retaliation for a missile strike that killed 12 youngsters in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
On Monday, Israel’s defense ministry said it had approved the distribution of 9,000 automatic rifles to civilian rapid response units in northern Israel and the Golan Heights.
Israeli minister says time running out for diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in Lebanon
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Israeli minister says time running out for diplomatic solution with Hezbollah in Lebanon
- “The possibility for an agreed framework in the northern arena is running out,” Gallant told Austin in a phone call
- As long as Hezbollah continued to tie itself to the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, where Israeli forces have been engaged for almost a year, “the trajectory is clear,” he said
Hezbollah says targeted Israeli naval base after deadly drone strike
The group said its fighters launched rockets at a naval base near Haifa in northern Israel, calling it a tribute to its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli military said on Monday it had intercepted another launch aimed at a training camp at Binyamina, also near Haifa, a day after four soldiers were killed and dozens more wounded in a Hezbollah drone strike.
On Monday, Israeli army chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi visited the Golani Brigade’s training camp in Binyamina, and told soldiers: “We are at war, and an attack on a training base on the home front is difficult and the results are painful.”
Israeli volunteer rescue service United Hatzalah said its teams in Binyamina assisted more than 60 people with mild to critical injuries.
Israel and Hezbollah have been at war since Israel intensified its strikes on Lebanon on September 23 and sent ground troops across the border a week later.
Israel has vowed to secure its northern border to allow tens of thousands of people displaced by nearly a year of Hezbollah rocket fire launched. Hezbollah says the rocket fire is in solidarity with its Palestinian ally, Hamas.
The war, which saw an expansion in fighting and air strikes around Lebanon at the weekend, has killed more than 1,300 people, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
On Sunday, Hezbollah threatened more attacks if Israel’s continues its offensive in Lebanon, warning Israel what it saw was “nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression.”
In Lebanon, Israel has expanded its air strikes mainly on Hezbollah strongholds, while its troops in south Lebanon have engaged in fierce fighting.
Hezbollah said it shelled Israeli troops inside a southern Lebanese village Monday, after saying it targeted soldiers elsewhere along the border.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported Sunday that Israeli forces had escalated air strikes on southern Lebanon, pounding border villages.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israel’s strikes on Saturday killed 51 people, including 16 in Maaysra, a Shiite Muslim village in a Christian-majority area north of Beirut.
In Nabatiyeh, in the south, residents spoke of their shock and grief after its marketplace was hit on Saturday.
“I’m staying here and I will not leave... Nabatiyeh is our mother. It’s heartbreaking to see people’s livelihoods gone,” said Tarek Sadaka, barely holding back tears.
Others have fled the city, with more than one million Lebanese leaving areas that morphed into war zones within weeks.
A UN peacekeeping force deployed in Lebanon since Israel’s 1978 invasion has been thrust onto the front lines of the latest war, with Israel repeatedly calling on it to abandon their positions.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on them to withdraw for their own safety and said their presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields.”
Five United Nations peacekeepers were injured in a series of incidents last week, with the latest seeing the UN force accuse Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions.
The Israeli military later said a tank “backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said “attacks” against peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime.”
Three Lebanese soldiers were wounded on Sunday, the country’s army said, when Israeli forces fired on military vehicles in south Lebanon.
The war in Lebanon erupted nearly a year after Hamas staged the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, sparking the conflict in Gaza.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The number includes hostages killed in captivity.
The war in Gaza has killed, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, 42,289 people, the majority civilians. The UN has described the figures as reliable.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli shelling late Sunday on a school used as a shelter for displaced people had killed 15 people. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.
“The Al-Mufti school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded,” said its spokesman, Mahmud Bassal.
With the wars in Lebanon and Gaza showing no sign of abating, fears of an all-out regional conflict have seen Iran, which backs Hezbollah and Hamas, engage in diplomatic efforts with allies and other powers.
Israel has vowed to retaliate against Iran’s missile strike of October 1, prompting a pledge from Tehran’s side that it would hit back if it is hit.
Iran has, for decades, financed and trained militant groups in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and beyond, but it has yet to enter into direct conflict with its arch enemy, Israel.
On Sunday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to seek support for a Gaza and Lebanon ceasefire, according to the Iranian presidential website.
According to Macron’s office, the French leader appealed to Iran to support “a general de-escalation” in Lebanon and Gaza.
The Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and its US military crew to Israel to help the ally protect itself from potential Iranian attack.
Second phase of polio vaccination campaign begins in Gaza, WHO says
- Aid groups carried out a first round of vaccinations last month
GENEVA: The World Health Organization said on X on Monday that the second phase of a polio vaccination campaign had started in central Gaza.
Aid groups carried out a first round of vaccinations last month, after a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus in August, in the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
Iran top diplomat meets senior Houthi official in Oman: ministry
- Araghchi’s visit to the Omani capital is the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region
TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met in Muscat on Monday with Mohammed Abdelsalam, a senior official from Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement, according to his office.
The foreign ministry released pictures of their talks during Araghchi’s visit to the Omani capital, the latest in a series of diplomatic trips in the region following Israel’s vow to retaliate against an Iranian missile attack.
Araghchi held a “meeting and discussion of Mohammad Abdelsalam, the spokesman and chief negotiator of the Yemen National Salvation Government,” read the photo caption, referring to the Houthi administration.
Iran fired 200 missiles at Israel on October 1 in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Tehran-aligned militant leaders in the region and a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israel has since vowed to respond.
Yemen’s Houthis, along with the Palestinian Hamas group in Gaza and Hezbollah, make part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” of militant groups arrayed against Israel.
Araghchi’s visit to Muscat came after a trip to Baghdad.
Last week, he visited Qatar and Saudi Arabia where talks mainly revolved around establishing a ceasefire in Lebanon and Gaza as well as ways to contain the conflict from spreading across the region.
On Sunday, Araghchi reiterated that Iran was “fully prepared for a war situation... but we do not want war, we want peace.”
At least 10 people killed in Israeli strikes at Gaza food distribution center
GAZA: Palestinian medics said on Monday that at least 10 people were killed and at least 30 injured in Israeli airstrikes on a food distribution center in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, with casualties including women and children.
Israeli strike on hospital tent camp kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens
- Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter that killed 20
DEIR AL-BALAH: An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and sent flames sweeping through a packed tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
The Israeli military said it targeted militants hiding out among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months it has repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent camps, alleging that Hamas fighters were using them as staging grounds for attacks.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir Al-Balah was already struggling to treat a large number of wounded people from an earlier strike on a school-turned-shelter nearby that killed at least 20 people when the early morning airstrike hit and fire engulfed many of the tents.
Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head in his arms. Another small child with a bandaged leg was given a blood transfusion on the floor of the packed hospital.
Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 wounded. Twenty-five people were transferred to the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Israel is still carrying out near-daily strikes across the Gaza Strip more than a year into the war, and has been waging a major ground assault in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.
The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants abducted around 250 hostages. Around 100 are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. Around 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal territory have been completely destroyed.
Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, estimated at around 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the start of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north heeded Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and have not been allowed to return.
That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there a combatant — a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law. The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it’s unclear whether it has been adopted.
With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas that has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to strike Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out regionwide war.
A Hezbollah aerial attack on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers and severely wounded seven others Sunday, the military said, in the deadliest strike by the militant group since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.
The Lebanon-based Hezbollah called the attack near Binyamina city retaliation for Israeli strikes on Beirut on Thursday that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani brigade, launching dozens of missiles to occupy Israeli air defense systems during the assault by “squadrons” of drones.
Israel’s national rescue service said the attack wounded 61. With Israel’s advanced air-defense systems, it’s rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles.
