Israel-Lebanon latest: 19 dead and thousands trapped as Israeli forces strike Jabalia refugee camps
An Israeli tank fired on UN headquarters in southern Lebanon on Thursday, the organisation said
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At least 19 people were killed by Israeli airstrikes in the Jabalia city and refugee camp in northern Gaza, the Hamas-run civil defence agency told the AFP news agency.
A spokesperson said that a strike occurred before 9:40pm local time and had left “12 dead, including women and children”, adding that 14 people were still missing and likely trapped under the rubble
In southern Lebanon, children are among eight people killed in villages as Israel intensifies airstrikes in its fight against militant groupHezbollah.
According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, a strike on Baysarieh, a village in Sidon province, killed three people, including a 2-year-old and a 16-year-old, while another strike in the Bekaa Valley killed five more people.
It comes as Israeli forces faced international condemnation for an attack on UN peacekeepers operating in the region.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) said an Israeli tank fired on its headquarters in the town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon on Thursday, hitting an observation tower and wounding two peacekeepers.
The force said its headquarters was affected by further explosions on Friday which injured two more peacekeepers.
“We were appalled to hear those reports and it is vital that peacekeepers and civilians are protected,” a No 10 spokesperson said.
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As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon's army watches from the sidelines
Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.
It’s not the first time the national army has found itself watching war at home from the discomfiting position of bystander.
Lebanon’s widely beloved army is one of the few institutions that bridge the country’s sectarian and political divides. Several army commanders have become president, and the current commander, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is widely regarded as one of the front-runners to step in when the deadlocked parliament fills a two-year vacuum and names a president.
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As Hezbollah and Israel battle on the border, Lebanon's army watches from the sidelines
Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines
Israel's airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes.
Moein Shreif was recently awakened at 3 a.m. by a neighbor calling to alert him that Israel planned to strike a nearby building in his middle-class suburb south of Beirut where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Shreif, his wife and their three children quickly fled their multi-story apartment building and drove away. Within minutes, explosions rang out, he said later that day upon returning to see the smoldering ruins of his building and the one next door.
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Israel's airstrike warnings terrify and confuse Lebanese civilians
As the war between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies, Lebanese civilians are increasingly paying the price – and this dangerous reality often becomes clear in the middle of the night: That’s when the Israeli military typically warns people to evacuate buildings or neighborhoods to avoid airstrikes
The Trump Organization wants to open a luxury hotel in the heart of Israel
Donald Trump’s family business tried to open a luxury hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, according to a report.
The Trump Organization sought a deal last year to open a Trump-branded hotel on the former site of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The New York Times reported.
The former president’s company also looked into transforming a developing skyscraper — near the Israel Defense Forces headquarters — in Tel Aviv into another hotel. Once completed, that building will house the most hotel rooms in the country, the outlet noted.
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The Trump Organization wants to open a luxury hotel in the heart of Israel
The Trumps reportedly planned to start with the Jerusalem project before possibly expanding to Tel Aviv
The UN says that aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months
UN humanitarian officials say aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months and warn that critical lifelines in the territory’s north, where Israel has renewed its military offensive, have been cut off.
UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq delivered the grim news Friday, saying the main crossings into northern Gaza have been closed and no food or other essential supplies have entered since Oct. 1. More than 400,000 people who remain in the north are under increasing pressure to move south, he said.
“The situation is terrible” across northern Gaza, Haq said, adding that the entire territory faces insecurity.
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The UN says that aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months
U.N. humanitarian officials say aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months and warn that critical lifelines in the territory’s north have been cut off
The European Union has said it is deeply concerned about draft Israeli legislation that would ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel and likely scale back aid distribution across war-ravaged Gaza.
Earlier this week, an Israeli parliamentary committee approved a pair of bills this week that would ban UNRWA from operating in Israeli territory and end all contact between the government and the U.N. agency. The bill needs final approval from the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
“If adopted, (the bill) would have disastrous consequences, preventing the U.N. agency from continuing to provide its services and protection to Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, and Gaza,” the EU said in an online statement.
Israel has alleged that some of UNRWA’s thousands of staff members participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
The UN has since fired more than a dozen staffers after internal investigations found they may have taken part in the attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel.
The UN agency has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter to Palestinian civilians during the 12 month conflict in Gaza.
Israel orders evacuation of more southern Lebanese towns
Israel’s military ordered residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages on Saturday to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows from the western Bekaa Valley into the Mediterranean.
The order, communicated via a military statement, mentions villages in southern Lebanon that have been recent targets of Israeli attacks, many of which are already almost empty.
The Israeli military stated that evacuations were necessary for the safety of residents due to increased Hezbollah activities, claiming the group is using sites to conceal weapons and launch attacks on Israel.
Hezbollah denies concealing weapons among civilians.
Another member of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL, was struck by gunfire on Friday, it said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the man was now stable after undergoing surgery to remove the bullet.
Hamas attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia with anti-tank rockets
In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel’s “massacre against the civilians” aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel’s military failure to defeat the group.
Israel has denied it targets civilians.
The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire.
Irish peacekeepers stood their ground in the face of an Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It’s not the first time
The 30 Irish peacekeepers carried only rifles and small arms. The Israeli force was preparing to advance with all the tools of a military superpower: tanks, aircraft, drones, heavy artillery and thousands of troops.
But when the Israelis ordered the Irish soldiers to vacate their observation post on the Lebanon-Israel border last week to clear the way for their invasion, they refused.
The incident, which sparked a tense stand-off and diplomatic spat, was just the latest in a long history of confrontations between the Israeli army and the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL.
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How Irish peacekeepers stood their ground in the face of an Israeli invasion
Irish peacekeepers have a long history of putting themselves in the firing line in Lebanon — and becoming so close with locals that people speak English with a Cork accent, Richard Hall writes
United Nations officials said on Friday an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.
The territory’s health ministry announced on Saturday that the campaign would begin on Monday in central Gaza Strip areas and would last three days before moving to other territories.
Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza are planned, in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.
Germany’s Nazi history has left it in turmoil over how to treat Israel
Two events took place last weekend in Germany. At a conference in Berlin called The Big Chill, a group of thinkers and activists denounced what they called “anticipatory obedience” in which Germans, including Jews, had been “muted, de-platformed and stigmatised” for criticising Israel’s response to the atrocities of 7 October 2023.
At the same time, in a small town called Zeitz in eastern Germany, 10 “stumbling stones”, small memorial brass plates denoting the homes of Jews taken to be exterminated in concentration camps, were ripped up. “Whoever did this wants to tear the Holocaust out of our memory,” a leading local politician, Götz Ulrich, declared.
The sad fact is both sets of assertions are largely true. And yet, it was a weekend like any other and neither event received particular coverage.
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Germany’s Nazi history has left it in turmoil over how to treat Israel
Germans have long been praised for their culture of remembrance and coming to terms with the crimes of the Nazis, writes John Kampfner. But this has turned into a level of support for Israel that is leaving many too scared to speak out about war in Gaza and Lebanon
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