Category Archives: Lebanon

Middle East crisis live: Israeli airstrike kills 12 in Gaza City school; Ireland joins genocide case against Israel – as it happened

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12 Palestinians killed in attack on al-Shati refugee camp; Irish foreign minister says country will join South Africa’s case in the international court of justice

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson has said the presidential election result in the US is a chance for a new administration to “review the wrong approaches of the past”.

Reuters quotes Esmaeil Baghaei saying “We had bitter experiences with various US governments’ past policies and approaches. Elections are an opportunity to review the wrong approaches of the past. What is important for Iran will be how we evaluate the actions of the US government.”

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Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF

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Brig Gen Itzik Cohen said in a briefing that aid would only be allowed to enter south of Gaza Strip, not the north

Israeli ground forces are getting closer to “the complete evacuation” of northern Gaza and residents will not be allowed to return home, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said, in what appears to be the first official acknowledgment from Israel it is systematically removing Palestinians from the area.

In a media briefing on Tuesday night, the IDF Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told Israeli reporters that since troops had been forced to enter some areas twice, such as Jabaliya camp, “there is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes”.

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Netanyahu’s sacking of defence chief ‘last thing Israel needs’, says president

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Critics dismayed at timing of dismissal amid war and on day of US election – and warn more may come for PM’s political gain

Many Israelis have been left reeling by Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to dismiss his popular defence minister in the midst of a multifront war, accusing him of carrying out the move for his own political gain.

In a surprise announcement late on Tuesday, the prime minister said that he had fired Yoav Gallant over what he described a “crisis of trust” in the past few months. Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and a senior general, has been replaced by the foreign minister, Likud lawmaker and loyalist Israel Katz, who has little military background.

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Protests in Israel after defence minister sacked – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. See our latest full report here and all our Middle East crisis coverage here

Al Jazeera reports that the death toll from an Israeli strike on tents housing displaced people in central Gaza has risen to six, and includes a six-year-old and a four-year-old child.

Lebanon’s Nation News Agency has reported that the Israeli army, which has been staging incursions inside the south of the country, “is booby-trapping and destroying entire neighbourhoods in cities and towns, such that more than 37 towns have been wiped out and their homes destroyed, and more than 40,000 housing units have been completely destroyed.”

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Full-scale war in Middle East involving Israel and Iran likely, say most Europeans in poll

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Large majorities in seven countries condemn 7 October attacks – but most common view is Israel’s response in Gaza is also unjustified

Full-scale war in the Middle East involving Israel and Iran is now likely, most western Europeans responding in a poll believe, with many criticising Israel’s conduct thus far and saying that if such a war did occur, the US and Europe should not provide it with military aid.

A YouGov Eurotrack survey in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and the UK found that strong majorities in all seven countries, ranging from 65% in France to 82% in Spain, felt the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 were not justified.

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Middle East crisis live: Leaks from Netanyahu’s office may have compromised peace deal, Israeli court finds – as it happened

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Breakdown in peace negotiations may have been caused by leaked and falsified documents involving close aide to Israeli PM

Israeli media reports that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet today with opposition leader Yair Lapid for a security briefing.

The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry has issued a statement condemning the reported burning of cars by Israeli settlers in Al-Bireh in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The ministry affirms that the Jewish terrorist elements who stormed Al-Bireh would not have committed this heinous crime had they not felt protected, supported and immune from the political level in the occupying state, especially the ministers of the extreme Israeli right who openly incite against Palestinian citizens, their land and their property in full view.

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Middle East crisis: Israeli attacks kill at least 31 people in Gaza, medics say – as it happened

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Nearly half of those killed were reported to be in northern Gaza, where the IDF has been conducting an intense assault

There are mounting concerns over whether the Israeli government’s ultimate war aims in Gaza include territorial expansion, as the IDF’s siege on the northern part of the territory – under sweeping evacuation orders - intensifies.

Here is an extract from a report by my colleagues Malak A Tantesh and Julian Borger, who explore these concerns further:

The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.

The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.

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Israel abducts alleged Hezbollah official in unprecedented sea raid

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Commandos land in northern Lebanon in highly unusual operation to capture supposed militant group member

The Israeli military abducted who it said was a senior Hezbollah official in an unprecedented operation on Saturday morning during which Israeli commandos landed on the shores of Batroun, northern Lebanon, captured the alleged official and escaped via speedboat.

In a statement, an Israeli military official said its forces captured a “senior operative of Hezbollah” and transferred him to its territory to be investigated by military intelligence. The media outlet Axios cited Israeli sources as saying the captured man – Imad Amhaz – was responsible for Hezbollah’s naval operations.

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Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declines to endorse Kamala Harris

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The Palestinian American ‘squad’ member has been critical of Harris and the Democratic party’s inaction on Gaza

Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib declined to endorse Kamala Harris at a union rally in Detroit, where the war in Gaza is the top issue for the largest block of Arab American voters in the country.

Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, is the only one of the so-called leftist “Squad” that has not endorsed the Democrat candidate. The other three members – Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York – endorsed Harris in July.

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Israel captures Lebanese sea captain and claims he is a Hezbollah operative – as it happened

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Navy confirms it landed in Batroun, 30km north of Beirut, and took him to Israel to be ‘investigated’

Troops were also operating in central Gaza and Rafah in the territory’s far south, the Israeli military said, while witnesses told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that Israeli drones and boats opened fire on al-Mawasi in south Gaza.

Medics and Gaza’s civil defence rescuers on Saturday reported three people killed in a strike on Nuseirat, in central Gaza, a day after AFP images showed the blood-stained shrouds of several people killed there in an Israeli strike.

The entire Palestinian population in north Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”

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Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza kill dozens as rockets are fired into Israel

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Israel targets north-eastern Lebanon and Beirut, while bombardment of Gaza raises fears of worsening humanitarian conditions for civilians

Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 52 people and wounded scores more, the Lebanese health ministry said, while rockets fired from Lebanon fell on Israel on Saturday.

Israeli police said 19 people were injured before dawn on Saturday in the central town of Tira. Three projectiles crossed into Israel from Lebanon, Israel’s military said, and some were intercepted.

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Middle East crisis: North Gaza situation ‘apocalyptic’ with whole population at risk of ‘imminent death’, say UN chiefs – as it happened

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The Israel Defence Force has shared pictures of Nazi memorabilia it says it found in “civilian homes exploited by Hezbollah” in Lebanon.

The IDF shared photos of a book with a swastika and the name “Hassan Salih” inscribed on the front, as well as a Nazi pennant flag and figurine of Adolf Hitler, but it did not provide any more evidence or details of the find. The Guardian could not independently verify the images.

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Lebanon’s PM denies US asked him to declare unilateral ceasefire with Israel

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Reports of such a request emerge as Israeli jets continues to bombard Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh

The US asked Lebanon to declare a unilateral ceasefire to revive stalled talks to end hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, according to a report later denied by the Lebanese prime minister

Two unnamed sources, a Lebanese political source and a senior diplomat, made the claim to Reuters, saying the US envoy, Amos Hochstein, had communicated the proposal to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, this week.

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US attempts to broker ceasefire as civilians killed in Lebanon and Israel

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IDF airstrikes kill 45 people while seven die, including four Thai workers, in rocket attack on northern Israel

Senior US officials have held talks in Israel aimed at brokering a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, on a day when more civilians in both countries were killed in the year-long war.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who had expressed optimism of a speedy settlement “in hours or days” earlier on Thursday, said that Israel’s “ongoing escalation” in his country “does not inspire optimism”.

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US says Lebanon ceasefire talks making ‘good progress’ – as it happened

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US secretary of state and defence secretary express hope of ceasefire in near future as Hamas rules out short-term truce for Gaza

Reuters reports that the Israeli military said on Thursday it had shot down a drone smuggling weapons from Egyptian territory to Israel on Wednesday.

No other information was provided. We will update the blog as more details come in.

Rafael and Lala Goliev … residents of Lod, were arrested after they carried out tasks on behalf of an Iranian cell that recruits Israelis from the Caucasus countries in Israel.”

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Middle East crisis: UN security council warns against attempts to dismantle Unrwa – as it happened

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This live blog is now closed. For the latest on the Middle East, read our full coverage here.

Under the laws – which will not be implemented for several months – Unrwa could not “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly”.

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Hezbollah elects new leader following Israeli strike that killed Nasrallah

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Naim Qassem replaces group’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah after he was killed by Israel

Hezbollah has elected its deputy secretary general, Sheikh Naim Qassem, as its new head, ending a month-long leadership vacuum after the group’s long time leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed by Israel.

Since Nasrallah’s death, Qassem has filled in for him, giving a public address earlier this month in which he vowed that Hezbollah would continue fighting Israel in what it described as a war of attrition, despite painful losses.

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Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 70 as UN chief calls civilians’ plight ‘unbearable’

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One person killed as truck rams into bus stop in Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu heckled at memorial event

Approximately 70 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the past day, health officials in Gaza said, as Israel’s renewed campaign in the north of the strip shows no sign of slowing despite the revival of ceasefire talks after a three-month-long hiatus.

Separately, one person was killed when a truck rammed into a bus stop in Ramat Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, on Sunday, in what Israeli police are treating as a suspected terrorist attack. About 40 people were injured to varying degrees, some seriously, and were taken to nearby hospitals, police said.

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Iran-Israel’s shadow war is out in the open and will only escalate unless causes addressed

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Face-to-face military confrontation on each other’s soil has now been normalised

For years, Israel and Iran have waged a “shadow war”, attacking each other indirectly using proxy forces, assassinations, informants, spies and hybrid, non-military covert means. Now this undeclared, largely silent war is undisguisedly out in the open. It’s become a shooting war, it’s noisy, it’s escalating, and there’s no end in sight.

This is not to say Israel’s large-scale, three-wave air assault on Tehran and other targets inside Iran early on Saturday morning means the two enemies are now engaged in all-out conflict. This is not yet the full-scale, region-wide conflagration so many in the Middle East fear. That may be coming, but it’s still in the future.

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World leaders call for restraint after Israel’s airstrikes on Iran

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US and European states urge Tehran not to respond, while Middle Eastern countries condemn Israeli operation

World leaders have called for restraint after the first open Israeli airstrikes on Iran, after Tehran reiterated that it was “entitled and obligated to defend itself”.

The Israeli air force struck about 20 military bases across Iran, including missile and drone manufacturing sites and air defence systems, in the early hours of Saturday.

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