Page 110 - Israel

Hezbollah struck a sensitive air traffic base in north: Israeli military

Hezbollah has struck an air traffic control base in northern Israel, the Israeli military said Sunday, and warned of another war with the Iran-backed militant group. The increase in fighting across the border with Lebanon as Israel battles Hamas militants in Gaza gave new urgency to U.S. diplomatic efforts as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to visit Israel on his latest Mideast tour. This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and even more suffering, Blinken told reporters after talks in Qatar, a key mediator. The escalation of cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has complicated a U.S. push to prevent a regional conflict. The Israeli military said Hezbollah fire hit the sensitive air traffic control base on Mount Meron on Saturday but air defences were not affected because backup systems were in place. It said that no soldiers were hurt and all damage will be repaired. Nonetheless, it was one of the most serious attacks

US Congress leaders announce agreement on spending levels to avert shutdown

Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on topline spending levels for the current fiscal year that could help avoid a partial government shutdown later this month. The agreement largely hues to spending caps for defense and domestic programmes that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend the debt limit until 2025. But it does provide some concessions to House Republicans who viewed the spending restrictions in that agreement as insufficient. In a letter to colleagues, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday it will secure USD 16 billion in additional spending cuts from the previous agreement brokered by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden and is about USD 30 billion less than what the Senate was considering. This represents the most favourable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade, Johnson writes. Biden said the agreement moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national ...

Lebanon airport screens display anti-Hezbollah message after being hacked

The information display screens at Beirut's international airport were hacked by domestic anti-Hezbollah groups on Sunday, as clashes between the Lebanese militant group and the Israeli military continue to intensify along the border. Departure and arrival information was replaced by a message accusing the Hezbollah group of putting Lebanon at risk of an all-out war with Israel. The screens displayed a message with logos from a hardline Christian group dubbed Soldiers of God, which has garnered attention over the past year for its campaigns against the LGBTQ+ community in Lebanon, and a little-known group that calls itself The One Who Spoke. In a video statement, the Christian group denied its involvement, while the other group shared photos of the screens on its social media channels. Hassan Nasrallah, you will no longer have supporters if you curse Lebanon with a war for which you will bear responsibility and consequences, the message read, echoing similar sentiments to critics ov

Israel ministry to give go-ahead for Elon Musk-owned Starlink this week

Sales will initially be restricted to official bodies, and Starlink agreed not to grant access to humanitarian organizations in the Gaza Strip without the approval of Israel's defense establishment

Drive-by shooting, clashes in West Bank kill 7 Palestinians, 2 Israelis

An Israeli man was fatally shot at a busy intersection in the West Bank on Sunday, hours after a violent confrontation elsewhere in the Israeli-occupied territory left seven Palestinians and a member of Israel's paramilitary border police dead. In Sunday's drive-by shooting, assailants fired through the victim's front windshield, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. Paramedics arriving at the scene in the central West Bank found the man unresponsive in his car. The Israeli army said security forces were searching the area for the shooter. Israeli media reported that security forces found an abandoned car that was likely used to carry out the attack, and the suspect fled on foot. Hours earlier, a deadly confrontation erupted when Israeli security forces were on patrol to search for roadside bombs in Jenin, a town and adjacent refugee camp by the same name in the northern West Bank. A roadside bomb exploded near a vehicle of the paramilitary border police, killing a policewoman

Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 5th member of veteran correspondent's family

An apparent Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinian journalists in southern Gaza on Sunday, including the son of veteran Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Dahdouh, who lost his wife, two other children and a grandson and was nearly killed himself earlier in the war. Dahdouh has continued to report on the fighting between Israel and Hamas even as it has taken a devastating toll on his own family, becoming a symbol for many of the perils faced by Palestinian journalists, dozens of whom have been killed while covering the conflict. Hamza Dahdouh, who was also working for Al Jazeera, and Mustafa Tharaya, a freelance journalist, were killed when a strike hit their car while they were driving from Khan Younis to the southern town of Rafah, according to the media office of the Hamas-run government. Amer Abu Amr, a photojournalist, said in a Facebook post that he and another journalist, Ahmed al-Bursh, survived the strike. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Wael Dahd

Netanyahu declares war won't end until Israel achieves 'all' of its goals

"My government directed the IDF to go to war to eliminate Hamas, return our hostages and ensure that Gaza will never again be a threat to Israel," Netanyahu said

Blinken meets Jordan's king and minister to keep Gaza war from spreading

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Sunday with Jordan's king and foreign minister and visited a World Food Programme warehouse in Amman as he pressed ahead with an urgent Middle East diplomatic mission to prevent Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza from spreading. On his fourth visit to the region in three months, Blinken stressed the need for Israel to adjust its military operations to reduce civilian casualties and significantly boost the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza while highlighting the importance of preparing detailed plans for the post-conflict future of the territory, which has been decimated by intensive Israeli airstrikes and ground offensives. After a day of talks with Turkish and Greek leaders in Istanbul and Crete, Blinken met Sunday with Jordan's King Abdullah II and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi seeking buy-in for US efforts to tamp down resurgent fears that the three-month-old war could engulf the region, ramp up aid deliveries to Gaza and prepare

Israeli military signals it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza

The Israeli military signaled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has completed dismantling Hamas' military infrastructure there, as the war against the militant group entered its fourth month on Sunday. Its spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Saturday that forces would continue to deepen the achievement there, strengthen defences along the Israel-Gaza border fence and focus on the central and southern parts of the territory. The announcement came ahead of a visit to Israel by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Biden administration officials, including Blinken, have repeatedly urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders to prevent harm to Palestinian civilians. In recent weeks, Israel had already been scaling back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressing its offensive in the territory's south, where most of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians are bein

Cumbersome process and inspections slow aid delivery into Gaza: US senators

At Egypt's Rafah border crossing, lines of hundreds of trucks carrying aid wait for weeks to enter Gaza, and a warehouse is full of goods rejected by Israeli inspectors, everything from water testing equipment to medical kits for delivering babies, two U.S. senators said Saturday after a visit to the border. Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley pointed to a cumbersome process that is slowing relief to the Palestinian population in the besieged territory largely due to Israeli inspections of aid cargos, with seemingly arbitrary rejections of vital humanitarian equipment. The system to ensure that aid deliveries within Gaza don't get hit by Israeli forces is totally broken, they said. What struck me yesterday was the miles of backed-up trucks. We couldn't count, but there were hundreds, Merkley said in a briefing with Van Hollen to a group of reporters in Cairo. The U.S. has been pressing Israel for weeks to let greater amounts of food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies int

Turkey committed to a positive role in postwar Gaza, says Antony Blinken

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that Turkey is committed to playing a positive, productive role for postwar Gaza and prepared to use its influence in the region to prevent the Israel-Hamas conflict from broadening even more. The latest Mideast mission by America's top diplomat opened with talks in Turkey and Greece before shifting to the region for not necessarily easy conversations with allies and partners about what they are willing to do to build durable peace and security. Blinken's fourth visit in three months comes as developments in Lebanon, northern Israel, the Red Sea and Iraq have put intense strains on what had been a modestly successful U.S. push to prevent a regional conflagration since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, and as international criticism of Israel's military operation mounts. Blinken held meetings with Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, in Istanbul about what Turkey and others can do to exert

Gaza now 'uninhabitable' due to Israel-Hamas war: UN humanitarian chief

The U.N. humanitarian chief described Gaza on Friday as uninhabitable three months into Israel's war with Hamas, warning that famine was looming and a public health disaster unfolding. In a grim assessment of the devastating impact of Israel's military response to the horrific Hamas attacks on October 7, Martin Griffiths said that Gaza's 2.3 million people face daily threats to their very existence while the world just watches. He said tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, have been killed or injured, families are sleeping in the open as temperatures plummet, and areas where Palestinians were told to relocate have been bombed. People are facing the highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded (and) famine is around the corner, Griffiths said. The few partially functioning hospitals are overwhelmed and critically short of supplies, medical facilities are under relentless attack, infectious diseases are spreading, and amidst the chaos some 180 Palestinian women ar

Oil prices rise as Blinken begins week-long sweep through the Middle East

Shipping giant Maersk said it will divert all vessels away from the Red Sea for the foreseeable future, warning customers of disruptions

We must retaliate for suspected Israeli strike in Beirut: Hezbollah leader

The leader of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah said on Friday that his group must retaliate after a presumed Israeli strike hit a Beirut neighbourhood this week, killing a senior Hamas official, or else all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attack. Hassan Nasrallah appeared to be making the case for a response to the Lebanese public, even at the risk of escalating the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel. But he gave no indication of how or when the militants would act. The strike that killed Hamas' deputy political leader, Saleh Arouri, threatened months of efforts by the United States to prevent the war in Gaza from spiralling into a regional conflict. Nasrallah said it was the first strike by Israel in the Lebanese capital since 2006. We cannot keep silent about a violation of this seriousness, he said, because this means that all of our people will be exposed (to targeting). All of our cities, villages and public figures will be exposed. The repercussions of silence are

Problems in Red Sea impacting exports; increasing freight, insurance costs

The escalation of troubles in the Red Sea has started impacting India's exports as shippers have to take longer routes to reach destinations in the US and Europe, an official has said. The situation around the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping route connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, has escalated due to recent attacks by Yemen-based Houthi militants. Due to these attacks, the shippers are taking consignments through the Cape of Good Hope, resulting in delays of almost 14 days and also higher freight and insurance costs. The issues being faced by the concerned stakeholders were discussed at a high-level meeting in the commerce ministry on January 4. Stakeholders, including traders, shippers, container firms and freight forwarders were there at the meeting. "They told us that freight cost has increased. They have to take a long route now and due to that, the turnaround time has increased. It has increased by 14 days," the official said. Ex

Families in Gaza desparate for food, water; wait in long lines for aid

Stranded in a corner of southern Gaza, members of the Abu Jarad family are clinging to a strict survival routine. They fled their comfortable three-bedroom home in northern Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war broke out nearly three months ago. The 10-person family now squeezes into a 16-square meter (172-square foot) tent on a garbage-strewn sandy plot, part of a sprawling encampment of displaced Palestinians. Every family member is assigned daily tasks, from collecting twigs to build a fire for cooking, to scouring the city's markets for vegetables. But their best efforts can't mask their desperation. At night dogs are hovering over the tents, said Awatif Abu Jarad, an older member of the family. We are living like dogs! Palestinians seeking refuge in southern Gaza say every day has become a struggle to find food, water, medicine and working bathrooms. All the while, they live in fear of Israeli airstrikes and the growing threat of illnesses. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion

Israel offers tax incentives to aid housing crisis for war evacuees

Following the start of the "Iron Swords" war the government evacuated more than 100,000 citizens from the areas surrounding Gaza and near the Lebanese border, mainly to hotels

Israel focuses assault on southern Gaza amid concern over wider war

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was heading for the Middle East, including a stop in Israel, to continue "diplomatic consultations", a U.S. official said

Iran vows revenge after biggest attack since 1979 revolution: Report

Iran's powerful Guards described Wednesday's attack as a cowardly act 'aimed at creating insecurity and seeking revenge against the nation's deep love and devotion to the Islamic Republic'

Israel's ambassador to UN links Iran to Houthi attacks in Red Sea

The Houthis vowed in early December to target any Israel-bound ship in the Red Sea, regardless of its ownership