Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit at the American Center in Vientiane, Laos, on Friday (October 11, 2024).
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken voiced hope on Friday (October 12, 2024) for a diplomatic solution in Lebanon and preventing a broader conflict, as he backed efforts by the fragile state to assert itself against Hezbollah.

Mr. Blinken again said that Israel, which has been carrying out deadly strikes on Lebanon, “has a right to defend itself” against Hezbollah, but said he was alarmed by the worsening humanitarian situation.

“We continue to engage intensely to prevent broader conflict in the region,” Mr. Blinken told reporters after an East Asia Summit in Laos.

“We all have a strong interest in trying to help create an environment in which people can go back to their homes, their safety and security and kids can go back to school,” he said.

“So Israel has a clear and very legitimate interest in doing that. The people of Lebanon want the same thing. We believe that the best way to get there is through a diplomatic understanding, one that we’ve been working on for some time, and one that we focus on right now.”

Later in the day, Mr. Blinken spoke by phone with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.

Lebanon’s presidency has been vacant for two years, and Mr. Blinken stressed “the need to empower leadership that reflects the will of the people for a stable, prosperous, and independent Lebanon”.

He said that “Lebanon cannot allow Iran or Hezbollah to stand in the way of Lebanon’s security and stability”.

The statement did not mention discussions on a possible ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed group.

After a year of cross-border fire with Hamas ally Hezbollah over the Gaza war, Israel has expanded its operations in Lebanon.

Mr. Blinken said the United States would work to support the fragile Lebanese state to build itself up after Hezbollah’s long-held sway. “It’s clear that the people of Lebanon have an interest — a strong interest — in the state asserting itself and taking responsibility for the country and its future,” he said.

He also said that the United States was voicing concern directly to Israel on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“I have real concern about the inadequacy of the assistance that’s getting to them,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that the United States has been “very directly engaged with Israel” on the topic.

Israel carried out another series of punishing airstrikes Friday (October 4, 2024), hitting suburban Beirut and cutting off the main border crossing between Lebanon and Syria for tens of thousands of people fleeing the Israeli bombardment of the Hezbollah militant group.

The overnight blasts in Beirut’s southern suburbs sent huge plumes of smoke and flames into the night sky and shook buildings kilometres away in the Lebanese capital. Additional strikes sent people running for cover in streets littered with rubble in the Dahiyeh neighbourhood, where at least one building was levelled and cars were burned out.

Follow Israel strike LIVE updates on October 4

The Israeli military said it targeted Hezbollah’s central intelligence headquarters around midnight. It did not say who it was aiming for or if any militants were killed in that strike, but it claimed to have killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the last 24 hours.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported more than 10 consecutive airstrikes in the area. Some 1,400 Lebanese, including Hezbollah fighters and civilians, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries’ shared border.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched about 100 rockets into Israel on Friday, the Israel military said.

The Israeli military also said that a strike in Beirut the day before killed Mohammed Rashid Skafi, the head of Hezbollah’s communications division. The military said in a statement that Skafi was “a senior Hezbollah terrorist who was responsible for the communications unit since 2000” and was “closely affiliated” with high-up Hezbollah officials.

Thursday’s strike along the Lebanon-Syria border, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Beirut, led to the closure of the road near the busy Masnaa Border Crossing — the first time it has been cut off since Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire almost a year ago.

Israel said it targeted the crossing because it was being used by Hezbollah to transport military equipment across the border. It said fighter jets had struck a tunnel used to smuggle weapons from Iran and other proxies into Lebanon.

Hezbollah is believed to have received much of its weaponry through Syria from Iran, its main backer.

Associated Press video footage showed two huge craters on each side of the road. People got out of cars, unable to pass, carrying bags of their possessions as they crossed on foot. More than 250,000 Syrians and 82,000 Lebanese have fled across the border into Syria during the escalation of the past two weeks. There are a half-dozen crossings between the two countries, and most remain open.

Israel launched its ground escalation in Lebanon on Tuesday, and its forces have been clashing with Hezbollah militants in a narrow strip along the border. Israel has vowed to put an end to Hezbollah fire into northern Israel, after nearly a year of exchanges between the two sides that drove tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border. Israeli strikes over the past two weeks killed some of Hezbollah’s key members, including longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah.

On Thursday, Israel warned people to evacuate communities in southern Lebanon, including areas beyond the buffer zone declared by the United Nations after Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006.

Israeli Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters Friday that the ground operations were limited, aimed at rooting out Hezbollah militants and making the border safe for northern residents of Israel to return to their homes, “First of all, our mission is to make sure they’re (Hezbollah) not there,” Shoshani said. “Afterwards we will talk about how we make sure they don’t come back.” Nine Israeli troops have been killed in close fighting in the area, which is saturated with arms and explosives, the military said.

Two more soldiers were killed and two were severely wounded by a drone attack in northern Israel, military officials said.

An umbrella group of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it carried out three drone strikes Friday in northern Israel. In recent months, the group has regularly claimed drone strikes launched at Israel, but the strikes have rarely landed.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who was in Beirut on Friday to meet Lebanese officials, warned that if Israel carries out an attack on Iran, Tehran would retaliate more powerfully than it did this week when it launched at least 180 missiles into Israel in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Hezbollah.

The missile barrage amid a series of rapidly escalating attacks has threatened to push the Middle East closer to a regionwide war.

“If the Israeli entity takes any step or measure against us, our retaliation will be stronger than the previous one,” Araghchi said after meeting Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri.

In the Iranian capital, Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers and delivered a speech in which he praised the country’s missile strikes on Israel and said Iran was prepared to conduct more strikes if needed.

He spoke to thousands of people at Tehran’s main prayer site, the Mosalla mosque, which was decorated with a huge Palestinian flag.

Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage. Since then, Israel’s campaign in Gaza in retaliation has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, just over half them women and children, according to local health officials.

Meanwhile, Israel carried out its deadliest strike in the occupied West Bank since the Gaza war began, hitting a cafe in the Tulkarem refugee camp. At least 18 Palestinians were killed, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Relatives said a family of four, including two children, were among the dead. The Israeli military said several Hamas militants were killed, including the group’s leader in the camp.

The Israeli military said Friday that militants in Gaza fired two rockets into Israeli territory, the first time Israel has seen rocket fire from the territory in a month.

The military said one of the rockets was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system and the other fell in an open area near a kibbutz across the border from Gaza. (AP) GSP

Palestinians inspect a school sheltering displaced people following an Israeli strike, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on July 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli airstrikes hit a school and a hospital in central Gaza on Saturday as the country’s negotiators prepared to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

At least 30 people sheltering at a girls’ school in Deir Al-Balah were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital and pronounced dead after a strike that Israel’s military said targeted a Hamas command and control centre used to store weapons and plan attacks.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said 11 people were killed in other strikes on Saturday.

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation of a part of a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza ahead of a planned strike on Khan Younis on Saturday, as the country’s negotiators prepare to meet international mediators to discuss a proposed cease-fire.

The evacuation order is in response to rocket fire that Israel said originated from the area. The military said it planned an operation against Hamas militants in the city, including parts of Muwasi, the crowded tent camp in an area where Israel has told thousands of Palestinians to seek refuge throughout the war.

The planned strike comes a day before officials from the US, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are scheduled to meet in Italy and discuss the ongoing hostage and cease-fire negotiations. CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to meet Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel on Sunday, according to officials from the U.S. and Egypt who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to discuss the plans.

It’s the second evacuation order issued in a week that has included striking part of the humanitarian zone, a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. Israel expanded the zone in May to take in people fleeing Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population at the time had crowded.

According to Israeli estimates, about 1.8 million Palestinians are currently sheltering there after being uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel’s punishing air and ground campaign. In November, the military said the area could still be struck and that it was “not a safe zone, but it is a safer place than any other” in Gaza.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was increasingly difficult to know how many people would be affected by the evacuation order because those sheltering under there were constantly being displaced.

“Referring to the orders as evacuation orders don’t do any justice to what this means,” said Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications.“These are forced displacement orders. What happens is when people have these orders, they have very little time to move.”

Further north, Palestinians mourned the deaths of seven killed by Israeli airstrikes overnight on Zawaida, in central Gaza. Members of two families — parents and their two children as well as a mother and her two children — were wrapped in traditional Islamic white burial shrouds as community members gathered to perform funeral rights. As men lined up to pray in front of the bodies, weeping friends and neighbours approached individually to pay their final respects.

Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital confirmed the count and Associated Press journalists saw the bodies.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas militants on southern Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

People search the rubble of a collapsed building in the aftermath of Israeli bombardment at the Jaouni school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on July 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The Hamas authorities in Gaza said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a UN-run school where thousands of displaced were sheltering killed 16 people.

Israel’s military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which condemned the strike as an “odious massacre”, said 50 injured were taken to hospital from the school.

Some 7,000 people were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack, the Hamas government press office said. Dozens of people scrambled through the rubble after the strike to find survivors.

The press office said the school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and most of the casualties were “children, women, and elderly”.

“This is the fourth time they have targeted the school without warning,” said one woman, Samah Abu Amsha, who told how some children were killed as they read the Koran in a class when the missile hit.

Also read | Israeli strikes in Rafah: At least 37 Palestinians, most in tents, killed

“Shrapnel flew at me inside the classroom and the children were injured,” she told AFP.

Hamas called the attack “a new massacre and crime committed by this criminal enemy as part of its war of genocide against our Palestinian people”.

The Israeli military said in a statement it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school”.

“This location served as a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip were directed and carried out,” it added, insisting that “steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.

‘No place is safe’

Israel has agreed to meetings with mediators on a ceasefire initiative but has kept up its offensive in the territory that started on October 7 after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

UNRWA said two of its workers were killed in a strike at Al-Bureij, also in central Gaza, early Saturday. The agency has a major food warehouse in the district.

The Al-Aqsa hospital said nine other bodies were brought to its morgue from the strike.

The UN agency said 194 of its workers have now been killed since the war started.

An UNRWA spokesperson said that since the war began, more than half of the agency’s facilities have been hit and many were shelters. “As a result at least 500 people sheltering in those facilities have been killed,” the spokesperson told AFP.

Paramedics said 10 people, including three journalists, died in another strike on a house in Nuseirat on Saturday.

“Absolutely no place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

The war began with the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Hamas militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry there.

Palestinians walk near houses destroyed in the Israeli military offensive as they struggle with food scarcity, basic necessities amid the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will on July 4 evening convene a meeting of his security cabinet to discuss proposals from Hamas about a possible ceasefire deal in Gaza, a source in Netanyahu’s office said.

Before the cabinet meets, Mr. Netanyahu will have consultations with his ceasefire negotiations team, the source also said.

Jerusalem:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that a deadly strike that hit a displacement camp in Gaza’s Rafah was a “tragic accident” which his government was investigating.

“In Rafah, we evacuated a million uninvolved residents and, despite our best efforts, a tragic accident happened yesterday,” Netanyahu told parliament.

He added that “we are investigating the case and will draw the conclusions” after Gaza’s health ministry reported 45 dead as the strike late Sunday sparked a fire that tore through a tent city for displaced Gazans.

The ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip also said that 249 people were wounded.

Israel faced a wave of international condemnation on Monday over the Rafah strike, including from across the region as well from the European Union, France and the United Nations.

The Israeli military said it had launched a probe into the strike which it said was carried out based on “precise intelligence information” about two Hamas militants who it said were killed.

It also said “the strike did not occur in the humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, to which the IDF (army) has encouraged civilians to evacuate” since the ground operation began in Rafah.

Netanyahu struck a defiant tone in his Knesset address while being heckled by relatives of hostages held in Gaza, and vowed to keep up the battle to destroy Hamas.

“There is no substitute for absolute victory” in Gaza, he told the chamber.

Netanyahu denounced pressure, both internal and external, that he said his government has faced since the war in Gaza began.

“They pressured us then,” said Netanyahu, before listing calls to refrain from military operations which Israel carried out anyway.

“Don’t enter Gaza. We entered! Do not enter Shifa! We entered! Do not enter Khan Yunis! We entered! Do not enter Rafah! We entered!” he said.

“I don’t give up and I won’t give up! I stand up to pressures from home and abroad.”

The Gaza war broke out after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,050 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A view of the screen showing the result of a vote on a resolution regarding the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, during the 55th session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

India on April 5 abstained on a resolution at the Human Rights Council that called on Israel for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and called on states to implement an arms embargo, which was adopted by the 47-member Human Rights Council.

While India’s abstention is believed to be in line with previous votes on any HRC resolutions that call for “accountability”, it did vote in favour of three other resolutions that criticised Israel for human rights violations against Palestinians, Israel’s occupation of Syrian Golan, and called for the Palestinian right to self-determination. All four resolutions were introduced at the HRC in Geneva by Pakistan on behalf of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation.

Friday’s vote was significant as it followed the killing of seven international aid workers in Gaza in Israeli airstrikes, and a military strike by Israel on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, which India had expressed “concerns” about. While the Ministry of External Affairs did not issue any explanation for the vote, it is understood to follow previous abstentions on similar resolutions, and also in line with its vote at the UN General Assembly in October 2023, since the HRC resolution (A/HRC/55/L.30) failed to condemn Hamas, while condemning Israel’s killing of more than 33,000 Palestinians, blockade of food and humanitarian aid into the area, and “forcible transfer” of civilians from one part of Gaza to another in the past six months. 

Also read | Biden tells Netanyahu that U.S. support depends on protecting Gaza civilians; Israel agrees to open border for aid delivery

The United States, Germany and four other countries voted against the resolution, titled “Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the obligation to ensure accountability and justice” and India joined France and Japan amongst 13 countries that abstained. However, a significant majority, 28 members of the HRC including Bangladesh, China, Maldives, the UAE, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa voted in favour of the resolution. 

The Israeli Ambassador, who criticised the resolution for its failure to mention Hamas and condemn the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 Israelis were killed, walked out of the plenary session in protest at the end of her speech.

The resolution that was finally adopted demanded that Israel “immediately lift its illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip and all other forms of collective punishment and siege”, called for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, condemned Israeli actions that “may amount to ethnic cleansing”, and spoke of the “starvation of civilians” by the Israeli forces. It also pressed for punitive measures, calling on all states to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel” and to refrain from the transfer of “surveillance goods and technologies” used to violate or abuse human rights.

India voted in favour of three other resolutions that were also adopted with large majorities on “Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, “Human rights in the occupied Syrian” Golan, and “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan”.

A key Biden confidant had earlier urged him to use the leverage afforded by the huge military aid that Washington gives Israel – something Biden has resisted for the past six months.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 4 that U.S. policy on Israel depends on the protection of civilians in Gaza, in his strongest hint yet of possible conditions on military aid after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

In their first call since the deaths of the employees of the U.S.-based World Central Kitchen group on Monday, Mr. Biden also called for an “immediate ceasefire” after the “unacceptable” attack and wider humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Democrat Biden is facing growing pressure in an election year over his support for Israel’s Gaza war – with allies pressing him to consider making the billions of dollars in military aid sent by the United States to its key ally each year dependent on Mr. Netanyahu listening to calls for restraint.

Mr. Biden “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers”, the White House said in a readout of the call.

Also read | Israel’s Netanyahu says Biden ‘wrong’ in critique of war policy

“He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

A key Biden confidant had earlier urged him to use the leverage afforded by the huge military aid that Washington gives Israel – something Biden has resisted for the past six months.

“I think we’re at that point,” Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from the president’s home state of Delaware, told CNN.

If Israel began its long-threatened full-scale offensive in the southern city of Rafah, without plans for some 1.5 million people sheltering there, “I would vote to condition aid to Israel,” Mr. Coons said.

“I’ve never said that before, I’ve never been there before,” he added.

Mr. Biden also reportedly faces pressure from even closer to home — from First Lady Jill Biden.

“Stop it, stop it now,” she told the president about the growing toll of civilian casualties in Gaza, according to comments by Mr. Biden himself to a guest during a meeting with members of the Muslim community at the White House, and reported by The New York Times.

Also read | Aid group halts food delivery in Gaza after Israeli strike kills seven workers

‘Outraged and heartbroken’

Mr. Biden has supported Israel’s six-month-old war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, but has increasingly voiced frustration with Israel’s right-wing premier over the soaring death toll and dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

In his strongest statement since the war began, he said that he was “outraged and heartbroken” by Israel’s killing of the seven aid workers, who included a U.S.-Canadian citizen.

Israel has said the deaths were “unintentional”.

But Mr. Biden’s words have not been matched by any concrete steps to limit the billions of dollars in military aid that Washington supplies to its bedrock regional ally.

In a sign of business as usual, Biden’s administration approved the transfer of thousands more bombs to Israel on the same day as the Israeli strikes that killed the seven aid workers, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

Many Democrats fear the controversy could hurt Biden’s chances of re-election in November against Republican Donald Trump, as Muslim and younger voters express their anger over Gaza.

A former senior aide to Barack Obama – the president under whom Biden served as vice president – called for Biden’s actions to back his words.

“The U.S. government is still supplying 2 thousand pound bombs and ammunition to support Israel’s policy,” Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor in Obama’s administration, wrote on X.

“Until there are substantive consequences, this outrage does nothing. Bibi (Netanyahu) obviously doesn’t care what the U.S. says, its about what the U.S. does.”

U.S. voters are also increasingly turning against Israel’s Gaza offensive.

A majority of 55% now disapprove of Israel’s actions, compared to 36% who approve, according to a Gallup poll released on March 27.

He made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps

With ally Hamas under attack in Gaza, the head of Iran’s Quds Force visited Beirut in February to discuss the risk posed if Israel next aims at Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an offensive that could severely hurt Tehran’s main regional partner, seven sources said.

In Beirut, Quds chief Esmail Qaani met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the sources said, for at least the third time since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel and Israel’s devastating retaliatory assault on Gaza.

The conversation turned to the possibility of a full Israeli offensive to its north, in Lebanon, the sources said. As well as damaging the Shia Islamist group, such an escalation could pressure Iran to react more forcefully than it has so far since October 7, three of the sources, Iranians within the inner circle of power, said.

Over the past five months, Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, has shown support for Hamas in the form of limited volleys of rockets fired across Israel’s northern border.

At the previously unreported meeting, Mr. Nasrallah reassured Mr. Qaani he did not want Iran to get sucked into a war with Israel or the United States and that Hezbollah would fight on its own, all the sources said.

“This is our fight,” Mr. Nasrallah told Mr. Qaani, said one Iranian source with knowledge of the discussions.

Calibrated to avoid a major escalation, the skirmishes in Lebanon have nonetheless pushed tens of thousands of people from their homes on either side of the border.

Israeli strikes have killed more than 200 Hezbollah fighters and some 50 civilians in Lebanon, while attacks from Lebanon into Israel have killed a dozen Israeli soldiers and six civilians.

In recent days, Israel’s counter-strikes have increased in intensity and reach.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant indicated in February that Israel planned to increase attacks to decisively remove Hezbollah fighters from the border in the event of a Gaza ceasefire, although he left the door open for diplomacy.

Israeli security sources have said previously that Israel did not seek any spread of hostilities but added that the country was prepared to fight on new fronts if needed.

Iran and Hezbollah are mindful of the grave perils of a wider war in Lebanon, two of the sources aligned with the views of the government in Tehran said, including the danger it could spread and lead to strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations.

The U.S. lists Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism and has sought for years to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel has long considered Iran an existential threat.

Two U.S. sources and an Israeli source on request of anonymity, said Iran wanted to avoid blowback from an Israel-Hezbollah war.

The Beirut meeting highlights strain on Iran’s strategy of avoiding major escalation in the region while projecting strength and support for Gaza across the West Asia through allied armed groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, analysts said.

In Israel’s sights

Between them, Mr. Qaani and Mr. Nasrallah hold sway over tens of thousands of fighters and a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles. They are the main protagonists in Tehran’s network of allies and proxy militias, with Mr. Qaani’s elite Quds Force acting as the foreign legion of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

While Hezbollah has publicly indicated it would halt attacks on Israel when the Israeli offensive in Gaza stops, U.S. Special Envoy Amos Hochstein said last week a Gaza truce would not automatically trigger calm in southern Lebanon.

Arab and Western diplomats report that Israel has expressed strong determination to no longer allow the presence of Hezbollah’s main fighters along the border, fearing an attack similar to Hamas’s incursion that killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.

Israel’s retaliatory assault in Gaza has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians and laid waste to the coastal enclave.

A senior Israeli official agreed that Iran was not seeking a full-blown war, noting Tehran’s restrained response to Israel’s offensive on Hamas.

“It seems that they feel they face a credible military threat. But that threat may need to become more credible,” the official said.

A war in Lebanon that seriously degrades Hezbollah would be a major blow for Iran, which relies on the group founded with its support in 1982 as a bulwark against Israel and to buttress its interests in the broader region, two regional sources said.

“Hezbollah is the first line of defence for Iran,” said Abdulghani Al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies, a think tank in Yemen.

If Israel were to launch major military action on Hezbollah, the Iranian sources within the inner circle of power said, Tehran may find itself compelled to intensify its proxy war.

According to the Iranian insider, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not inclined to see a war unfold on Iran, where domestic discontent with the ruling system last year spilled over into mass protests.

“The Iranians are pragmatists and they are afraid of the expansion of the war,” said Iryani

.“If Israel were alone, they would fight, but they know that if the war expands, the United States will be drawn in.”

Buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza City on October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk warned on October 28 there was the potential for thousands more civilians to die if Israel presses a major ground offensive in Gaza.

Israel’s army relentlessly hammered the territory on October 28 after fierce overnight bombardment that rescuers said destroyed hundreds of buildings three weeks into a war sparked by the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

“Given the manner in which military operations have been conducted until now, in the context of the 56-year-old occupation, I am raising alarm about the possibly catastrophic consequences of large-scale ground operations in Gaza and the potential for thousands more civilians to die,” Turk said.

“There is no safe place in Gaza and there is no way out. I am very worried for my colleagues, as I am for all civilians in Gaza.”

Follow live updates from the Israel-Hamas war on October 28

Israel unleashed its bombing campaign after Hamas gunmen stormed across the Gaza border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing more than 220 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli strikes had killed 7,703 people, mainly civilians, including more than 3,500 children.

The U.N. rights chief also condemned the Internet and telecommunications blackout that has hit the Palestinian enclave since Friday.

“Compounding the misery and suffering of civilians, Israeli strikes on telecommunications installations and subsequent Internet shutdown have effectively left Gazans with no way of knowing what is happening across Gaza and cut them off from the outside world,” he said.

“Ambulances and civil defence teams are no longer able to locate the injured, or the thousands of people estimated to be still under the rubble.

“When these hostilities end, those who have survived will face the rubble of their homes and the graves of their family members,” Turk said.

He called on all parties “to do all in their power to de-escalate the conflict”.

The conflict is the fifth and deadliest in Gaza since Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Palestinian territory in 2005.

The latest Israeli strikes against Hamas, the Islamist group that has ruled Gaza since 2007, were the most intense since the war broke out. They coincided with ground operations.

“Continued violence is not the answer. I call on all parties as well as third States, in particular those with influence over the parties to the conflict, to do all in their power to de-escalate this conflict,” Turk added.