Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected on Tuesday (October 15, 2024) the idea of a ceasefire in Lebanon that would leave Hezbollah close to his country’s northern border, as the militant group threatened to widen its attacks.

Mr. Netanyahu’s comments came as the United States ramped up pressure over Israel’s conduct of the wars in Lebanon and Gaza, criticising the recent bombing of Beirut and demanding that more aid reach the Palestinian territory.

In a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr. Netanyahu said he was “opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was”, according to a statement from his office.

Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli military have insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu clarified that Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this (a buffer zone) and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement said.

In a defiant televised speech, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution was a ceasefire while threatening to expand the scope of its missile strikes across Israel.

“Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place” in Israel, he said.

In another day of fighting, the Iran-backed group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa and targeted Israeli bulldozers and a tank near the border.

Israel’s military bombed several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, including in the Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.

It also said it had captured three Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry said nine people were killed Tuesday evening in strikes on the country’s south, and five others in the east, including three children.

Asked about Israeli air strikes in Lebanon in which residential buildings in central Beirut were hit on October 10, the U.S. State Department voiced open criticism.

“We have made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks” in Beirut, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

In a letter sent to the Israeli government on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also warned that the United States could withhold weapons deliveries unless more humanitarian aid was delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.

The letter made “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,” Mr. Miller said.

‘Worst restrictions’

Despite the need for food, medical supplies and shelter in hunger-ravaged Gaza, a spokesman for the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF said Tuesday that aid was facing the tightest restrictions since the start of Israel’s offensive in October last year.

“We see now what is probably the worst restrictions we’ve seen on humanitarian aid, ever,” spokesman James Elder said in Geneva, adding that there were “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in”.

For over a week, Israeli forces have engaged in a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza and the area around Jabalia amid claims that Hamas militants were regrouping there.

“The whole area has been reduced to ashes,” said Rana Abdel Majid, 38, from the Al-Faluja area of northern Gaza.

Mr. Majid said entire blocks had been levelled by “the indiscriminate, merciless bombing”.

At a school-turned-shelter hit by an Israeli strike in the central Nuseirat camp, Fatima al-Azab said “there is no safety anywhere” in Gaza.

“They are all children, sleeping in the covers, all burned and cut up,” she said.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after an October 7 attack by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.

The Israeli campaign has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory which the UN considers reliable.

Lebanon strikes

Israel escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon from September 23 and then launched a ground offensive a week later intended to push the group back from its northern border.

Hezbollah has been firing thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year in support of Hamas, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.

At least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated its bombing last month, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

The war in Lebanon, which has suffered years of economic crisis, has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.

Israel is also weighing how to respond to Iran’s decision to launch around 200 missiles at the country on October 1.

Netanyahu’s office said that Israel – and not its top ally the United States – would decide how to strike back.

“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” it said on Tuesday.

The Iranian barrage was in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and another that killed Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan on September 27.

U.S. President Joe Biden, whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier, has warned Israel against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities.

According to a Washington Post report on Monday citing unnamed US officials, M.r Netanyahu reassured the White House that Israel was contemplating targeting only military sites.

Palestinian women stand near the damaged site of a drone strike in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, August 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Five Palestinians were killed in anIsraeli strike on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank on Monday (August 26, 2024), the Palestinian Health Ministry said in a statement.

The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said four loud explosions were heard after an Israeli drone targeted a house in the camp in the West Bank city of Tulkarm. Israel has not immediately commented.

Clashes in the occupied West Bank have risen sharply since the start of the Gaza war last year as Israeli forces have stepped up operations against armed militant groups, including Hamas and the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad.

Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and at least 637 killed, many of them armed fighters but others stone-throwing youths or uninvolved civilians.

In the latest war between Israel and Hamas, children were targets on both sides. Israel started its heavy bombardment of Gaza, a tiny Mediterranean land strip of 2.3 million people, on October 7 after Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs the enclave, carried out an unprecedented cross-border raid, killing at least 1,400 Israelis.

Of the victims, 447 were children and 248 were women, according to Israeli authorities. In retaliation, Israel has cut off food, fuel and power supplies to Gaza, laid siege to the enclave and started bombing it disproportionately. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog suggested there are no innocent civilians in Gaza. In the Israeli attacks, in 22 days, at least 7,700 people were killed, some 70% of them women and children.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the toll includes more than 3,500 minors. The Israeli attacks have also turned more than a million people refugees. Israel ordered one million people living in northern Gaza to move towards the south. Since children make up half of Gaza’s population, they are the hardest hit age category by the displacement as well.

Now that Israel launched its ground invasion, many more Palestinians will be killed, wounded and displaced, which means many more children would be victimised.