File photo of U.S. President Donald Trump with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An arrest warrant has been issued against Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant

Jerusalem:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Tuesday that Israel — and not the United States — will decide how it will strike back after Iran fired around 200 missiles at his country earlier this month.

The comments came as a top Iranian commander, whose absence sparked rumours that he could have been killed in an Israeli strike, appeared in public for the first time in weeks.

Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah also exchanged fire as fighting raged in Lebanon, while humanitarian groups sounded the alarm about a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

On October 1, Iran launched a volley of about 200 missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s capital Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan.

Israel has vowed to respond to the attack. Biden — whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier — has warned against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities in order to avoid broader war.

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

A statement from Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday took a different tone.

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

Also on Tuesday, Esmail Qaani, the head of Iran’s powerful Quds Force, attended the funeral for Nilforoushan, dispelling rumours he had been killed.

Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire

Israel’s military launched several strikes on eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, a day after Netanyahu vowed to “mercilessly strike Hezbollah in all parts of Lebanon — including Beirut”.

Multiple Israeli air strikes hit the eastern Bekaa Valley, putting a hospital in Baalbek city out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported.

“It was a violent night in Baalbek, we have not witnessed a similar one since” the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, 50-year-old resident Nidal al-Solh told AFP.

Israeli strikes have targeted Hezbollah strongholds as well as other parts of Lebanon, including a northern Christian-majority village where at least 21 people were killed on Monday, according to the health ministry.

Anis Abla, civil defence chief in the southern border town of Marjayoun, said that “our rescue missions are becoming more and more difficult, because the strikes are never-ending and target us”.

At least 1,315 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel last month escalated its bombing there, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.

The war in Lebanon has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to verified figures last week from the International Organization for Migration.

UNICEF and the World Food Programme on Tuesday called for more funding to address “increasing” needs in Lebanon.

‘Entirely unjustified’

Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah in order to secure its northern boundary and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire since last year to return home safely.

Hezbollah claimed several attacks early Tuesday, including targeting Israeli troops in northern Israel with a salvo of rockets.

It also said it downed an Israeli Hermes 450 drone overnight, without specifying where.

Fighters from Hezbollah also clashed with Israeli troops in a Lebanese border village, and sent rockets towards the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, the group said.

Hezbollah says its strikes are also in support of Palestinian militants Hamas who attacked Israel on October 7 last year, triggering the ongoing war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has faced new criticism over injuries and damage sustained by UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeeping force which has been deployed in Lebanon since 1978, after a previous Israeli invasion.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose country is the second-biggest contributor of UNIFIL peacekeepers, lashed out at the Israeli attacks. The attitude of the Israeli forces was “entirely unjustified,” she told the Italian Senate.

The UN Security Council for the first time on Monday expressed “strong concerns” over peacekeepers being wounded in Lebanon.

UNIFIL has refused Netanyahu’s request for peacekeepers to “get out of harm’s way”, with UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix saying the blue helmets will stay in their positions.

‘Unimaginable fear’ in Gaza

While deploying troops into Lebanon, Israel has kept up its bombardment of Gaza where it has been at war since the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

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.

In northern Gaza, the Israeli military announced it had effectively laid siege to the Jabalia area as it seeks to rout out Hamas fighters.

The International Committee for the Red Cross warned that “northern Gaza families are facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion”.

“People must be able to flee safely,” the ICRC’s Adrian Zimmerman said.

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

File photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday (October 5, 2024) slammed French President Emmanuel Macron for calling for a halt to arms supplies to Israel, which is fighting wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

“As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilised countries should be standing firmly by Israel’s side. Yet, President Macron and other Western leaders are now calling for arms embargoes against Israel. Shame on them,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel was fighting a war on several fronts against groups backed by arch-foe Iran.

“Is Iran imposing an arms embargo on Hezbollah, on the Huthis, on Hamas and on its other proxies? Of course not,” he said. All three groups are backed by Tehran and form part of its “axis of resistance” against Israel.

“This axis of terror stands together. But countries who supposedly oppose this terror axis call for an arms embargo on Israel. What a disgrace!”

Mr. Netanyahu said Israel would win even without their support.

“But their shame will continue long after the war is won,” he said.

“Rest assured, Israel will fight until the battle is won – for our sake and for the sake of peace and security in the world.”

Tel Aviv, Israel:

In Israel’s first reaction since thousands of blasts rocked Lebanon over two days, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defence minister has announced that the “centre of gravity” of the Middle East conflict is “moving north”.

In a brief video statement, Mr Netanyahu also promised that tens of thousands of residents from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon will “return to their homes”.

Lebanon’s militant outfit Hezbollah has been backing Hamas in the Gaza war shortly after it began in October 2023 and regular exchange of fire between Hezbollah militia and Israel’s armed forces have been going on for the last many months, however tensions have surges since Tuesday’s pager explosions across Lebanon which killed twelve and injured nearly 3,000 people, mostly linked with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has blamed Israel for what it calls their “biggest-ever” security breach. Mr Netanyahu, however, didn’t speak directly about the explosions that have rocked Lebanon.

Less than twenty-four hours since thousands of pagers blew up across Lebanon, hand-held walkie-talkies have today exploded killing another nine people and wounding over 300.

During his statement Mr Netanyahu said, “I have said it before, we will return to the citizens of the north to their homes in security and that’s exactly what we are going to do.”

To this, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant added that “forces are being sent to the northern border.” Israel has said that the war has now “moved into a new phase”, amid concerns that a new front to the war may soon see escalation.

“The ‘centre of gravity’ is moving north, meaning that we are allocating forces, resources and energy for the northern arena,” the defence minister said in remarks released by his office.

While the Gaza strip is on Israel’s south-western front, Lebanon shares a border with Israel’s north.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned against any escallation of the war in the Middle East.
 

The Arab nations have, for the first time ever, agreed to recognise Israel as a country, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being “frustrating” as he has not accepted a ceasefire deal that would ensure the return of peace in Gaza, Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera has said.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is standing in the way of the ceasefire deal,” Congressman Bera said in an exclusive interview to NDTV.

Speaking about the lengthy process of securing a ceasefire deal, Congressman Bera said, “I am frustrated as well. You need both Hamas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to the table. And I am frustrated with PM Netanyahu. He should accept the ceasefire deal and we should get the hostages released.”

He highlighted the fact that Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations are willing to change relations with Israel and recognise it as a country, calling it a “remarkable” development. However, he said that it will all only begin with a ceasefire deal and starting a discussion about the two-state solution. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is the one standing in the way of that,” Mr Bera said.

Ami Bera, who is in his sixth consecutive term, is the senior-most and the longest serving Indian-American Congressman in the House of Representatives.

He is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and House Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Congressman also outlined Vice President Kamala Harris’ stance on the Gaza crisis and what steps she could take if elected president in the November elections. “Vice President Harris has talked about the tragedy on October 7 but also the tragic loss of civilian lives after October 7. She, along with President Biden, understands the importance of getting a ceasefire and getting the hostages home.”

She has iterated the importance of both Jewish people living safely in Israel and Palestinian people living with dignity and peace, Mr Bera said.

The nearly year-long war in Gaza has seen the loss of more than 40,000 lives. Meanwhile, months of negotiations mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States have failed to stop the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Jerusalem:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “settle the score” with Hamas after the military had recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Gaza tunnel.

“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza truce, Netanyahu said in a statement, telling Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, we will catch you and we will settle the score”.

Netanyahu said that Israel was “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all”, mentioning a shooting attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank earlier on Sunday that killed three police officers.

Hamas has not claimed the attack but in a statement called it a “heroic operation by the resistance”.

According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so”, referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

A senior Hamas official said that several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a truce deal, which has yet to be finalised despite months of mediation efforts.

“Some of the names of the captives announced as found by the (Israeli) occupier… were part of the list of hostages to be released that Hamas had approved” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the issue.

Israeli media reported that US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies had been recovered from Gaza — Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi — had been approved by Hamas to be released in the event of a truce deal.

The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the occupation’s fire and bombing”, an accusation denied by the Israeli military.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists”.

“We do know they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. We do know — I can tell you — there was no real-time fire engagement in the tunnel,” Shoshani said.

Claims by Hamas that the hostages were killed by Israeli forces were “psychological warfare”, he said.

The bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, around one kilometre (0.6 miles) away from where troops had rescued alive another hostage, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, on Tuesday, according to Shoshani.

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

Jerusalem:

Israel will be the United States’ strongest ally in the Middle East regardless of who is elected president in November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday before flying to Washington, where he was due to address the U.S. Congress.

The visit, Netanyahu’s first to his most important international ally since returning for a record sixth term as prime minister at the end of 2022, has been overshadowed by President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek reelection.

Netanyahu said he would thank Biden for all he has done for Israel throughout his career and discuss with him issues such as securing the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, defeating the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, and confronting Iran and its proxies in the region.

A meeting with Biden is tentatively planned for Tuesday if the 81-year-old president has recovered from Covid-19. Netanyahu is scheduled to address Congress on Wednesday.

“I will tell my friends on both sides of the aisle that regardless of who the American people choose as their next president, Israel remains America’s indispensable and strong ally in the Middle East,” he told reporters before taking off.

“In this time of war and uncertainty, it’s important that Israel’s enemies know that America and Israel stand together today, tomorrow and always,” Netanyahu said, adding he wanted to “anchor the bipartisan support that is so important for Israel”.

After months of frosty relations with Washington over how Israel has conducted its offensive launched in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, the visit offers Netanyahu a platform to try to reset relations with Washington.

His speech to Congress is expected to focus on coordinating the Israeli and U.S. response to the volatile situation in the Middle East, where there is a growing danger of the Gaza war spilling over into a wider regional conflict.

The speech is likely to be less confrontational than an address Netanyahu gave to Congress in 2015, when he criticised Barack Obama’s drive as president for a nuclear deal with Iran.

PRESSURE

U.S. pressure on Israel for a resumption of talks on reaching a political agreement with the Palestinians, and a U.S. threat to withhold arms, have underlined perceptions in Israel that ties with Washington have weakened under Netanyahu. He has also faced protests in Israel demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Part of the goal is to try to show that with all that’s been said, with all the protests, Netanyahu is still the leader, still has support, he still has strong relations with America,” said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations specialist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The invitation for Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress – a rare honour generally reserved for the closest U.S. allies – was orchestrated by the House of Representatives’ Republican leadership, which has accused Biden of not showing sufficient support for Israel.

There was no immediate sign that Netanyahu will see Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The two forged a close relationship during Trump’s presidency but Trump has since criticised Netanyahu and said the Gaza war must end quickly.

Although his welcome in Congress should be generally warm, protests roiling U.S. campuses suggest Netanyahu’s reception outside official Washington may be hostile.

Activists opposing Israel’s offensive in Gaza and Washington’s support for Israel plan protests at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. Police expect a “large number of demonstrators” and are making additional security arrangements but said there were no known threats.

Israel has been isolated internationally over its campaign in Gaza, which Gaza health authorities say has killed almost 39,000 Palestinians, the expansion of settlement-building in the occupied West Bank and Jewish settlers’ attacks on Palestinians.

An opinion issued on Friday by the International Court of Justice that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal was criticised by Washington. But it followed similar developments including a decision by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to seek an arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

In Israel, Netanyahu faces growing calls for a deal that would halt the fighting in Gaza and allow the return of 120 hostages – alive or dead – still held in the enclave run by the Palestinian operative group Hamas.

Netanyahu has resisted pressure for an inquiry into the security failures before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and over 250 abducted into Gaza.

Opinion polls show most Israelis hold him responsible and would vote him out if elections were held.

Netanyahu will be accompanied by Noa Argamani, a hostage rescued by Israeli commandos last month. Her presence has been criticised by other hostage families who say Netanyahu has not been doing enough to secure the release of their loved ones.

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

Jerusalem:

National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss regional developments and the urgent need to address the issue of humanitarian assistance to Gaza which is facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met today with Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and updated him on recent developments in the fighting in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli Prime Minister posted on X from his official handle.

The Director of the National Security Council, the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Advisor and the Indian Ambassador to Israel also participated in the meeting. pic.twitter.com/epJd1CsVDW

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) March 11, 2024

More than 30,000 Palestinians were estimated to have been killed during the operation in Gaza, which Israel launched in response to the October 7 attack by Hamas militants that left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead and about 250 taken hostage.

The sides also discussed the effort to release the hostages and the issue of humanitarian assistance,” he said.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has created a growing humanitarian crisis, and the UN has warned that at least 576,000 people across the Gaza Strip – one-quarter of the population – are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.

Western countries have pressed Israel to expand land deliveries by facilitating more routes and opening additional crossings.

Mr Doval also met his Israeli counterpart Tzakhi Hanegbi, who was also present during the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been constantly in touch with the important leaders in the region, such as the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, and is actively involved in discussions to promote peace and stability in the region.

India has supported efforts to provide necessary humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population in Gaza sending consignments of essential items.
 

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