Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant was headed to Washington on Sunday for “critical” talks on the Gaza war raging since October 7 and surging cross-border tensions with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced hope for speedy progress on unfreezing US arms and ammunition deliveries from Israel’s top ally which he said had dropped off sharply in recent months.

US President Joe Biden has been at odds with Israel’s veteran right-wing leader over Gaza’s surging civilian death toll, but US officials have said they were not aware of what Netanyahu was referring to on the arms issue.

The Israeli premier on Sunday told his cabinet that “about four months ago, there was a dramatic drop in the supply of armaments arriving from the US to Israel. We got all sorts of explanations, but… the basic situation didn’t change.”

However, he voiced hope the issue would now be cleared up: “In light of what I have heard in the last day, I hope and believe that this issue will be resolved in the near future.”

Israeli forces again bombed Gaza on Sunday, a day after tens of thousands staged a protest rally in Tel Aviv against the government and to demand the return of hostages being held by Hamas.

Tensions have also flared on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon whose Iran-backed Hezbollah movement has traded daily cross-border fire with the army, heightening fears of all-out war.

Gallant said he would “discuss developments in Gaza and Lebanon”, vowing that “we are prepared for any action that may be required in Gaza, Lebanon and in additional areas”.

He stressed that “our ties with the United States are more important than ever. Our meetings with US officials are critical to this war.”

– ‘War of annihilation’ –

In Gaza, Israeli forces kept striking targets and battling Hamas, the Islamist militant group Israel has vowed to destroy over its October 7 attack, in a war that has devastated much of the coastal territory.

Warplanes had struck “dozens of terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including military structures, terrorists and terrorist infrastructure” over the past 24 hours, a military statement said.

As the Gaza war has raged on for over eight months, Israeli protesters have taken to the streets week after week demanding greater efforts to bring home the remaining hostages.

A rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening drew more than 150,000 people, according to the organisation Israel Democracy HQ ~CHECK~ Hofshi B’Artzenu, which called it the biggest rally since the Gaza war began.

Many demonstrators voiced anger and frustration with Netanyahu and his far-right allies, accusing them of prolonging the war and putting the country’s security and hostages at risk.

Many held signs reading “Crime Minister” and “Stop the War” while some lay on the ground covered in red paint to protest what they labelled the death of Israel’s democracy.

In an address to the crowd, Yuval Diskin, a former head of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet, condemned Netanyahu as Israel’s “worst prime minister”.

– Lebanon tensions –

The Gaza war broke out with Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza although the army says 41 are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,598 people, also mostly civilians, Gaza’s health ministry said.

An Israeli siege has deprived Gaza’s 2.4 million people of most drinking water, food, fuel and other essentials.

“This war must stop,” said Umm Siraj al-Balawi, surviving in a makeshift shelter amid a field of rubble, with strung-up sheets protecting her young children from the blazing sun.

“People are getting displaced from house to house, tent to tent, school to school,” she said. “This is a war of displacement. It’s a war of annihilation.”

Lebanon’s Hezbollah meanwhile said it had targeted a military position in northern Israel “with an attack drone” in response to the killing of a commander of the Jamaa Islamiya group in a strike on eastern Lebanon.

Israel said no one was injured in the attack Sunday.

Hezbollah had hours earlier published a video excerpt purporting to show locations in Israel along with their coordinates, amid heightening fears of an all-out conflict.

Israel’s military said last Tuesday that a plan for a Lebanon offensive had been “approved and validated”.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah responded with threats that no part of Israel would be spared in the event of a full-scale war.

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

People inspect the rubble of a house where a Hezbollah member and his family were killed in Israeli bombardment.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said on March 12 it launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for a strike on the country’s east that killed one person the day before.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

“Hezbollah launched “more than a hundred katyusha rockets” on Tuesday morning at two military bases in the occupied Golan Heights,” the group said in a statement. This was “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, it added.

On Monday, Israeli air strikes near Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek killed one person, in the second raid on the Hezbollah stronghold since cross-border hostilities began. The Israeli military confirmed its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, killing two Hezbollah members. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 317 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.

Displaced Palestinian children wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on February 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said on February 29 more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war between the militant group and Israel began nearly five months ago.

While mediators say a truce deal between Israel and Hamas could be just days away, aid agencies have sounded the alarm of a looming famine in Gaza’s north.

Children have died “due to malnutrition, dehydration and widespread famine” at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, said the Health Ministry, whose spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra has called for “immediate action” from international organisations to prevent more of these deaths.

Citing the deteriorating conditions in Gaza, USAID head Samantha Power said Israel needed to open more crossings so that “vitally needed humanitarian assistance can be dramatically surged”. “This is a matter of life and death,” Ms. Power said in a video posted on social media platform X.

“The latest overall toll for Palestinians killed in the war came after at least 79 people died overnight across the war-torn Gaza Strip,” the Health Ministry said on February 29.

Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been seeking a six-week pause in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which in response vowed to eliminate the Palestinian Islamist group that rules in Gaza.

Negotiators are hoping a truce can begin by the start of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month that kicks off March 10 or 11, depending on the lunar calendar.

The proposals reportedly include the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza in exchange for several hundred Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

Short of the complete withdrawal Hamas has called for, a source from the group said the deal might see Israeli forces leave “cities and populated areas”, allowing the return of some displaced Palestinians and humanitarian relief.

U.S. President Joe Biden is “pushing all of us to try to get this agreement over the finish line”, said his Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Famine imminent in northern Gaza: World Food Programme

The crucial southern Gaza city of Rafah is the main entry point for aid crossing the border from neighbouring Egypt.

But the World Food Programme said no humanitarian group had been able to deliver aid to the north for more than a month, accusing Israel of blocking access. Neighbouring Jordan has coordinated efforts to air-drop supplies over southern Gaza.

“If nothing changes, a famine is imminent in northern Gaza,” the World Food Programme’s deputy executive director Carl Skau said.

Israeli officials have denied blocking supplies, and the Army on Wednesday said “50 trucks carrying humanitarian aid” had made it to northern Gaza in recent days.

The war was triggered by an unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of around 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Militants also took about 250 hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 31 presumed dead, according to Israel. Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has left hundreds of thousands displaced, with nearly 1.5 million people now packed in Rafah.

In a sign of growing desperation among Gazans over living conditions, a rare protest was held on February 28 by residents over the soaring prices of commodities.

“Everyone is suffering inside these tents,” said Amal Zaghbar, who was displaced and sheltering in a makeshift camp. “We’re dying slowly.”

Israel has repeatedly threatened a ground offensive on Rafah, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying a truce would only delay it, as such an operation was needed for “total victory” over Hamas.

Egypt, which borders Rafah, says an assault on the overcrowded city would have “catastrophic repercussions”.

Stop this insane war: Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki

While Israel’s plans for post-war Gaza exclude any mention of the Palestinian Authority (PA), its top ally the United States and other powers have called for a revitalised PA, which governs the occupied West Bank, to take charge of the territory.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said a “technocratic” government without Gaza’s rulers Hamas was needed to “stop this insane war” and facilitate relief operations and reconstruction.

His government, based in the West Bank, resigned this week, with Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh citing the need for change after the war ends.

A government that includes Hamas — long-time rivals of president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party, which controls the PA — would “be boycotted by a number of countries”, Mr. Maliki told a news conference in Geneva.

On February 29, Palestinian factions — including Hamas and Fatah — were expected to arrive in Moscow for a meeting at Russia’s invitation.

“The central goal is how to unite the Palestinian ranks,” Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative — a civilian political party — told Qatar state TV from Moscow. In Israel, Netanyahu has come under increasing pressure to bring the hostages home. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant insisted the government was “making every effort”.

A group of 150 Israelis started a four-day march from Reim, near the Gaza border, to Jerusalem, calling for the government to reach a deal. “No one should be left behind,” said Ronen Neutra, father of captive Omer Neutra, an Israeli soldier who is also a U.S. citizen.