Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that his country had defeated Hezbollah and that eliminating its leader Hassan Nasrallah was the crowning achievement.
Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, said Palestinian medics.
An Israeli strike on a residential building in the Sayeda Zainab district south of the Syrian capital Damascus killed seven civilians on Sunday, said the Syrian defence ministry, in the second such attack in less than a week.
Israeli defence minister says Hezbollah has been defeated
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that his country had defeated Hezbollah and that eliminating its leader Hassan Nasrallah was the crowning achievement.
“Now it is our job to continue to put pressure in order to bring about the fruits of that victory,” said Katz during a ceremony at Israel’s foreign ministry.
Katz said Israel was not interested in meddling in internal Lebanese politics as Israel has “learnt our lessons”, but that he hoped an international coalition would capitalise on this opportunity politically and that Lebanon would join other countries in normalising relations with Israel.
Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike in northern Gaza
Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, said Palestinian medics.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid on the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
Later on Sunday, the Israeli military said it struck a site in Jabalia in which “terrorists were operating”.
“These terrorists posed a threat to IDF [Israel Defense Forces] troops operating in the area. The details are under review,” said the Israeli military.
The Hamas armed wing said it attacked 15 Israeli soldiers with an anti-tank rocket before it “finished them off” with grenades and light weapons from a close range in Beit Lahiya. There was no Israeli comment and Reuters could not independently verify the account.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on 5 October.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Sabra neighbourhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the welfare ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, said medics and relatives.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the report.
Efforts to reach a ceasefire between the two warring sides have failed so far, with Israel and Hamas trading blame. Hamas wants an agreement that ends the war and a prisoner-for-hostages deal, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will only stop once Hamas is eradicated.
Qatar, which has been trying to negotiate a ceasefire along with Egypt and the US, has told Hamas and Israel it will suspend its efforts until both sides show “willingness and seriousness” to resume talks, its foreign ministry said on Saturday.
The three nations have spent months on fruitless talks between the warring sides in Gaza and any disengagement from that process could further complicate efforts to reach a deal.
There was no official response from Hamas or Israel.
The war erupted on 7 October 2023, when Hamas gunmen attacked Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and seizing another 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies. Israel’s military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, say Palestinian health officials.
Seven civilians killed in Israeli strike near Damascus
An Israeli strike on a residential building in the Sayeda Zainab district south of the Syrian capital Damascus killed seven civilians on Sunday, said the Syrian defence ministry, in the second such attack in less than a week.
The fatalities included women and children, with 20 people also injured, said the ministry in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which said last week that its air force had struck intelligence assets of the Iranian-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in the same area.
Sayeda Zainab, a stronghold of Hezbollah and the site of a major Shi’ite shrine, has been the target of previous strikes. The heavily garrisoned area near the shrine is also a well-known stronghold of Hezbollah, which is one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chief allies.
Israel has ramped up strikes in Syria since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, particularly since the escalation of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
Syrian and Western intelligence sources say Israeli attacks in Syria have killed scores of Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militia fighters based around the eastern outskirts of Damascus and to the south of the city.
Dutch police seize scores of 'Free Palestine' protesters after soccer unrest
Dutch police took away more than 100 protesters supporting Palestine on Sunday who defied a ban on demonstrations in Amsterdam following clashes this week involving Israeli soccer fans.
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the capital’s Dam Square, chanting “Free Palestine” and “Amsterdam says no to genocide”, in reference to the Gaza war.
Israel denies allegations of genocide in its more than year-long offensive against Palestinian group Hamas.
After a local court ratified the city council’s ban, police moved in, instructing protesters to leave and rounding up more than 100 of them, according to a Reuters journalist.
They were put on buses and dropped off on the outskirts of the city, police spokesperson Ramona van den Ochtend said, without confirming how many had been picked up.
One bleeding protester was taken to an ambulance.
The ban, which authorities extended for another four days until Thursday, has been in place since Friday after attacks on Israeli soccer supporters following a soccer match between visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam.
At least five people were injured in assaults that Dutch authorities and foreign leaders including Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced as anti-Semitic.
Protest organisers said in a message on Instagram that they were outraged by the “framing” of unrest around the match as anti-Semitic and called the protest ban draconian.
“We refuse to let the charge of anti-Semitism be weaponised to suppress Palestinian resistance,” they said.
Four people remained detained on suspicion of violent acts, including two minors. Another 40 people were fined for public disturbance and 10 for offences including vandalism.
As well as undergoing attacks by what the mayor called “anti-Semitic hit-and-run squads”, visiting Israeli fans burned a Palestinian flag and used sticks, pipes and rocks in clashes with opponents, according to a video and police report.
Local police chief Olivier Dutilh told the court on Sunday that the protest ban was still needed as anti-Semitic incidents were continuing, including people being pushed out of taxis and told to show their passports on Saturday night.
The Netherlands has seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the Gaza war began in October last year.
Israel moves forward on deploying missile defence system in Germany
Israel’s Defence Ministry has begun coordinating joint preparations with the German Federal Ministry of Defence for the initial deployment of Israel’s Arrow-3 missile interception system on German soil in 2025, it said on Sunday.
The ministry said it had held meetings at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) along with the Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems Israel, with US approval, agreed last year to sell the Arrow-3 system to Germany in a $3.5-billion deal, its biggest defence sale to date.
Germany and its neighbours in Europe are boosting defence spending following Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The US is a partner in the Arrow project and Boeing and is involved in its production.
Arrow is the upper layer of Israel’s missile defences, together with the Iron Dome, which takes out short-range threats such as mortars and rockets, and mid-range defender David’s Sling.
Arrow-2 intercepts ballistic missiles at long range, while the newer Arrow-3 specialises in knocking out missiles before they re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon’s Almat
At least 23 people, including seven children, were killed and six others injured in an Israeli strike on Almat in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon province, said the country’s health ministry on Sunday, adding that the death toll was likely to climb.
Three people were also killed and two others wounded in an Israeli strike on Mashghara in the western part of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley late on Saturday, while one person was killed and four others injured in a strike on Sahmar, also in western Bekaa, that occurred the same night, said the health ministry.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it is targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
Israel’s strikes on Iran spark interest in air-launched ballistic missiles
Israel’s effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles (ALBMs) in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favour of cruise missiles and glide bombs.
The Israel Defense Forces said its 26 October raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defences in three waves of strikes. Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran’s nuclear programme.
Tehran defends such targets with “a huge variety" of anti-aircraft systems, said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
Cruise missiles are easier targets for dense, integrated air defences than ballistic missiles are. But ballistic missiles are often fired from known launch points, and most cannot change course in flight.
Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Rampage, developed by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) — weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude.
“The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defences," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. “The downside — accuracy — looks to have been largely solved.”
Ground-launched ballistic missiles — which Iran used to attack Israel twice this year, and which both Ukraine and Russia have used since Russia’s invasion in 2022 — are common in the arsenals of many countries. So, too, are cruise missiles.
Because ALBMs are carried by aircraft, their launch points are flexible, helping strike planners.
“The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them,” said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel’s missile defences.
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defences. In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Patriot PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia’s Khinzhals.
Many countries, including the US and Britain, experimented with ALBMs during the Cold War. Only Israel, Russia and China are known to field the weapons now.
Israel rejects ‘biased’ warning of famine in Gaza
Israel rejected on Saturday a group of global food security experts’ warning of famine in parts of northern Gaza where it is waging war against Hamas.
“Unfortunately, the researchers continue to rely on partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests,” said the military in a statement.
The independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said on Friday in a rare alert that there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in parts of north Gaza with immediate action required from the warring parties to ease a catastrophic situation.
Israel said it had increased aid efforts including opening an additional crossing on Friday.
Asked about the FRC alert, a US State Department spokesperson said on Saturday that Washington was “concerned about the limited amount of aid reaching civilians living in Gaza” and that the report underscored the situation’s urgency.
“We have and will continue to make clear to Israel that they must do more to facilitate aid entry and delivery inside Gaza,” said the spokesperson, adding that the US was working with Israel, the UN and other partners to find solutions to ramp up aid delivery.
The State Department spokesperson also said Hamas must release the hostages it is holding and not interfere in any humanitarian efforts.
Since the beginning of the war in October 2023, 39,000 trucks carrying more than 840,000 tonnes of food had entered Gaza, said Israel, and meetings were taking place daily with the UN, which had 700 trucks of aid awaiting pickup and distribution.
With some critics decrying a starvation tactic in north Gaza, Israel’s main ally, the US, has set a deadline within days for it to improve the humanitarian situation or face potential restrictions on military cooperation.
Nuclear watchdog chief to visit Iran
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi will visit Iran next Wednesday and start consultations with Iranian officials the following day, state media reported on Sunday.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Wednesday he might head to Iran in the coming days to discuss its disputed nuclear programme and that he expected to work cooperatively with US President-elect Donald Trump.
Long-standing issues between Iran, the IAEA and Western powers include Tehran barring uranium enrichment experts from IAEA inspection teams in the country and its failure for years to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.
Iran has also stepped up nuclear activity since 2019, after then President Trump abandoned a 2015 deal Iran reached with world powers under which it curbed enrichment — seen by the West as a disguised effort to develop nuclear weapons capability — and restored tough US sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
Tehran is now enriching uranium to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the roughly 90% required for an atom bomb. It has enough higher-enriched uranium to produce about four nuclear bombs if refined further, according to an IAEA yardstick.
Iran has long denied any nuclear bomb ambitions, saying it is enriching uranium for civilian energy uses only. DM
Read more: Middle East crisis news hub