Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed at least 38 people around the eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley on Wednesday, according to the regional governor, and at dusk more strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The United Nations says replacing its Palestinian relief agency Unrwa in Gaza and the West Bank was not the world body’s responsibility, signalling it was Israel’s problem, according to a letter excerpt seen by Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his supporters celebrated Donald Trump’s election as president, hailing what a leader of the Israeli settler movement called an ally who would support them “unconditionally”
Israeli strikes on Lebanon kill 38 people
Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed at least 38 people around the eastern city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley on Wednesday, according to the regional governor, and at dusk more strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have exchanged fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war but fighting has escalated since late September, with Israeli troops intensifying bombing on swathes of Lebanon’s south and east and making ground incursions into border villages.
Around 40 Israeli strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel governorate killed 38 people and wounded 54, said Governor Bachir Khodr on X. The Israeli military did not comment.
Israeli strikes have also battered Hezbollah strongholds in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut. At least four strikes targeted the area on Wednesday after the Israeli military ordered residents to evacuate from several locations.
There was no immediate report on casualties or details on what was hit. The attack happened shortly after Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Naim Qassem, said he did not believe that “political action” would bring about an end to hostilities.
He said there could be a road to indirect negotiations if Israel stopped its attacks.
“I will tell you very clearly, our conviction is that only one thing can stop this war of aggression, and that is the battlefield,” said Qassem, who was elected as Hezbollah’s secretary-general following the killing of his predecessor, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in Israeli strikes in September.
“When the enemy decides to stop the aggression, there is a path for negotiations that we have clearly defined — indirect negotiations through the Lebanese state and Speaker [of parliament Nabih] Berri,” said Qassem.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last year, the vast majority in the past six weeks.
Lebanese rescuers scoured a destroyed apartment building in the town of Barja south of Beirut for bodies or any survivors after an Israeli strike on Tuesday evening that killed 20 people there, Lebanon’s health ministry said.
Moussa Zahran, who lived on one of the upper floors of the building, returned to sift through the ruins of his home. His burned feet were wrapped in gauze and his son and wife were in hospital after being wounded in the strike.
“These rocks that you see here weigh 100 kilos; they fell on a 13-kilo kid,” he said, referring to his son and the apartment wall that had collapsed onto him during the strike.
It was not clear if the strike targeted a member of Hezbollah. There was no evacuation warning ahead of the air raid.
Hezbollah said on Wednesday it had fired missiles at an Israeli military base near Ben Gurion Airport. Israeli media reported a rocket had landed near the airport.
Later, the Israeli military said dozens of “projectiles” had crossed into Israel from Lebanon, some of which were intercepted.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister meanwhile congratulated the “president-elect” in the US, without naming Donald Trump.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump’s election, while senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump would be tested on his statements that he can stop the Gaza war in hours as president.
Replacing Unrwa relief agency not our responsibility, UN tells Israel
The United Nations says replacing its Palestinian relief agency Unrwa in Gaza and the West Bank was not the world body’s responsibility, signalling it was Israel’s problem, according to a letter excerpt seen by Reuters.
The UN formally responded in a letter to Israel’s decision to cut ties with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a move that Unrwa has said leaves its operations in Gaza and the West Bank at risk of collapse.
Under a new law, Israel told the UN on Sunday it was ending a 1967 cooperation agreement with Unrwa that covered its protection, movement and diplomatic immunity. The law will also ban Unrwa’s operations in Israel from late January.
“I would note, as a general point, that it is not our responsibility to replace Unrwa, nor do we have the capacity to do so,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ chef de cabinet, Courtenay Rattray, wrote to a senior Israeli foreign affairs official late on Tuesday.
The mention of responsibility is a veiled reference to Israel’s obligations as an occupying power.
The UN views Gaza and the West Bank as Israeli-occupied territory. International humanitarian law requires an occupying power to agree to relief programmes for people in need and to facilitate them “by all the means at its disposal” and ensure food, medical care, hygiene and public health standards.
“If Unrwa is no longer able to operate it would be the responsibility of the Israeli authorities to replace its services that it delivers to civilians, in education, in health, and all sorts of other areas,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric later clarified to reporters.
Top UN officials and the Security Council describe Unrwa as the backbone of the aid response in Gaza, where Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas have been at war for the past year, leaving the enclave in ruins and on the brink of famine.
Netanyahu has long called for Unrwa to be dismantled, accusing it of anti-Israeli incitement. Israel also says Unrwa staff took part in the 7 October 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
The UN has said nine Unrwa staff may have been involved and had been fired. Later, a Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was found to have had an Unrwa job.
Unrwa was established in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel. It provides aid, health and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and neighbouring Arab countries — Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
The United Nations has repeatedly said there is no alternative to Unrwa.
Unrwa Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that implementing the Israeli law would have “disastrous consequences”, adding: “Millions of Palestine refugees fear that the public services on which their lives depend will soon disappear.
“They fear that their children will be deprived of education; that illnesses will go untreated; and that social support will stop. The entire population of Gaza fears that their only remaining lifeline will be cut.”
Israeli government celebrates Trump’s election triumph
Netanyahu and his supporters celebrated Donald Trump’s election as president, hailing what a leader of the Israeli settler movement called an ally who would support them “unconditionally”.
Congratulating Trump, Netanyahu said the former president had made “history’s greatest comeback”.
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” he said in a statement, which was echoed by the leaders of the hard-right nationalist religious parties in his coalition.
Hamas said the election was a matter for the American people, but it called for an end to the “blind support” for Israel from the US.
“We urge Trump to learn from [President Joe] Biden’s mistakes,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
The outcome is a relief for Netanyahu’s coalition, which has clashed with Biden’s Democratic administration over the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon that have fuelled protests worldwide and left Israel increasingly isolated internationally.
Israel’s settler leaders welcomed Trump’s victory after Biden’s administration imposed sanctions and asset freezes on settler groups and individuals involved in violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“We expect to have an ally standing unconditionally beside us as we fight the battles that are a war on the entire West,” said Israel Ganz, the chairperson of the main Yesha settler council.
Nearly two-thirds of Israelis believe Trump would be better for Israel than his Democratic Party rival Kamala Harris, according to a survey from the Israel Democracy Institute.
Iraq denies talk of Iranian attack on Israel from its soil
The Iraqi government’s Council for National Security said on Wednesday that reports about Iraqi territory being used by Iran for attacks on Israel were “false pretexts” aimed at justifying aggression against it, the military said.
Iraqi military spokesperson Yahya Rasool’s comments came in response to an Oct. 31 Axios report citing Israeli intelligence about a potential Iranian attack from Iraqi territory.
Gaza polio vaccination campaign completed, says Israeli military
The Israeli military said on Wednesday aid organisations had completed a second polio vaccination round for children in Gaza, administering more than 1.1 million vaccinations in different areas of the enclave, achieving 90% coverage.
Limits on the area covered by a humanitarian pause in the fighting to conduct the campaign meant the campaign in northern Gaza was largely restricted to the area around Gaza City, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
The polio campaign began on 1 September after the WHO confirmed in August that a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
Out of a total of 1,107,541 vaccinations for children across Gaza, there were 211,170 vaccinations in northern Gaza, 379,361 vaccinations in central Gaza and 517,070 vaccinations in southern Gaza, said the military.
Cogat, the military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, has been working with international agencies to coordinate the campaign, which requires two vaccine doses per child.
On Tuesday, Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian Territories, said the mass evacuations from areas in northern Gaza where the Israeli military has been operating for more than a month, had made it difficult to estimate the number of children who might be missed in the north.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on 1 September, reached its target of 90% of children under 10 years of age, according to the United Nations. DM
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