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Israel Expands War Aims to Include Returning Displaced Citizens to the North as Prospect of Hezbollah War Looms
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s security cabinet has expanded its war goals to include returning displaced Israelis from the north back to their homes after they were forced to flee amid unrelenting fire from the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The decision, which was made in a late-night meeting on Monday that extended into the early hours of Tuesday morning, was announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Israel will continue to act to implement this goal,” Netanyahu said.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel — in which the Palestinian terrorist group murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages — the Jewish state’s war aims have been to return the hostages, destroy Hamas, and ensure Gaza cannot be used as a launching pad to attack Israel in the future.
On Oct. 8, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s war on Israel, pummeling northern Israeli communities almost daily with barrages of drones, rockets, and missiles from southern Lebanon, where it wields significant political and military influence. One such attack killed 12 children in the small Druze town of Majdal Shams.
About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate Israel’s north during that time due to the unrelenting attacks. Most of them have spent the past 11 months living in hotels in other areas of the country.
Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all displaced citizens can safely return to their homes. Efforts to make it safe for them to return have so far been unsuccessful, indicating a larger military conflict could be on the horizon.
“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Monday in a meeting with White House Special envoy Amos Hochstein, according to a statement from his office. “Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action.”
Amid escalating tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the US has warned both sides to refrain from larger military action.
Hochstein, who was visiting Israel on Monday, told Netanyahu and Gallant in meetings that the US does not believe that a full confrontation with Lebanon will serve Israel’s interests or return the residents of the north to their homes, according to Israeli media reports. The US envoy also reportedly added that the risk of a regional war was real and that the diplomaitc resolution to ultimately end it would be similar to the ones being discussed now anyway.
However, tensions do not seem likely to lower in the near future.
On Tuesday, thousands of members of Hezbollah, including fighters and medics, were seriously when the pagers they use to communicate exploded.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the Iran-backed group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel.
Up to 2,750 people were injured in Lebanon due to exploding pagers, and at least eight people were killed, according to Lebanon’s minister of health.
Hezbollah blamed Israel for the explosions and vowed revenge, although the Jewish state has so far neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
The post Israel Expands War Aims to Include Returning Displaced Citizens to the North as Prospect of Hezbollah War Looms first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.