Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu says ability to counter ‘threats’ from Lebanon key to any ceasefire deal | Israel
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told US envoys that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal.
The comments came hours before Israel carried out airstrikes early on Friday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters witnesses said, the first strikes there in nearly a week.
“The main issue is … Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling two US envoys.
The envoys, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza. Lebanon’s prime minister on Wednesday expressed hope that a ceasefire deal was imminent.
Hochstein and McGurk, met the Israeli prime minister on Thursday to talk about a ceasefire proposal for Lebanon. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said negotiators made “good progress” toward a deal. “We’re hopeful that we will see things transition in Lebanon in a not too distant future,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who had expressed optimism of a speedy settlement “in hours or days” earlier on Thursday, said that Israel’s “ongoing escalation” in his country “does not inspire optimism”. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister “made it clear that the main point is not this or that agreement on paper but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon, in a manner that will return our residents securely to their homes”.
Thursday marked a day when the most civilians in both Israel and Lebanon were killed since October 2023. The Lebanese health ministry said that Israeli attacks had killed 45 people in the previous 24 hours, amid bombing in the north-east Bekaa valley and infantry battles in the south. In one Bekaa village, eight people were killed from the same family. In northern Israel, seven people were killed by rocket fire from Lebanon, including four Thai agricultural workers.
The Israeli army’s evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday included a Palestinian refugee camp. Among the areas listed was Rashidieh camp, which houses thousands of Palestinian refugees. Israel issued its second evacuation order for the city of Baalbek and two surrounding villages in the Bekaa valley on Thursday afternoon, carrying out a series of airstrikes on the village of Durous a few hours later. The evacuation orders had prompted a mass exodus of residents from the city, which is home to a Unesco world heritage site.
Israeli attacks killed at least one child in Lebanon each day and injured 10 others, the UN children’s agency (Unicef) said. Citing the Lebanese health ministry, Unicef said 166 children have been killed since October 2023, while at least 1,168 have been injured. It awrned that the war in Lebanon is “inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars” on many of the country’s children. Six Lebanese health workers were killed and four wounded in Israeli strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday, the health ministry said in a statement.
Key events
A Reuters report looks at the worsening conditions in Lebanon as looming winter stretches the country’s ability to aid those displaced by Israel’s attacks:
Thousands are seeking refuge from Israeli strikes in the mountainous Christian town of Deir al-Ahmar in eastern Lebanon.
The town was already hosting more than 10,000 displaced people before Israel escalated its strikes on predominantly Shi’ite Muslim Baalbek and nearby towns starting on Wednesday this week.
“If we flee the bombing, are we meant to die of cold?” said Suzanne Qassem, a mother of two at one displacement centre, whose home in Buday had been destroyed. “I’m sick, I’ve been taking medicine for a week and I’m still coughing... If my son gets sick, am I going to be able to get him medicine?”
Temperatures in Deir al-Ahmar are dropping to 6C overnight even before winter fully sets in and the schools have no diesel to run central heating systems.
“At night, we’re shaking. I put my mattress up next to my daughter and tell her to hug me so that we can keep warm. But we’re not keeping warm,” said Neyfe Mazloum, 69.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon over the last year in its campaign against militant group Hezbollah. That includes nearly 190,000 who have sought refuge in shelters. Others are staying with relatives, have rented out homes, or are sleeping in the streets.
Lebanon’s crisis management agency says that out of 1,130 accredited shelters, 948 have reached maximum capacity. Most of the displaced are in the districts of Mount Lebanon and Beirut – easy to reach for most aid organisations – but Deir al-Ahmar is much further afield.
Local volunteers are worried that the looming winter will cut off the only safe route into Deir al-Ahmar, leaving them stranded. “That road will close with the first snow. It will be like a siege,” said Khodr Zeaiter, an aid volunteer.
More images show the level of destruction in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza following Israeli airstrikes overnight.
Palestinians search through the rubble following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty ImagesA Palestinian youth pushes his bicycle amid the rubble of Nuseirat refugee camp. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty ImagesPalestinians inspect the damage following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp. Photograph: Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images
The first images of the overnight attacks on Lebanon are emerging on the wires …
A damaged building at the site of an Israeli military strike in Dahiyeh, a suburb in southern Beirut, Lebanon. Photograph: Wael Hamzeh/EPAA man walks among the ruins of a building that was flattened in an overnight Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesA heavily damaged building following an Israeli strike in the village of Douris in the Baalbeck district of eastern Lebanon’s Bekaa valley. Photograph: Nidal Solh/AFP/Getty Images
Forty seven Palestinians were killed and dozens injured, most of them children and women, in overnight Israeli bombardment of the city of Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of Al-Zawayda in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA said, Reuters reports.
The Israeli military said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza and had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in targeted raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area.
Israel’s air force pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighborhoods, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday, AP reports.
The strikes on Dahiyeh — after a four-day lull during which no airstrikes were reported in the suburb — destroyed dozens of buildings and caused fires in the area. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Recently, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeastern city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon.
Welcome and summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing coverage of the crisis in the Middle East.
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told US envoys that Israel’s ability to counter threats to its security from Lebanon and return displaced people to the north were key elements of any ceasefire deal.
The comments came hours before Israel carried out airstrikes early on Friday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, Reuters witnesses said, the first strikes there in nearly a week.
“The main issue is … Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon,” Netanyahu’s office cited him as telling two US envoys.
The envoys, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, were in Israel on a new push to secure ceasefires in both Lebanon and Gaza. Lebanon’s prime minister on Wednesday expressed hope that a ceasefire deal was imminent.
Hochstein and McGurk, met the Israeli prime minister on Thursday to talk about a ceasefire proposal for Lebanon. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said negotiators made “good progress” toward a deal. “We’re hopeful that we will see things transition in Lebanon in a not too distant future,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, who had expressed optimism of a speedy settlement “in hours or days” earlier on Thursday, said that Israel’s “ongoing escalation” in his country “does not inspire optimism”. Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister “made it clear that the main point is not this or that agreement on paper but Israel’s ability and determination to enforce the agreement and thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon, in a manner that will return our residents securely to their homes”.
Thursday marked a day when the most civilians in both Israel and Lebanon were killed since October 2023. The Lebanese health ministry said that Israeli attacks had killed 45 people in the previous 24 hours, amid bombing in the north-east Bekaa valley and infantry battles in the south. In one Bekaa village, eight people were killed from the same family. In northern Israel, seven people were killed by rocket fire from Lebanon, including four Thai agricultural workers.
The Israeli army’s evacuation call for several areas of south Lebanon on Thursday included a Palestinian refugee camp. Among the areas listed was Rashidieh camp, which houses thousands of Palestinian refugees. Israel issued its second evacuation order for the city of Baalbek and two surrounding villages in the Bekaa valley on Thursday afternoon, carrying out a series of airstrikes on the village of Durous a few hours later. The evacuation orders had prompted a mass exodus of residents from the city, which is home to a Unesco world heritage site.
Israeli attacks killed at least one child in Lebanon each day and injured 10 others, the UN children’s agency (Unicef) said. Citing the Lebanese health ministry, Unicef said 166 children have been killed since October 2023, while at least 1,168 have been injured. It awrned that the war in Lebanon is “inflicting severe physical wounds and deep emotional scars” on many of the country’s children. Six Lebanese health workers were killed and four wounded in Israeli strikes across south Lebanon on Thursday, the health ministry said in a statement.
