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The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that more than 700 people have been killed and 2,600 others injured since the Israeli occupation intensified its deadly bombings in southern Lebanon on Monday.
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“I saw the whole mountains leading to Naqoura. There were flames, black dark smoke like clouds. It was really like a mirage. It was like a dream, like a bad dream, weird dream. And that’s how the nightmare started.”
A Lebanese woman has told the Guardian
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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged world leaders to increase support for UNRWA, which provides vital humanitarian services for the Palestinian refugees, especially for those living in the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Guterres made his plea at a high-level meeting co-organized by Jordan and Sweden in support of UNRWA, which was held on the margins of the UN General Assembly meetings in New York.
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Military expert Retired Major General Fayez al-Duwairi said Hezbollah is still able to manage the defensive battle effectively and powerfully despite the Israeli onslaught which have not undermined its combat capabilities.
Duwairi explained Hezbollah, Thursday, launched five large missile barrages despite the intensive Israeli air campaign and assassinations that targeted prominent military leaders, including Fouad Shukr and Ibrahim Aqil, and the bombing of pagers and walkie-talkies.
According to the strategic expert, the combat organizations that are fighting an asymmetric war with a regular Israeli army that has great capabilities “have in their calculations, to be exposed to painful strikes that may abort their combat power if they move to the traditional approach.”
Accordingly, there are fixed instructions for the fighters that at some point communications may be lost and the chain of command may be struck through concentrated assassinations, “but this does not mean the collapse of the combat power, as planning is centralized but implementation is decentralized,” he added on Al Jazeera.
The military expert touched on the combat capabilities possessed by Hezbollah, most notably its missile capabilities and their impact on Israel, in addition to artillery, drones, and field forces deployed in the south, central Bekaa, and Hermel, and the the Radwan Force, designed to carry out operations inside occupied Palestine.
Hezbollah’s missile force ranges between 100,000 and 200,000 missiles, 80% of which are unguided, according to Al-Duwairi who said that the party has not yet deployed medium- and long-range missiles.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers what Israel achieved, so far, in terms of preemptive strikes, intensive assassinations, and bombings of communications and wireless devices are “military achievements that may disappear if he enters a ground war,” Al-Duwairi pointed out.
The military expert added that Hezbollah – 18 years after the 2006 war – has a large presence in southern Lebanon, and succeeded in harnessing the geographical turrain of the area to serve its defensive plan, noting it focuses on controlling combat nodes and target bank.
He concluded the entry of the Israeli occupation army into southern Lebanon “will not be a summer outing,” noting Israel’s strikes have targeted Hezbollah’s capabilities and its incubating environment, so far, “so the party is walking a tightrope between maintaining deterrence and not being dragged into a ground war.”
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Air raid sirens blasted in Tel Aviv, early Friday morning as explosions were heard in the city with the Israeli army stated the sirens were triggered by a missile launched from Yemen with an interceptor missile that also launched to counteract it.
“The Arrow air defense system successfully intercepted the missile launched from Yemen, and air raid sirens and explosions were heard after the missile was intercepted and shrapnel fell,” the Israeli army stated.
Israeli Channel 12 reported that 17 Israelis were injured while fleeing to shelters after the sirens were activated in Tel Aviv.
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said on Thursday the battle is one and that “the aggression against the Lebanese people is within the framework of the aggression against the Palestinian people.”
On 15 September Houthi military spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree, spoke of the carrying out of a qualitative military operation that targeted a military target in Jaffa, Israel, with a hypersonic missile.
“The missile succeeded in reaching its target, and the enemy’s defenses failed to intercept and confront it, and it traveled a distance of 2,040 kilometers within 11 and a half minutes,” he said.
For its part, the Israeli army said at the time that the initial investigation revealed that the missile launched by the Houthis at Israel crashed in the air.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the “Houthis” should “know that they will pay a heavy price for every attempt to harm us.”
Nine Israelis were injured while fleeing upon hearing the sirens of a missile attack on Tel Aviv that lies in central Israel.
Since dawn last Monday, Israeli forces have been launching waves of intensive airstrikes in an operation called “Arrow of the North”, targeting areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, which are considered strongholds of Hezbollah, leaving more than 600 dead and thousands wounded, with the death the toll is expected to rise.
In contrast, sirens continue to sound in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, after Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at military sites and settlements.
Since 8 October, 2023, Lebanese and Palestinian factions in Lebanon, most notably Hezbollah, have been exchanging daily shelling with the Israeli army across the “Blue Line” separating the country, resulting in hundreds of deaths and injuries, most of them on the Lebanese side.
These factions demand an end to the war that Israel has waged on the Gaza Strip since 7 October, which has left more than 137,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and deadly famine according to Russia Today.
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Haaretz is appealing to the Israeli authorities to reverse the closure of Al Jazeera’s office in the occupied West Bank. It described what happened as a wake-up call for the Israeli press.
In its “Don’t Close Al Jazeera,” editorial, Haaretz wrote stopping Al Jazeera’s broadcast in the West Bank for 45 days by military order is “another attempt by the far-right government to control the consciousness of Israelis, under a law passed last May that was turned into a dangerous tool in the hands of Information Minister Shlomo Karhi after it gave him unlimited powers.”
Last May, the Knesset passed a bill that empowers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the broadcast of any foreign channel if he deems it harmful to security, and Al Jazeera – with its Arabic and English stations – was the first victim after its broadcast was stopped in Israel.
Haaretz described the closure of Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah as a wake-up call for the Israeli press itself, stating the government is trying to muzzle journalists and Israelis to prevent them from knowing the full picture of events.
It recalled the office is located in Area A, which is entirely under the control of the Palestinian Authority, but that did not prevent dozens of soldiers from storming it in a “shameful act” that warns the Israeli press of a bleak future and nominates Israel to join the club of authoritarian countries in the region, a number of which have suspended the network’s broadcasts for periods of time.
Propaganda bubble
Haaretz said the far-right government of Israel is exploiting the war to instill fear in journalists on both sides of the Green Line, and sees any journalist holding a microphone as an enemy if he refuses to become a propaganda mouthpiece and chooses to criticize the actions of the army in the occupied territories.
The newspaper described Al Jazeera as a major media outlet in the Arab world and the rest of the world, and said that its journalists in the occupied territories have been practicing their profession for nearly two decades.
It believed that the real reason for closing the office is that Al Jazeera documents what is happening daily in the occupied Palestinian territories, and said the channel has burst the bubble of Israeli propaganda, before concluding with an “urgent” appeal to the Israeli authorities to back down from closing the office.
It stated that in the final analysis it will not prevent viewers in the Arab world and the rest of the world from knowing what is happening in the occupied territories, and will not prevent Al Jazeera Network from continuing to broadcast.
Last Sunday, the Israeli occupation forces stormed Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah, ordered its closure, and confiscated all equipment and documents with a military order to close it under the emergency law. They prevented the Al Jazeera crew in Ramallah and colleagues Walid Al-Omari and Guevara Al-Badri from working and stopped broadcasting.
The Israeli army sent trucks to confiscate and remove filming and broadcasting equipment and documents from the Al Jazeera office, despite the fact that the military order did not stipulate their confiscation.
This raid came four months after the occupation authorities closed the channel’s office in occupied Jerusalem.
Al Jazeera Network condemned the Israeli occupation forces’ storming and closing of its office in the city of Ramallah, and stressed that these repressive measures aim to prevent the world from seeing the reality of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the war on Gaza according to Al Jazeera.net.
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Political Science Professor specializing in Palestinian affairs Dr. Arej Jabr, said that the proposals of the new deal presented by the United States comes within the framework of attempts to stop the escalation in the region and exit from the state of war within a comprehensive deal.
Jabr added to Jordan24 that the Zionist entity does not have the ability to open up two fronts at once and continue the war in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, especially in light of the exhaustion of the army due to the performance of the resistance in the Gaza Strip.
She explained that the proposal to stop fighting for 3 to 4 weeks and enter into negotiations leading to a comprehensive deal under the auspices of the United States will be part of the comprehensive settlement in the region.
Jabr indicated that the resistance in Gaza has returned to organize its ranks again and has taken control of large parts of the Strip, which will finally force the occupation to accept the Hamas conditions.
Jabr concluded by saying that the coming days will be decisive, noting that the occupation is betting on weakening Hezbollah after assassinating its first-tier leaders.
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Colombian President Gustavo Petro criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Tuesday, for his continual attacks on the Gaza Strip during his speech to the UN General Assembly.
“It is in this inequality … that we find the logic of the mass destruction unleashed by the climate crisis and the logic of the bombs dropped by a criminal like Netanyahu on Gaza.”
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Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) staged, Thursday, protests in 10 countries across world to pay homage to journalists killed in Gaza.
The non-profit in a statement said the Israeli army, since last October, has killed over 130 journalists in the Palestinian enclave.
The protests were organized in Germany, Brazil, Spain, the US, UK, France, Senegal, Switzerland, Taiwan and Tunisia.
“With this global awareness campaign, RSF aims to alert the international public to the gravity of this crisis: the alarming rate at which these journalists are being killed is jeopardizing the right to free and independent information,” the RSF said in a statement.
“The massacre of journalists in Gaza must stop. The Israeli military’s elimination of Gaza’s journalists, more than 130 in less than a year, threatens to impose a complete media blackout on the locked-down enclave,” said Thibaut Bruttin, general-director of RS according to Anadolu.
“These attacks target not only the press in Palestine, but the right of the public everywhere to receive reliable information – free, independent and pluralistic – from one of the most watched conflict zones on the planet,” he added.
Israel has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion. The conflict has also spread to Lebanon, where exchange of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah continues.
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