Hezbollah chief says response to killing of senior Hamas official is inevitable
Peter Beaumont
The assassination of a senior official in Beirut has changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said, warning that a response is “inevitable”.
In a second nationally televised address within three days, Nasrallah said all of Lebanon would be exposed if there was no response from his group to the killing of Saleh al-Arouri, further heightening fears of a dangerous escalation in the conflict. Israel said its military was ready for any eventuality.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s current operations on the southern border also opened a “historic opportunity” for Lebanon to liberate land occupied by Israel. He said residents of northern Israel would be the first to pay the price in any expanded war.
Since the war in Gaza began three months ago, Nasrallah has spoken four times, the two most recent addresses within days of each other after the killing of Arouri, the No 2 in Hamas’s political bureau, in a suspected Israeli drone strike on Tuesday.
He left the door open to a diplomatic solution over areas occupied by Israel when the war with Gaza ends, but analysts inferred that his remarks suggested a response was imminent and that they also signalled that other Iranian proxies may escalate their attacks on US forces in Iraq.
Reiterating that Hezbollah would be required to respond to the assassination, Nasrallah said that “the battle in the south of Lebanon” where Israel and Lebanon have been exchanging daily fire for three months was intended to “reinforce the equilibrium of dissuasion”.
A response to what occurred in a southern suburb of Beirut is inevitable … I am not going to say at the appropriate time and place.
“The war today is not only for Palestine but also for Lebanon and its south, in particular the region south of the Litani River,” he said.
Key events
Gallant warns ‘hourglass about to turn’ on Hezbollah
Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, has warned that time is running out on diplomatic efforts to end tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.
Gallant, during a situational assessment at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) northern command base, indicated that Israel would soon be left with no choice but to launch a military offensive against Hezbollah, the Times of Israel reported. He was quoted as saying:
We prefer the path of an agreed-upon diplomatic settlement, but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over.
He said Israel would continue to “intensify our operations across the entire sector as needed” with the objective to “safely return the residents of the north to their homes”, Ynet reported.
France and Jordan teamed up to airdrop seven tonnes of aid to civilians and aid workers in Gaza, the French presidency has said.
The “extremely complex” operation, which took place on Thursday night, involved each country sending a C-130 transport plane with mixed French-Jordanian crews, bringing a total of seven tonnes of “humanitarian and health” aid, it said.
The supplies were equipped with systems that remotely guided them to a Jordanian field hospital set up in Gaza’s second city, Khan Younis, the French presidency said.
Jordan has previously carried out drops in Gaza, but it was the first time France had directly taken part in such an operation.
“The humanitarian situation remains critical in Gaza,” France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, posted to social media, adding:
In a difficult context, France and Jordan delivered by air aid to to the population and those who are bringing them help.
La situation humanitaire reste critique à Gaza. Dans un contexte difficile, la France et la Jordanie ont livré par les airs de l’aide à la population et à ceux qui lui portent secours. pic.twitter.com/jNXGiZieCh
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 5, 2024
Peter Beaumont
Saleh al-Arouri’s assassination took place in the Hezbollah stronghold of Beirut’s southern suburbs, as the group has attempted to pursue a policy of supporting Hamas in Gaza while stopping short of triggering its own major war with Israel.
Friday’s comments by Hassan Nasrallah, were, however, more forceful than those made earlier this week, and came as Lebanon issued a formal complaint to the UN security council over Arouri’s killing, and over Israeli incursions into Lebanon’s airspace to attack targets in Syria.
In what appeared to be an effort to talk up Hezbollah’s carefully calibrated campaign since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the Hezbollah chief said his group had been engaged in a war with Israel for more than 90 days in which it had hit a large “number of targets”.
He said Hezbollah had launched 670 attacks on Israel in the past three months at an average rate of between six and seven a day.
“For those who demand to know why we are fighting on the [southern] front, we are obliged to reply.
There are two goals on this front: to pressure the enemy and its government to cease the aggression against Gaza. The second goal is to relieve the pressure on the resistance [Hamas] in Gaza.
Hezbollah chief says response to killing of senior Hamas official is inevitable
Peter Beaumont
The assassination of a senior official in Beirut has changed the nature of the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, the group’s head, Hassan Nasrallah, has said, warning that a response is “inevitable”.
In a second nationally televised address within three days, Nasrallah said all of Lebanon would be exposed if there was no response from his group to the killing of Saleh al-Arouri, further heightening fears of a dangerous escalation in the conflict. Israel said its military was ready for any eventuality.
Nasrallah said Hezbollah’s current operations on the southern border also opened a “historic opportunity” for Lebanon to liberate land occupied by Israel. He said residents of northern Israel would be the first to pay the price in any expanded war.
Since the war in Gaza began three months ago, Nasrallah has spoken four times, the two most recent addresses within days of each other after the killing of Arouri, the No 2 in Hamas’s political bureau, in a suspected Israeli drone strike on Tuesday.
He left the door open to a diplomatic solution over areas occupied by Israel when the war with Gaza ends, but analysts inferred that his remarks suggested a response was imminent and that they also signalled that other Iranian proxies may escalate their attacks on US forces in Iraq.
Reiterating that Hezbollah would be required to respond to the assassination, Nasrallah said that “the battle in the south of Lebanon” where Israel and Lebanon have been exchanging daily fire for three months was intended to “reinforce the equilibrium of dissuasion”.
A response to what occurred in a southern suburb of Beirut is inevitable … I am not going to say at the appropriate time and place.
“The war today is not only for Palestine but also for Lebanon and its south, in particular the region south of the Litani River,” he said.
Unicef also said most young children and women in the Gaza Strip were unable to meet their basic nutrition needs.
About 90% of children under the age of two are consuming two or fewer food groups, the agency said in a statement on Friday.
Most families said their children are only getting grains – including bread – or milk, which would meet the definition of severe food poverty, it said.
A quarter of pregnant and breastfeeding women said they only eat from one food group a day, it said.
The deteriorating situation is “raising concerns about acute malnutrition and mortality breaching famine thresholds”, it said, adding that it was particularly worried about the nutrition of more than 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as more than 135,000 children under two.
“Unicef works to provide the life-saving aid the children of Gaza so desperately need. But we urgently need better and safer access to save children’s lives,” the agency’s executive director, Catherine Russell, said.
The futures of thousands more children in Gaza hang in the balance. The world cannot stand by and watch. The violence and the suffering of children must stop.
UN says ‘time is running out’ for Gaza children ‘caught in a nightmare’
The head of the Unicef has said time is running out for children in Gaza who are “caught in a nightmare that worsens with every passing day”.
Catherine Russell said in a statement on Friday that children in the territory faced a “deadly triple threat” to their lives from the spread of diseases, plummeting nutrition and the escalation in fighting.
Living conditions for children were continuing to “rapidly deteriorate”, she said, noting the increasing cases of diarrhoea and food poverty.
Cases of diarrhoea in children under five rose from 48,000 to 71,000 in a week from 17 December, equivalent to 3,200 new cases a day, the agency said. Such an increase in such a short timeframe is a “strong indication that child health in the Gaza Strip is fast deteriorating”, Unicef said.
Russell said:
Children and families in the Gaza Strip continue to be killed and injured in the fighting, and their lives are increasingly at risk from preventable diseases and lack of food and water. All children and civilians must be protected from violence and have access to basic services and supplies.
Blinken arrives in Turkey on first leg of Middle East tour
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has arrived in Turkey to start his fourth Middle East tour since the Israel-Hamas war broke out three months ago.
He will hold talks with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, and the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in Istanbul on Saturday. He is then scheduled to pay a brief visit to Greece later the same day.
Blinken will also travel to Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Egypt.
“We don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy. There are obviously tough issues facing the region and difficult choices ahead,” the state department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters.
But the secretary believes it is the responsibility of the United States of America to lead diplomatic efforts to tackle those challenges head on.
The US is offering rewards of up to $10m (£7.9m) for information that will lead to the disruption of Hamas’s financial network.
The state department is looking for information on five Hamas financiers: Abdelbasit Hamza Elhassan Khair, Amer Kamal Sharif Alshawa, Ahmed Sadu Jahleb, Walid Mohammed Mustafa Jadallah, and Muhammad Ahmad ‘Abd Al-Dayim Nasrallah.
The first financier, known as Hamza, is a Sudan-based individual who has managed numerous companies in Hamas’s investment portfolio and was previously involved in the transfer of almost $20m to Hamas, the department said in a statement. He also has longstanding financing ties to al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden-linked companies in Sudan, it said.
Three of the individuals – Amer Kamal Sharif Alshawa, Ahmed Sadu Jahleb, and Walid Mohammed Mustafa Jadallah – are part of the group’s investment network in Turkey, the department said.
The department is looking for information that would lead to the identification and disruption of Hamas’s sources of revenue or “its key financial facilitation mechanisms”, and any major donors or financial facilitator, it said.
Iranian security forces have detained 11 people suspected of links to Wednesday’s attack on a crowd in southern Iran that killed at least 84 people, according to Iran’s intelligence ministry.
Security forces also seized explosives during the arrest, Reuters reported.
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack in the city of Kerman, near the site of where the senior Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Suleimani was buried.
Germany urges Israel to do more to protect Gaza civilians
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, warned against an Israeli occupation of Gaza as she called for more humanitarian pauses in the war at a press conference in Berlin.
Israel “must do more for the protection of the civilian population” in its war against Hamas in Gaza, Baerbock said today.
She reiterated Germany’s solidarity for Israel in its fight against “blind terror” but called for more “humanitarian pauses”, adding that “peace cannot be won if the prospect of a life in dignity dries up, if Gaza is uninhabitable after the war.”
“Our position on the so-called day after is very clear,” Baerbock said at the news conference.
There must be no occupation of the Gaza Strip, no expulsions and no reduction in the size of the territory. And at the same time there must be no more danger to Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Israelis and Palestinians would “only be able to live side by side in peace if the security of the one means the security of the other”, she added.
Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, is expected to travel to Israel on Sunday for her fourth visit since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
While in Israel, Baerbock will hold talks with her new Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, as well as the president, Issac Herzog, her spokesperson, Sebastian Fischer, said.
She will also meet the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, during her visit.
She will then travel to Egypt to meet the foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, and also plans to visit Lebanon, said Fischer.
The talks will focus on the “dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank and the extremely volatile situation on the Israel-Lebanon border”, as well as efforts to secure the release of more hostages held by Hamas, he said.
Jason Burke
The Israeli defence minister has suggested Israel could keep security control of Gaza after Hamas has been defeated with an undefined, Israeli-guided Palestinian body running day-to-day administration and the US, EU and regional partners taking responsibility for the reconstruction of the territory.
Yoav Gallant revealed the plan to media on Thursday before a visit by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and after growing pressure from Washington for Israel to make proposals for postwar scenarios.
Under Gallant’s plan, which is not official policy and has yet to be submitted to other ministers, Israel’s offensive in Gaza would continue until hostages taken on 7 October are freed and Hamas’s “military and governing capabilities” dismantled.
Then, the outline says, a new phase would begin during which “Hamas will not control Gaza and will not pose a security threat to the citizens of Israel”, with unspecified Palestinian bodies – apparently local civil servants or communal leaders – assuming the territory’s governance.
The picture Gallant outlined differs starkly from US calls for a revitalised Palestinian Authority to take control of the territory, ruled by Hamas since 2005, and a start to new negotiations towards creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has ruled out the US proposal.
Gallant said Israel would reserve its right to operate in the territory, but the plan states that there would be “no Israeli civilian presence in the Gaza Strip after the goals of the war have been achieved”.
“Gaza residents are Palestinian, therefore Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostile actions or threats against the state of Israel,” Gallant’s outline said, without giving details.
The al-Harir airbase in Erbil, Iraq, which hosts US and international forces, was targeted by an armed drone on Friday, Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service said in a statement.
The statement, reported by Reuters, did not elaborate on whether the attack caused casualties or infrastructure damage.
The airbase was previously attacked in November by drones that were downed by air defences and caused no casualties.
