Israeli military launches deadly attacks in Beirut and Gaza as war escalates and Blinken returns to peace push

Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday to further push for a ceasefire between the close U.S. allies. multi-pronged battle and Iran’s so-called proxy group. Hours before he landed, an air raid siren rang through the morning calm in Tel Aviv, temporarily suspending operations at Ben-Gurion Airport and foreshadowing Hezbollah’s latest attempted attack in Lebanon. This time around 20 rockets or drones were aimed at northern and central Israel. According to the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel is Step up attacks on Hezbollah The IDF has recently raided the offices of financial institutions across Lebanon, alleging that it is channeling Iranian funds to terrorist organizations designated by the United States and Israel.

An Israeli airstrike struck near the Lebanese capital’s largest hospital on Monday night, killing at least 13 people, including a child, and wounding dozens, according to the country’s Health Ministry. Israel issued a warning to residents in some areas of Beirut ahead of the airstrike and ordered tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes in Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon.

But residents said there was no warning before Monday’s strike in the densely populated area around Beirut’s Rafik Hariri Hospital. Many displaced Lebanese civilians are pouring into the area from further south, where Israel also conducts ground operations.

Hezbollah’s long-term presence and the return of Israeli troops violates United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which states that no military other than the Lebanese National Army may operate in Lebanon. But that hasn’t been the case for almost 20 years. Israel claims it was forced to send troops back across the border after UN peacekeeping operations in southern Lebanon failed to prevent Hezbollah from establishing itself in the area. This is the fourth time in about 50 years that Israeli forces have entered Rhein.

The Lebanese Ministry of Health said around 1,500 people have been killed and 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes across Lebanon since Israel stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah in mid-September.

The IDF says it launched the attack to stop Hezbollah’s relentless barrage of rockets and drones from across Israel’s northern border. The Iranian-backed group began firing these weapons at Israel on October 8, 2023, in support of its ideological ally Hamas. war in gaza A day earlier, around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage in the deadliest terrorist attack on Israeli soil in history.

Gaza’s health ministry, run by Hamas, said more than 42,700 people have been killed since the war began, and recent Israeli attacks in the area have intensified in recent days. Hospitals in the northern Palestinian territories are filling up with more dead and dying civilians, many of them young people.

With the Biden administration recently pushing for a diplomatic solution to the spiraling conflict, Israeli forces are said to be pressing ahead with a determination to prevent Hamas from regrouping in the ravaged enclave. The northern Gaza town of Jabalia has been the main target of recent attacks. The video appeared to show people running to help a boy injured in the latest strike, unaware that a second strike had already begun.

Health authorities said at least 18 people were killed in Jabalia on Monday, and eight others were killed in Israeli military attacks elsewhere in Gaza.

On Tuesday, a strike hit the area around Kamal Adwan Hospital, just north of Jabalia.

“A bomb was dropped from the quadcopter of the ambulance inside the hospital, but it did not explode. Currently, the upper floors of the hospital are under fire and the service is completely collapsed, so no one can go in or out. Blood “There are no troops and most of the medical supplies and tubes to drain chest bleeding are unavailable,” the Gaza Ministry of Health said in a statement on Tuesday. “Senior staff are in extreme danger. People around the hospital have been asked to evacuate, but those who have evacuated have been shot on the way. The situation is more than catastrophic.”

In a statement, the IDF said its forces “continue to fight in the Jabaliya area while safely evacuating civilians from the combat area along designated routes. As a result, thousands of civilians They were evacuated. Dozens of terrorists were arrested.” In one attack, IDF forces eliminated 10 terrorists who posed a threat and were operating in the vicinity. ”

Israeli settlement movement becomes active, aiming to occupy Gaza

A small but growing number of Israelis want all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be expelled from the territory, as the IDF says it has warned civilians to move south from Jabalia. .

About 20 years ago, the Israeli government at the time withdrew its troops from Gaza, and Israeli settlers were also forced out. Just outside Gaza, on the Israeli side of the border, CBS News met with a controversial Israeli far-right activist and his family on a mission to resettle in Gaza.

“Gaza residents lost their right to live in Gaza on October 7,” Daniela Weiss, head of the Nachara settlement movement, told CBS News. She said the Israelis’ right to live on this small piece of land was “given by God.”

However, under international law, Israeli settlement buildings The act is illegal in the Palestinian territories, and the United States has accused the current far-right Israeli government of not only allowing but encouraging it.

Weiss and other members of the settler movement argue that those rules don’t apply.

“The most basic reason is that it was given by God,” settler activist Ronit Bonomo told CBS News, referring to Gaza land and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “If it’s ours, it’s not illegal.”

The movement is Supported by far-right ministers Netanyahu’s administration has emboldened Weiss’s group and nearly a dozen others after decades on the fringes of Israeli politics.

“I have nothing against innocent people,” Aharon Gottlieb, another member of the Israeli Resettlement Movement, told CBS News. “I can’t believe there are innocent people out there.”

Asked where the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip should go, another member, Bonomo, said: “The world is very, very big. We can adapt them. There are only so many of them. There aren’t many. There are many Arab countries in the world.” They have a huge amount of land, so why don’t they accept Gazans? ”

In a poll conducted in the spring, only a minority of Israelis (less than 20%) said they supported resettling Israelis in Gaza. Even Prime Minister Netanyahu has said multiple times that this is not a realistic idea.

But the movement’s growing presence and support within the Israeli government has become another factor in further escalating the religious and political tensions fueling deadly conflicts across the Middle East, and Secretary of State Blinken announced the 11th I’m trying to save the day. Something like peace.

emmett lyons

contributed to this report.

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