Israel’s response to the Israeli missile attack on Hezbollah: a U.N. investigation of unauthorized disclosure of classified documents
More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza offensive according to local health authorities. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.
The United States is investigating an unauthorized disclosure of classified documents that indicated Israel was about to launch a military strike against Iran in response to its missile attack on Hezbollah. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The U.N. UN mission called for an investigation after Israel demolished an observation tower and perimeter fence in southern Lebanon. It again refused to move its positions.
Israel’s military said Sunday that it will attack Hezbollah’s financial arm in Lebanon as well as a lot of other targets. Explosions began in Beirut’s southern suburbs about an hour later.
Lebanon’s army hasn’t been involved in the war. The military in Lebanon is revered, but doesn’t have the power to protect the country or impose its will on Hezbollah.
Three soldiers were killed in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon, the army said. There was no immediate comment on that from the Israeli military, which said it struck more than 100 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon in the past day and continued ground operations there.
The senior Israeli intelligence official said that the strikes would target al-Hassan all over Lebanon. Al-Qard al-Hassan is a Hezbollah unit that’s used to pay operatives of the Iran-backed militant group and help buy arms, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with army regulations.
In one evacuation notice, for the Choueifat area south of Beirut, the Israeli military mislabeled one target, causing confusion and panic. A theater in an upscale shopping mall in central Beirut was identified as the Grand Cinema ABC Verdun.
The Gaza War and Doctors Without Borders: Israeli Forces in Gaza After the High-Once Warning to the Israeli Army on October 7, 2023
A year of escalating tensions and frequent cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the war in Gaza turned into all-out war last month. Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon early this month.
For months, Hochstein has been tasked by the White House with calming the Israel-Lebanon conflict. In the run-up to his arrival in Lebanon, Israel’s military had announced fresh ground raids in southern Lebanon in which fighters were killed and anti-tank missiles, rocket propelled grenades and other explosives were dismantled. The Israeli military said that 200 missiles were fired from Lebanon into northern Israel on Sunday.
Around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and 250 were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militant blew holes in Israel’s security fence. A third of the 100 captives in Gaza are thought to be dead.
Israel ordered the entire population of the northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate to the south in the war’s opening weeks and reiterated those instructions this month. Around 400,000 people are believed to have remained.
It was hard to get information about strikes and rescue efforts after the Internet went down in northern Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders, the international charity known by its French acronym MSF, called on Israeli forces to immediately stop their attacks on hospitals in northern Gaza after the Health Ministry said Israeli troops had fired on two hospitals over the weekend.
AQAH, a terrorist organization that manages finances for Hezbollah, and a child killed in a Gaza strike
Six people, including a child, were killed when a strike hit a car in central Gaza. AP journalists counted the dead.
The U.S. is urging Israel to press for a cease-fire in Gaza following the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week. But neither Israel nor Hamas has shown interest in such a deal after negotiations sputtered to a halt in August.
Among the dead were parents and eight children, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. He said the strike flattened a multistory building and at least four neighboring houses.
Al-Qard al-Hassan reassured customers that their funds were safe despite the fact that it had decided to target it. A stream of people left the areas surrounding its branches in Beirut.
Cash is the basis ofAQAH. The cash will be trash” in the event of strikes, he said, adding that it has large accounts with big Lebanese banks.
“It’s a big deal,” said David Asher, an expert on illicit financing who has worked at the U.S. Defense and State Departments and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
Al- Qard Al-Hassan has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. because it is used to manage finances for Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s banks have been attacked: Israeli threats to evacuate evacuated hospitals and the hospital that houses Al-Qard Al-Hassan
Evacuation warnings affected southern Beirut, the eastern Bekaa valley and parts of southern Lebanon. AP video showed strikes near Lebanon’s only airport but it continued to operate.
Late Sunday an Israeli military spokesperson published messages online in Arabic instructing Lebanese civilians to move away from specific buildings that house branches of the bank, called Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
The warnings caused some panic in parts of Lebanon’s capital, but Israel’s foreign minister said that 15 buildings had been hit and the military would continue to attack Hezbollah.
Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote on social media that Al-Qard Al-Hassan was a “microfinance institution” modeled after the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. She said that in some cases it is possible for women to offer their jewelry as security for loans against specific assets in a country where the banking system has repeatedly collapsed.
Ihab Hamadeh, a member of the Lebanon parliament affiliated with Hezbollah’s political wing, denied that the group made any money from Al-Qard Al-Hassan. He said the financial institution offers services to all of Lebanon’s consumers and grants 5000 scholarships to university students overseas. He wrote on Telegram that he would not lose a single penny for the depositors in Al-Qard Al-Hassan.
Some news outlets and social media posts in Lebanon suggested that a hospital in the town of Baalbek had been emptied due to the strike on the Al-Qard Al-Hassan branch. The hospital was operating normally and the health ministry denied that. It explained that following the Israeli threats, several patients had only been moved out of rooms facing the Al-Qard Al-Hassan branch adjacent to the hospital.
The injuries and deaths tied to the strikes have not been confirmed. The National News Agency said that the strikes on one of the financial branches in the same building caused a lot of damage to other floors. And in the city of Tyre, the agency reported that “severe damage to surrounding homes” and to a nearby radio station had resulted from the strike on one branch.
The prime minister’s office said that Hezbollah sent a drone to hit Netanyahu’s family residence in Caesarea. Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, described it in a social media post as an “attempt to kill the prime minister of Israel,” and “an attack on all of us — on the people of Israel.”