Israel launches new airstrikes on Lebanon as leaders draw closer to a
ceasefire with Hezbollah
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[November 26, 2024]
By SALLY ABOU ALJOUD, JOSEF FEDERMAN and SAM METZ
BEIRUT (AP) — Israel's military launched airstrikes across Lebanon on
Monday, unleashing explosions throughout the country and killing at
least 31 while Israeli leaders appeared to be closing in on a negotiated
ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group.
Israeli strikes hit commercial and residential buildings in Beirut as
well as in the port city of Tyre. Military officials said they targeted
areas known as Hezbollah strongholds. They issued evacuation orders for
Beirut's southern suburbs, and strikes landed across the city, including
meters from a Lebanese police base and the city's largest public park.
The barrage came as officials indicated they were nearing agreement on a
ceasefire, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's Security
Cabinet prepared to discuss an offer on the table.
Airstrikes kill at least 31
Massive explosions lit up Lebanon's skies with flashes of orange,
sending towering plumes of smoke into the air as Israeli airstrikes
pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs. The blasts damaged buildings and left
shattered glass and debris scattered across nearby streets. No
casualties were reported after many residents fled the targeted sites.
Some of the strikes landed close to central Beirut and near Christian
neighborhoods and other targets where Israel had issued evacuation
warnings, including in Tyre and Nabatiyeh province. Israeli airstrikes
also hit the northeast Baalbek-Hermel region without warning.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that 26 people were killed in southern
Lebanon, four in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel province and one in
Choueifat, a neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs that was not
subjected to evacuation warnings on Monday.
The deaths brought the total toll to 3,768 killed in Lebanon throughout
13 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah and nearly two months
since Israel launched its ground invasion. Many of those killed since
the start of the war between Israel and Hezbollah have been civilians,
and health officials said some of the recovered bodies were so severely
damaged that DNA testing would be required to confirm their identities.
Israel says it has killed more than 2,000 Hezbollah members. Lebanon's
Health Ministry says the war has displaced 1.2 million people.
Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon in early October, meeting
heavy resistance in a narrow strip of land along the border. The
military had previously exchanged attacks across the border with
Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that began firing rockets into
Israel the day after the war in Gaza began last year.
Lebanese politicians have decried the ongoing airstrikes and said they
are impeding U.S.-led ceasefire negotiations. The country's deputy
parliament speaker accused Israel of ramping up its bombardment in order
to pressure Lebanon to make concessions in indirect ceasefire
negotiations with Hezbollah.
Elias Bousaab, an ally of the militant group, said the pressure has
increased because “we are close to the hour that is decisive regarding
reaching a ceasefire.”
Hopes grow for a ceasefire
Israeli officials voiced similar optimism about prospects for a
ceasefire. Mike Herzog, the country's ambassador to Washington, earlier
in the day told Israeli Army Radio that several points had yet to be
finalized. Though any deal would require agreement from the government,
Herzog said Israel and Hezbollah were “close to a deal."
“It can happen within days,” he said.
Israeli officials have said the sides are close to an agreement that
would include withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon and a
pullback of Hezbollah fighters from the Israeli border. But several
sticking points remain.
Two Israeli officials told The Associated Press that Netanyahu’s
security Cabinet had scheduled a meeting for Tuesday, but they said it
remained unclear whether the Cabinet would vote to approve the deal. The
officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing
internal deliberations.
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Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, told reporters that he expected a
ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah to have stages and to be discussed by
leaders Monday or Tuesday. Still, he warned, “it’s not going to happen
overnight.”
After previous hopes for a ceasefire were dashed, U.S. officials
cautioned that negotiations were not yet complete and noted that there
could be last-minute hitches that either delay or destroy an agreement.
"Nothing is done until everything is done," White House national
security spokesman John Kirby said.
The proposal under discussion to end the fighting calls for an initial
two-month ceasefire during which Israeli forces would withdraw from
Lebanon and Hezbollah would end its armed presence along the southern
border south of the Litani River.
The withdrawals would be accompanied by an influx of thousands more
Lebanese army troops, who have been largely sidelined in the war, to
patrol the border area along with an existing U.N. peacekeeping force.
Western diplomats and Israeli officials said Israel is demanding the
right to strike in Lebanon if it believes Hezbollah is violating the
terms. The Lebanese government has said that such an arrangement would
authorize violations of the country's sovereignty.
A ceasefire could mark a step toward ending the regionwide war that
ballooned after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct.
7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting
another 250.
The lack of a ceasefire has emerged as a political liability for Israeli
leaders including Netanyahu, particularly while 60,000 Israelis remain
away from their homes in the country's north after more than a year of
cross-border violence.
Hezbollah rockets have reached as far south into Israel as Tel Aviv. At
least 75 people have been killed, more than half of them civilians. More
than 50 Israeli soldiers died fighting in the ground offensive in
Lebanon. The Israeli military said about 250 projectiles were fired
Sunday, with some intercepted.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, the strongest of Iran’s armed
proxies, is expected to significantly calm regional tensions that have
led to fears of a direct, all-out war between Israel and Iran. It’s not
clear how the ceasefire will affect the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Hezbollah had long insisted that it would not agree to a ceasefire until
the war in Gaza ends, but it dropped that condition.
A top Hamas official in Lebanon said the Palestinian militant group
would support a ceasefire between its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and
Israel, despite Hezbollah’s previous promises to stop the fighting in
Lebanon only if the war in Gaza ends.
“Any announcement of a ceasefire is welcome. Hezbollah has stood by our
people and made significant sacrifices,” Osama Hamdan of Hamas'
political wing told the Lebanese broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, which is seen
as politically allied with Hezbollah.
While the ceasefire proposal is expected to be approved if Netanyahu
brings it to a vote in his security Cabinet, one hard-line member,
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said he would oppose it. He
said on X that a deal with Lebanon would be a “big mistake” and a
“missed historic opportunity to eradicate Hezbollah.”
If the ceasefire talks fail, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi
said, “it will mean more destruction and more and more animosity and
more dehumanization and more hatred and more bitterness.”
Speaking at a G7 meeting in Fiuggi, Italy, the last summit of its kind
before U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office, Safadi said such a
failure "will doom the future of the region to more conflict and more
killing and more destruction.”
___
Federman reported from Jerusalem and Metz from Rabat, Morocco.
Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Nicole
Winfield in Fiuggi, Italy, and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed
to this report.
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