After a short-lived calm following a heavy exchange of strikes between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, fighting resumed Monday.
State media and witnesses reported that Israeli strikes targeted the Lebanese border village of Tair Harfa and an area of the coastal city of Sidon on Monday afternoon. A car was hit in the latter strike.
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Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that a man “from one of the Palestinian organizations” had survived the strike on the car. In addition to targeting Hezbollah members, Israel has occasionally targeted members of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Lebanon. There were no immediate reports of other casualties.
Later Monday afternoon, Hezbollah announced that it had targeted military surveillance equipment in northern Israel with an exploding drone.
On Sunday, Israel launched dozens of strikes on southern Lebanon that it described as a preemptive operation, saying it had averted a major attack planned by Hezbollah in retaliation for the killing of one of its top commanders, Fouad Shukur, in an Israeli strike in Beirut last month.
Shortly afterward, Hezbollah launched a barrage of hundreds of drones and rockets, which it said was in retaliation for the killing of Shukur. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah claimed drones had hit an Israeli military intelligence site near Tel Aviv. Israel said no military target was hit. Neither offered evidence.
Hezbollah declared its retaliatory operation was over, at least for the time being, and neither side launched strikes overnight.
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Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff meets with Israeli defense leaders
TEL AVIV, Israel — Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top Israeli defense leaders on Monday, and visited the military’s Northern Command headquarters.
Navy Capt. Jereal Dorsey, Brown’s spokesperson, said the chairman met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi in Tel Aviv, and he participated in operational updates with Israeli Defense Force senior leaders.
“The leaders reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership while also discussing the most recent engagement across the Israeli-Lebanese border and the need to de-escalate tensions to avoid a broader conflict,” said Dorsey.
He said they also discussed Israel’s need to defend itself as well as the need to get more humanitarian support into Gaza and the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. Dorsey said they talked about Brown’s recent meetings with other partners in the region. He visited Jordan and Egypt.
He said the U.S. “continues to coordinate with Israel and other allies and partners on ways to improve regional security and stability, protect U.S. forces in the Middle East, and deter a broader conflict.”
Gallant’s office said the Israeli defense chief thanked Brown for “his unequivocal commitment to Israel’s security,” including through the deployment of U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Israeli airstrike kills 5 Palestinians in the West Bank, health officials say
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian health officials say an Israeli airstrike has killed five Palestinians in the northern West Bank.
The military said late Monday that it struck an “operations room” used by militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the city of Tulkarem. Palestinian health officials said five bodies arrived at a nearby hospital.
Neither Palestinian health officials nor the military immediately identified those killed.
It’s the latest violence to occur in the West Bank, where around 640 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, most from Israeli raids into Palestinian cities and towns.
Israel continues to shrink the humanitarian zone in Gaza, UN says
UNITED NATIONS – Sixteen evacuation orders by Israel’s military this month have squeezed Gazans into even smaller areas of the territory and the latest has shut the U.N. humanitarian operations center. However, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA is still providing health care and other assistance.
As a result of the orders, several hundred thousand already displaced Palestinians have been forced to move again, and the humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk to about 11% of the entire Gaza Strip, Sam Rose, the senior deputy field director for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees told reporters Monday.
“And this isn’t 11% of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life, really,” Rose said in a briefing from Gaza,
He said it’s precisely in this environment with lack of access to aid, services, water and health care that polio has recently reemerged in Gaza, “with a small number of cases that could spread very rapidly.”
Rose said a U.N. campaign to vaccinate 95% of children under the age of 10 is scheduled to start on Saturday and involves over 3,000 people, including 1,000 from UNRWA, the largest primary health care provider in the Gaza Strip.
He expressed hope that humanitarian pauses needed for the campaign will be heeded by Israel, Hamas and other militants.
A senior U.N. official said Israel’s latest evacuation order on Sunday included the U.N. operations center in Deir al-Balah, which was forced to close on short notice. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the U.N. has been in contact with Israel about the latest order and improving humanitarian operations.
Rose said UNRWA services are continuing with national staff, estimating that 15,000 Palestinians received health services across Gaza on Monday.
But he stressed that the ability of the U.N. humanitarian system to operate in Gaza “is becoming increasingly difficult.”
He said an estimated one million Palestinians a month aren’t getting the food they desperately need because of obstacles at crossing points, with only about 100 trucks with aid getting into Gaza every day instead of the 500 needed.
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Associated Press writer Edith Lederer contributed to this report.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah hasn't hindered negotiations, US says
WASHINGTON — Intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend did not derail Gaza cease-fire talks in Cairo as a “working-level” group of negotiators remain in talks over technical aspects of a potential deal, the White House said on Monday.
A cease-fire is seen as the best hope for heading off an even larger regional conflict as Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against Israel for the killing of senior commander Fuad Shukr last month. Iran, meanwhile, has vowed revenge for the recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran.
“There was not an impact on the talks in Cairo,” White House national security John Kirby told reporters. “We’re certainly glad to see that.”
Kirby said progress was made during four days of high-level talks that concluded in Egypt on Sunday without a long sought-after cease-fire and hostage agreement.
But the parties agreed to continue talks between lower-ranked officials aimed at hatching out some of the differences that remain between Israel and Hamas.
Kirby said that the working group, in part, is trying to “flesh out” the proposed exchange that would take place involving hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding.
But the two sides also are at odds over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel Defense Forces maintain a presence in two strategic corridors in Gaza, the Philadelphi corridor alongside Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory.
White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk was leading the U.S. delegation in the talks in Cairo on Monday, but was expected to soon depart as lower-level officials aim to work through some of the outstanding issues, Kirby said.
The talks are expected to last for several days.
US helped Israel track Hezbollah strikes, Pentagon says
WASHINGTON — The U.S. provided intelligence and surveillance support for the Israelis to help them track and take out incoming Hezbollah strikes, but the U.S. military did not take part at all in the operation or in Israel’s pre-emptive attack, said Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman.
Ryder said the U.S. has forces ready to respond if needed, but Israel did not request any help.
Ryder said the U.S. has been closely monitoring the situation in Lebanon and noted there was a threat emanating from the region. He would not go into any details, but said the U.S. “continues to assess there is a threat of attack.”
Israel extends housing subsidies for hostages' families and evacuees
JERUSALEM — Israel’s government has extended housing grants for Israeli evacuees and families of hostages by one month until the end of September, as the war drags on with no immediate end in sight.
Thousands of Israelis are still living in temporary housing as the war nears its 11th month. They have been displaced in the south by ongoing rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and in the north from Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group.
The government said Monday that it was allocating nearly $900 million to those displaced from northern and southern border communities, as well as families of the hostages. It said the subsidies will include grants for displaced people who are unemployed and grants to “encourage employment.” It said it would set aside additional funds to pay for housing until the end of the year, if necessary.
Israel’s economy is struggling as the war stretches on, and the government is coming under increased pressure to cut spending.
Intensifying conflict hampers Gaza food aid deliveries, UN agencies say
JERUSALEM — U.N. agencies say they have only been able to deliver about half the food required in Gaza over the last two months because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and heavily damaged roads.
The leading international authority on hunger crises, known as the IPC, said in June that Gaza was at “high risk” of famine, with nearly the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians experiencing varying degrees of hunger.
The World Food Program said in a statement Monday that in July and August it was only able to deliver around half of the 24,000 metric tons of food aid for operations serving 1.1 million people.
It said its operations were “severely hampered by intensifying conflict, the limited number of border crossings and damaged roads.”
It warned that roads littered with shell craters and debris are already difficult to navigate and will be unusable in a few months when the winter rains set in.
Israel’s ongoing offensive against Hamas, as well as sweeping Israeli evacuation orders that the U.N. says now cover around 84% of Gaza’s territory, have forced hundreds of thousands of people into squalid tent camps along the coast.
Israel has controlled all of Gaza’s border crossings since May, when it captured the Rafah crossing with Egypt. Egypt has refused to open its side until the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.
Israel, which has come under intense international pressure to facilitate humanitarian assistance to Gaza, says it allows unlimited amounts of aid to enter and accuses U.N. agencies of failing to deliver it.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, also warned about the hunger crisis.
It said that due to repeated evacuation orders, the breakdown of law and order and damaged roads, more than 1 million people would likely not receive food rations for August.
It also estimates that people in Gaza are only getting 1-3 liters (quarts) of drinking water per day. The WHO says people require 15 liters of water per day to meet basic needs.
Iran’s foreign minister vows ‘definitive’ retaliation against Israel
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s foreign minister again has referenced his country’s planned retaliation over the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Abbas Araghchi said late Sunday he made the remark in a conversation with Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, by telephone.
“Iran reaction to Israeli terrorist attack in Tehran is definitive, and will be measured & well calculated,” Araghchi wrote on the social platform X. “We do not fear escalation, yet do not seek it—unlike Israel.”
From Tajani’s side, he said he “called for restraint and to pursue a constructive approach, in order to stop the cycle of military actions in the region, which only risks bringing more suffering.”
“It is important that Iran exercises moderation towards Hezbollah in order to avert an escalation on the Lebanese-Israeli border, where Italian soldiers of the UNIFIL contingent are operating, and towards the Houthis in order to avoid an increase in tensions in the Red Sea area, where Italy plays a leading role in the (European Union’s) Aspides mission,” he said in a statement.
Their call came after Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, long backed by Iran, traded heavy fire early Sunday but backed off from sparking a widely feared all-out war.
Israel says more polio vaccines are delivered to Gaza
Polio vaccines for more than 1 million people have been delivered to Gaza, Israel’s military said Sunday, after the first confirmed case of the disease in the territory in a quarter-century.
It was not immediately clear how, or how quickly, the more than 25,000 vials of vaccine would be distributed in Gaza, where ongoing fighting and unrest have challenged humanitarian efforts during more than 10 months of war.
Other polio cases are suspected across the largely devastated territory after the virus was detected in wastewater in six different locations in July.
Aid groups plan to vaccinate more than 600,000 children under age 10 and have called for an urgent pause in the war to increase vaccinations. The World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency have said that, at a minimum, a seven-day pause is needed.
The U.N. has aimed to bring 1.6 million doses of polio vaccine into Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded into tent camps lacking clean water or proper disposal of sewage and garbage. Families sometimes use wastewater to drink or clean dishes.