Ceasefire prospects dwindle as Israel intensifies attacks
• Strikes kill 64 people in Gaza Strip, 10 in Lebanon
• Lebanese PM accuses Tel Aviv of ‘rejecting truce’
CAIRO: Prospects of a ceasefire between Israel and its foes Hamas and Hezbollah ran aground on Friday as Israeli air strikes killed at least 64 people in the Gaza Strip and battered Beirut’s southern suburbs.
US envoys had been working to secure ceasefires on both fronts ahead of the US presidential election next Tuesday.
But Hamas did not favour a temporary truce, its Al-Aqsa Hamas television reported on Friday. The ceasefire proposals failed to meet its conditions that any deal must end the year-long war in Gaza and include a withdrawal of Israeli forces from there, it said.
Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his priority was to enforce security “despite any pressure or constraints”. His office said he relayed this message to US envoys Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk in Israel on Thursday.
Lebanon’s prime minister on Friday accused Israel of rejecting a ceasefire after the Israeli military bombed the Hezbollah stronghold of south Beirut for the first time this week.
PM Najib Mikati condemned the “expansion” of Israel’s attacks, saying they signalled a refusal to engage in truce efforts. “The Israeli enemy’s renewed expansion… and its renewed targeting of the southern suburbs of Beirut with destructive raids are all indicators that confirm the Israeli enemy’s rejection of all efforts being made to secure a ceasefire,” he said.
Military offensives
Israel, meanwhile, pressed on with its military offensives against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon on Friday.
Medics in Gaza said about 64 people were killed and dozens more injured overnight and into Friday morning in Israeli strikes on the city of Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of Al-Zawayda, all in the central area of Gaza as well as in its south.
Fourteen people were killed by an Israeli strike at the gate of a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Nuseirat, according to medics at the camp’s Al-Awda Hospital. Another 10 were killed in a car in Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, medics said.
Israel also pummelled Beirut’s southern suburbs on Friday morning with at least 10 strikes. It was the first bombardment on the area — once a densely-packed district and Hezbollah stronghold — in nearly a week.
The strikes came after Israel issued evacuation orders for 10 separate neighbourhoods.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 10 people had been killed in an initial toll for Israeli strikes in the country’s east on Friday, most of them in a single village.
“Ten martyrs and 26 wounded in a preliminary toll for today’s Israeli enemy strikes on the Baalbek-Hermel region,” the ministry said, adding eight were killed in the village of Amhaz.
Hassan Saad, speaking in a street in Lebanon’s capital Beirut, told Reuters: “This is a brutal war and Israel does not have the right to do this…There must be a limit put for Israel because it does not abide by any of the laws or human morality.”
Another Beirut man, Ali Ramadan, said he believed the Israeli airstrikes were a way to put pressure on Lebanon in the ceasefire negotiations.
The hostilities have whittled away any hope a truce could be reached before the Nov 5 US presidential election. Hamas television, quoting a leading source in the group, said the ceasefire proposals did not meet its conditions.
“The proposals do not include a permanent cessation of aggression, withdrawal of occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, or the return of displaced people,” the source said. Nor did they address Palestinians’ need for security, relief and reconstruction, and the full reopening of border crossings, the source said.
The delegation also demanded the provision of food, medicine and shelter, and said any agreement must include an exchange of Palestinians held in Israel’s jails for the Israelis captive in Gaza.
Israel on Thursday also bombed the Baalbek region in Lebanon’s east, home to UNESCO-listed Roman ruins. A cultural group that organises yearly festivals amid the ruins said some cracks were visible due to nearby Israeli strikes.
Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2024