US warns Israel that it could withhold assistance if it continues to block aid to Palestinians

THE UNITED STATES has warned ally Israel that it may withhold some assistance if improvements aren’t made in aid delivery to Palestinians in Gaza.

In a letter sent on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The letter pointed to US law that requires that “recipients of US military assistance do not arbitrarily deny or impede the provisioning of US humanitarian assistance.”

The US also said it has voiced concern to Israel over bombings of Beirut in its campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

“We have made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks” in Beirut,  Miller told reporters.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu rejected the idea of a “unilateral ceasefire” in Lebanon.

In a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Netanyahu said he was “opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was”, according to a statement from his office.

Netanyahu and the Israeli military have insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu clarified that Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this (a buffer zone) and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement said.

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Around 3,000 French citizens have fled Lebanon since the eruption of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah amid the war in Gaza.

The remarks came as Macron upped pressure on Israel to abide by UN decisions, telling his cabinet that “Mr Netanyahu must not forget that his country was created by a decision of the UN”, a participant in the meeting told AFP.

The Israeli military said today that its troops in south Lebanon had captured three Hezbollah fighters, the second such announcement since it launched a cross-border ground assault into the country late last month.

Hezbollah has called for a ceasefire, but threatened to further target Israel if the IDF continues its bombardments.

The Lebanese militant group said it launched a barrage of rockets towards the northern Israeli city of Haifa and targeted Israeli bulldozers and a tank near the border.

Israel responded with fresh air strikes around Lebanon, a day after an estimated 41 people were killed in attacks on the country, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Peacekeepers vow to stay

Israel says it wants to push back Hezbollah in order to secure its northern boundary and allow tens of thousands of people displaced by rocket fire since last year to return home safely.

In Kfar Kara, a village in northern Israel, restaurant manager Yousef was shaken by the deadly Hezbollah strike on a nearby military base.

“Now they know where that base is, what if next time they fire and are slightly off target?” he said, declining to give his full name for safety reasons.

Hezbollah said it had launched the “squadron of attack drones” in response to Israeli attacks, including one last week that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.

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The group says its strikes are also in support of Palestinian militants Hamas who attacked Israel on 7 October last year, triggering the ongoing war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.

The war in Lebanon has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to verified figures last week from the International Organization for Migration.

Israel faced new criticism over injuries and damage sustained by the UN peacekeeping force which has been deployed in Lebanon since 1978, after a previous Israeli invasion.

The UN Security Council for the first time yesterday expressed “strong concerns” over peacekeepers being wounded.

UNIFIL has refused Netanyahu’s request for peacekeepers to “get out of harm’s way”, with UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix saying the blue helmets will stay in their positions.

‘Blockade’ on north Gaza

While deploying troops into Lebanon, Israel has kept up its bombardment of Gaza where it has been at war since the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians and including hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed 42,289 people, the majority civilians, according to the health ministry in the territory. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

Despite the violence, elsewhere in Gaza the second round of a polio vaccination campaign for hundreds of thousands of children began yesterday.

© AFP 2024