Gaza: Israel expands war on medics to south Lebanon, rights group alleges – Newstrends
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Gaza: Israel expands war on medics to south Lebanon, rights group alleges

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Gaza: Israel expands war on medics to south Lebanon, rights group alleges

Most evenings in al-Habbariyeh, a small town in southern Lebanon’s verdant hills, the young volunteers of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps centre liked to get together to play cards or share an argileh (hookah).

On March 26, a clear, brisk night, Abdullah Sharif Atwi, Abdulrahman al-Shaar, Ahmad al-Shaar, Baraa Abu Qais, Hussein al-Shaar, Muhammad al-Farouq Atwi and Muhammad Ragheed Hammoud were in the second-floor hangout.

The Israeli drones hovered overhead, they had been going all day and now their sound was fading almost into the background.

The group was in high spirits, taking videos of themselves and joking about.

About half an hour after midnight, just into March 27, Israel hit the centre with an air strike, levelling the two-storey building.

“People from the village ran down to see what happened,” Ali Noureddine, a journalist and activist from al-Habbariyeh, told Al Jazeera. “It’s a small village,” he said. “We’re all one family.”

The seven young men had been killed and four others badly injured.

Most of the 18-to-25-year-olds had been students.

Hunted health workers

Israel killed a total of 17 people in three different towns just that day, 10 of them medical workers.

The attack made March 27 the deadliest day for medical workers in south Lebanon.

An attack on a cafe in Ras al-Naqoura killed a medical worker from Amal’s Al-Risala Scouts and three others, including one Amal member.

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The third attack that day was in Tayr Harfa which killed two paramedics from Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Association along with four Hezbollah fighters.

The Israeli army spokesperson said the al-Habbariyeh attack successfully targeted a “significant terrorist” in al-Jamaa al-Islamiya.

“They didn’t say who the ‘terrorist’ was,” Mahyaddine Qarhani, director of the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps’ Ambulance Association, told Al Jazeera.

Investigations by human rights organisations found no evidence of military activity or fighters on-site.

Human Rights Watch called for the al-Habbariyeh attack to be investigated as a war crime as leading rights groups currently investigate other Israeli attacks on medical workers.

Hezbollah and Israel have been trading attacks across the border since October 8, the day after Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on Israel in which 1,139 people were killed and about 240 others taken captive.

More than 92,600 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon by the relentless Israeli attacks, according to the International Organization for Migration.

The people still in the south are vulnerable, like the elderly and lower-income people who rely on the medical services the Lebanese Emergency and Relief Corps provides.

Like many services in the country, Lebanon’s healthcare is mostly privatised as the Ministry of Public Health relies on private groups and NGOs to fill the gaps.

The medical situation in Lebanon was already deeply affected by a five-year-old economic crisis, with 80 percent of the population below the poverty line.

Now, the south is also contending with war and with its few medical workers and facilities being targeted by Israel.

Data on the attacks on south Lebanon are hard to find, with locals saying many incidents go unreported.

Al Jazeera collected data from monitoring groups indicating at least 18 Israeli attacks on medical personnel and facilities, resulting in the deaths of 20 health workers, as of May 31.

They include members of Lebanon’s civil defence and health workers for the medical branches of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement and al-Jamaa al-Islamiya.

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Each group has an armed wing engaging with the Israeli military but their healthcare workers are protected by international humanitarian law.

This protection as medical workers lapses only if they participate in military activities.

There has been no evidence that this was the case in any of the attacks on medical workers, multiple sources, including representatives of leading human rights and monitoring agencies, told Al Jazeera.

None of the attacks showed “evidence of any association with the armed wing of these groups”, Ameneh Mehvar, a Middle East specialist at ACLED, told Al Jazeera.

Possible war crimes

The attacks on medical workers in southern Lebanon have gone largely unreported, although they are contributing to significantly degrading the quality of life for the people left there.

Medical personnel cannot be targeted “even if they’re close to military targets”, Shane Darcy, a professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.

“Even if there is a Hezbollah [fighter] present, the principle of proportionality means [Israel’s military] has to weigh the impact on civilian proportionality,” a source at a renowned human rights organisation told Al Jazeera, speaking on background.

There is no exact formula for proportionality, Darcy said, but targeting or killing civilians deliberately is a crime.

“There’s a lot of danger [for medical workers],” Dr Wahida Ghalayni, who works at the Ministry of Public Health, told Al Jazeera. “These are direct attacks [on them].”

The pattern of Israel’s lack of accountability and continued attacks leave Lebanon’s medical workers feeling Israel is directly targeting them.

A day before the al-Habbariyeh attack, on March 26, an Israeli air raid hit Tayr Harfa’s civil defence centre, injuring four health workers.

Then two Hezbollah paramedics “were killed in a second strike on the same location during the same day”, according to data collected by ACLED.

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“This is nothing new,” Rabieh Issa, civil defence commissioner for Al-Risala Scouts, told Al Jazeera.

“We don’t normally deploy until 15 minutes after the first hit because they hit again and again. So, for our own security, we wait a bit.”

But it is not only warplanes that the hunted medical personnel need to look out for.

On March 21, Israeli warplanes struck Yarine during fighting with Hezbollah, according to ACLED.

Israel said they were targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure but that does not explain why ambulances that rushed in after the attack came under “heavy machinegun fire” from the Israelis.

And there are many more incidents.

On March 4, a medical centre in the Al-Ouwayni neighbourhood of Odaisseh was hit by an Israeli air raid, killing three Hezbollah-affiliated health workers. On February 22, four people from Lebanon’s civil defence were killed in air attacks on Blida. On January 11, two medics were killed in the southern town of Hanin when Israeli jets struck the Islamic Health Society building.

Israel claims it is attacking “Hezbollah cells”. But in many of its attacks on medical workers or facilities, no fighters were killed.

In April, media outlet +972mag reported on Lavender, an artificial intelligence (AI)-supported system Israel uses to select targets for assassination and calculate “acceptable civilian loss” for each killing.

For a low-level Hamas operative, the Israeli army determined that 15-20 civilian deaths are permissible, while “the army on several occasions authorised the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander”.

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“I’d find it hard for any international humanitarian lawyer to say that’s an acceptable application of proportionality,” Darcy said. “Those are possible war crimes.”

Gaps in the south

Back in al-Habbariyeh, the Israeli attack has left a big hole in the community.

“We’re a small village … all grieving,” Noureddine, who used to visit friends at the centre, said.

“Israel hits whoever they want. I don’t know if tomorrow someone else will die or not.”

But the decimated team has also left a big gap in the community’s medical care.

The Emergency and Relief Corps suspended operations in al-Habbariyeh after the attack, fearing that moving operations would simply attract attacks on civilians in other neighbourhoods.

“We can’t work in that area anymore,” Qarhani said. “Nobody knows why they hit the centre but it’s completely destroyed.”

The outskirts of al-Habbariyeh have been hit as recently as a month ago.

“Israel is still hitting us and if we make a new centre they’ll come and bomb it again,” Noureddine said. “They’re hitting civilians and we don’t have people whose lives we can simply sacrifice.”

“The Americans give Israelis weapons and hit us with them and no one will hold them accountable or will even look at what they’re doing,” Noureddine said.

“No one is held accountable for Israel’s attacks.”

Gaza: Israel expands war on medics to south Lebanon, rights group alleges

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon

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Mohammed Nimah Nasser

Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon

Hezbollah has said one of its senior commanders was killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon, with the Iran-backed armed group retaliating with a barrage of rockets against Israel.

Mohammed Nimah Nasser is the latest senior member of Hezbollah to be targeted by Israel during almost nine months of cross-border violence which have raised fears of an all-out war.

Hezbollah said it had launched 100 rockets and missiles at Israeli military positions “as part of the response to the assassination”. The Israeli military said a number of projectiles which fell in open areas sparked fires, but no injuries were reported.

The military said Nasser commanded Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit, which is responsible for launching rockets from south-western Lebanon, and accused him of directing a “large number of terror attacks”.

It also described him as “the counterpart” of Taleb Sami Abdullah, the commander of another unit whose killing last month prompted Hezbollah to launch more than 200 rockets and missiles into northern Israel in a single day.

Since then, there has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions, with the UN and US warning of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a war that could also draw in Iran and other allied groups.

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There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.

Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group that is also backed by Iran. Both groups are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.

In recent weeks, Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that they will use military force to restore security along the northern border if diplomacy fails.

“We are striking Hezbollah very hard every day and we will also reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon, or to reach an arrangement from a position of strength,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday. “We prefer an arrangement, but if reality forces us we will know how to fight.”

Hezbollah, heavily armed and long seen as a significantly superior foe to Hamas, has said it does not want a full-out war with Israel and that it will observe in Lebanon any ceasefire in Gaza.

“Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” the group’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said in an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday. “But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel.”

So far, more than 400 people have been reported killed in Lebanon, the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters, and 25 people in Israel, mostly soldiers.

Tens of thousands from communities on both sides of the border have also been displaced.

Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon

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Biden vows to stay in US presidential race, governors offer support

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US President Joe Biden

Biden vows to stay in US presidential race, governors offer support

United States President Joe Biden has pledged to continue his re-election campaign “to the end”, as the embattled Democrat fights to keep his candidacy alive amid growing alarm over his physical and mental fitness.

Biden, 81, on Wednesday insisted that he would keep running despite growing pressure from within his party to step aside following last week’s disastrous debate performance against his Republican challenger Donald Trump.

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call with campaign staffers.

“I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win.”

Biden’s defiant remarks came after US media reports indicated that the president and his team have acknowledged that his candidacy is at risk of collapsing within days if he cannot convince the public of his fitness for office.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre denied those reports, insisting Biden was “clear-eyed, and he is staying in the race”.

Concerns about Biden’s age and condition have boiled over since last Thursday’s debate, when the president gave several answers that meandered into incoherence.

While acknowledging that Biden performed poorly at the debate, his team has dismissed suggestions that he has dementia or is otherwise cognitively impaired.

White House officials initially blamed Biden’s poor performance on a cold.

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Biden on Tuesday said he had been exhausted after making back-to-back trips to France and Italy, although he spent the week leading up to the debate behind closed doors at the presidential retreat, Camp David.

Raul Grijalva, a House representative from Arizona, on Wednesday became the second elected Democrat to call on Biden to step aside, following Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett the previous day.

Several other elected Democrats have publicly questioned Biden’s condition or said they believe he will lose against Trump in November.

“The unfortunate reality is that the status quo will likely deliver us President Trump. When your current strategy isn’t working, it’s rarely the right decision to double down,” Seth Moulton, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that he was “taking time” to consider the best path forward for his party.

“President Biden is not going to get younger.”

Democrat disquiet

Late on Wednesday, Biden received a boost from a group of Democratic governors who reiterated their support for the president after a meeting with him and Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House.

“The president has always had our backs. We’re going to have his back as well,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore told reporters.

“The president is our nominee,” Moore said. “The president is our party leader.”

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who also attended the meeting, said Biden was “in it to win it and I support him.”

At 78, Biden was the oldest person ever sworn into the US presidency following his victory in the 2020 election over Trump. A second victory would see him leave office at the age of 86. If Trump were to win in November, he would also be 78 when he enters office for his second term.

Biden’s age has been a longstanding concern among voters, and his support among the public appears to have slipped substantially since his debate appearance.

In a New York Times/Siena College poll released on Wednesday, Trump led Biden 49 percent to 41 percent among registered voters, the highest margin since 2015.

Nearly three-quarters of voters, including a majority of Democrats, believe the president is too old to do a second term, a five-point rise since the debate, according to the poll.

In a CNN poll published earlier this week, three-quarters of registered voters said Democrats would have a better chance at winning the election with someone other than Biden on the ticket.

Voters also favoured Trump over Biden, 49 percent to 43 percent.

Harris did moderately better, gaining the support of 45 percent of voters compared with Trump’s 47 percent.

If Biden were to step aside, it would cast the race into uncharted territory. The US presidential primary season, when party members typically vote on who they want to be their candidate, has already ended, although the party’s candidate will not be finalised until the Democratic National Convention next month.

Harris, who has rallied behind her boss, is considered the most likely successor if Biden were to step aside.

Other names floated include Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.

Biden vows to stay in US presidential race, governors offer support

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone

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Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe in the territory’s south.

Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, said AFP reporters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that “this will not happen.”

Military chief Herzi Halevi meanwhile said Israel is engaged in “a long campaign” to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attack and to bring home the hostages held by Palestinian militants.

The United Nations warned that the almost nine-months-old war had “unleashed a maelstrom of human misery” and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into “an abyss of suffering.”

Ten days after Netanyahu said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down air strikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shujaiya district.

The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists,” located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.

The Israeli army — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.

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Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been impacted by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the order covers 117 square kilometers (45 square miles), or “about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October.”

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 percent of Gaza’s population.

She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.

“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”

Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, said the World Health Organization.

Wafaa Elwan, a Palestinian mother of seven who now lives in a tent city by the sea, said: “We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us.”

She said her five-year-old son, much of whose body was covered in rashes and welts, “can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body.”

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip.”

The Gaza civil defense agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.

Another strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir Al-Balah area, said an AFP reporter.

Air strikes also hit homes in Rafah, according to Gaza’s government media office.

The New York Times has quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.

Netanyahu, who heads a government including hard-line right-wing parties, strongly rejected this on Tuesday and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism.”

“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.

Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone

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