Source: Reuters
Security & Justice
Southern Lebanon Endures Massive Damage: 40,000 Homes Leveled Across 37 Towns
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed entire neighborhoods in southern Lebanon, leveling more than 37 towns and wiping out over 40,000 residential units, according to Lebanon's National News Agency.
Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Gaps in Coastal Radar Enabled Israeli Raid in Batroun, Army Commander Says
Lebanon’s army chief, General Joseph Aoun, detailed to Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati how Israeli forces likely exploited gaps in the country's coastal radar system during the recent raid carried out in Batroun. The briefing comes as Lebanese officials seek answers on how Israel’s elite Shayetet 13 unit carried out the landing undetected.
Monday, November 4, 2024
Opinion
The Emptying of Baalbek Is a Moment to Take Stock
“Large numbers of people continue to flee their homes every day, as Israel’s military operations in Lebanon have been going on unabated.” These disturbing words could be from almost any news report about Israel’s invasion of its northern neighbour over the past month. However, they can be found in a report by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre issued on July 27, 2006.
Saturday, November 2, 2024
A Future Without Hezbollah
At the end of September, when Israel’s campaign to destroy Hezbollah was reaching its height, I met one of the group’s supporters in a seaside café in western Beirut. He was a middle-aged man with a thin white beard and the spent look of someone who had not slept for days. He was an academic of sorts, not a fighter, but his ties to Hezbollah were deep and long-standing.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
Sports
Tottenham Forward Son Heung-min Crowned Asia’s International Player of the Year
Tottenham forward Son Heung-min was crowned as Asia’s International Player of the Year for the fourth time by the Asian Football Confederation at its annual awards ceremony Tuesday.
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Real Madrid Launch Investigation into Racist Insults After El Clasico Defeat
Real Madrid has launched an investigation into racist insults directed at players during Saturday’s 4-0 home loss to Barcelona in LaLiga, it said on Sunday.
Monday, October 28, 2024
Monday 30 August 2021 14:05:51
Israeli PM Plays Down Defence Chief's Talks with Palestinian Leader
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett sought on Monday to play down any notion of a move towards renewed peace negotiations with the Palestinians after the highest-level Israeli-Palestinian meeting in years.
Hours after Defence Minister Benny Gantz and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met, the main Israeli media outlets quoted "a source close to the prime minister" as saying: "There is no diplomatic process with the Palestinians, nor will there be one."
The session, which was not announced in advance, covered only "routine issues", according to the source. Hussein Al Sheikh, a member of Abbas' Fatah Central Committee, said the talks included "all aspects" of Palestinian-Israeli relations.
Gantz, who heads a centrist party, and Abbas convened two days after Bennett, a far-right politician who opposes Palestinian statehood, met in Washington with U.S. President Joe Biden, who backs the idea.
A White House statement said Biden reiterated to Bennett his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and "underscored the importance of steps to improve the lives of Palestinians".
Bennett did not mention Palestinians in public remarks at the White House that focused largely on arch-enemy Iran's nuclear programme.
Gantz has called in the past for resumption of a peace process with the Palestinians, who aspire to a state of their own in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Middle East war.
But any renewed movement on the issue could shake the foundations of Bennett's government of left-wing, rightist, centrist and Arab parties that in June ended Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year run as prime minister.
In a sign of friction over Palestinian statehood from within the coalition, Mossi Raz, a legislator from the left-wing Meretz party, said dismissal of prospects for renewed peace talks by the Bennett source was "outrageous".
"A peace process is an Israeli interest," Raz wrote on Twitter.
A statement from Gantz's office made no mention of peacemaking, saying only that he and Abbas discussed the security and economic situation in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, an enclave run by Abbas's Hamas Islamist rivals.
The meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah marked the first time Israeli and Palestinian talks at such a senior level have been confirmed since peace U.S.-brokered peace negotiations collapsed in 2014.
The source quoted by Israeli media said Bennett had given Gantz the go-ahead to see Abbas.