As tensions heighten in the Middle East amid the escalating Israel-Hamas war, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced late Saturday that the U.S. will redeploy one of its strike groups to the Persian Gulf, as well as send additional air defense systems to the region.
Austin also said that he has placed additional U.S. forces on “prepare to deploy orders,” but did not detail how many. Austin earlier this week ordered 2,000 troops to be prepared to deploy to the Middle East.
The latest decision followed “detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East,” Austin said in a statement.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and its strike group — which last weekend Austin had announced was being deployed to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to join the USS Gerald R. Ford — will instead be heading to the Persian Gulf, Austin disclosed Saturday.
Austin also said he ordered a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile battery, and Patriot missile defense system battalions, to the Persian Gulf as well.
The moves come as U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria have seen an increase in attacks by Iran-backed Shia militia groups in the days since Hamas militants invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7.
The USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group was deployed from the western to eastern Mediterranean two days after that attack.
Before reversing course Saturday, Austin last weekend said the Eisenhower strike group would join it in the eastern Mediterranean in an effort to “deter hostile actions against Israel or any efforts toward widening this war following Hamas’ attack on Israel.”
Hamas’ attack on Israel left at least 1,400 people dead and 3,500 wounded. More than 200 people were taken hostage, included several Americans, two of whom were freed Friday.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza is at least 4,385, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with more than 13,000 wounded.
Florida lawmakers will return for a special session to impose additional sanctions against Iran, express support for Israel and provide additional security to protect Jewish institutions in Florida, House and Senate leaders announced Friday.
The session will also take up issues like hurricane relief, property insurance and providing more money for special needs students. Presidential candidate and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis supports bringing lawmakers back to the Capitol to address the issues rather than wait for the January start of the annual session.
“Following the horrific atrocities committed by Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas against Israel, I am calling on the Florida Legislature to act swiftly to ensure our state does not send a penny to the Iranian terror state,” DeSantis said in a news release.
The four-day session will begin Nov. 6.
The special session was called because Iran supports Hamas militants who attacked Israel two weeks ago, though no government worldwide has offered direct evidence supporting that Iran orchestrated the attack.
Florida already has sanctions against companies that directly do business with Iran and six other “countries of concern,” including Cuba, China and Russia. The U.S. federal government has imposed sanctions against Iran for decades.
The announcement comes after DeSantis made efforts to bring Floridians home from Israel, declared a state of emergency and sent airplanes loaded with supplies for the country.
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Israel said its ongoing airstrikes hit more Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip Friday, as it began evacuating a town near its northern border with Lebanon, where almost daily exchanges of fire with the other major Iran-backed group in the region, Hezbollah, have fueled fear of new fronts opening almost two weeks into the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly terror attack.
Israel’s military has accused Hamas of killing about 1,400 people in that attack and seizing at least 203 hostages during the rampage. The military said Hamas kidnapped Israeli soldiers, but also dozens of civilians, including as many as 20 people over the age of 60 and more than 20 under 18. One Israeli family shared their heartache with CBS News on Friday as they waited desperately for any word on a 10-month-old baby among the captives.
A senior Israeli military leader told soldiers Thursday they would soon “see Gaza from the inside,” suggesting a long-expected ground invasion was still looming, but fear the conflict could spread beyond Israel’s borders and the decimated Palestinian territory were only growing Friday.
Hezbollah has exchanged deadly fire with Israeli forces for more than a week, but it has so far been relatively limited cross-border shelling. The powerful Iran-backed group is based in Lebanon, and it has a large arsenal of long-range rockets.
With tension along the northern border soaring, Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Friday that the roughly 20,000 residents of the town of Kiryat Shmona, near that Lebanese border, would be evacuated.
A map shows Israel, with Jerusalem and other major cities labeled, along with the Palestinian territories of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Getty/iStockphoto
Another militant force in the region that’s considered by the U.S. and Israel to be an Iranian proxy group is the Houthi movement, which has fought Yemen’s Western-backed government in a brutal civil war for almost a decade. On Thursday, the Pentagon said a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Red Sea had shot down cruise missiles and drones launched by the Houthis, which may have been aimed at Israel.
Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said the U.S. was still completing its assessment of where the three intercepted ballistic missiles were headed, but if they were intended for Israel, it would be the first direct U.S. military intervention to protect Israel from its regional foes since Hamas’ unprecedented attack.
A U.S. defense official confirmed to CBS News, meanwhile, that an American military base near Baghdad, Iraq, was targeted in a new rocket attack. Reports of U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria being targeted by drones have increased since the Israel-Hamas war erupted, and Iran-backed militias in northern Iraq and Syria have long targeted American forces in the region.
President Biden has warned Iran and its regional allies repeatedly and clearly not to get involved in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Speaking Friday to journalists at the Iranian Embassy in London, charge d’affaires Mehdi Hosseini Matin said Iran’s “first priority is stopping the war, not escalation.”
He was dismissive of the level of influence Iran could exert over allied groups in the region, claiming the Islamic republic was “not in a position to control any group effectively in the Middle East or in border countries with Gaza.”
The Iranian regime has said Hamas’ brutal terror attack on southern Israel was a justifiable response to “the establishment of an open air prison in Gaza for more than two decades,” which Matin said Friday was “absolutelyunacceptable according to international law.”
Calling the situation in the region “very volatile and dangerous,” Matin said any further “escalation is not in the interest of anyone, including the United States.”
Anger in the West Bank and Egypt
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians had been increasing for a year even before Hamas’ terror attack. Palestinian officials in the Israeli-occupied territory, which is not controlled by Hamas like Gaza, say more than 70 people have died in confrontations with Israeli forces and armed Jewish settlers since Oct. 7.
Palestinian officials said a rare Israeli airstrike in the region, reportedly hitting a refugee camp near the West Bank-Israel border, killed 13 people on Friday, and anger was growing over that strike and the ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip.
“It was horrible for all the Palestinians. Not just for Palestinians but I think for everybody in the world who saw this horror of what’s going on in the Gaza Strip,” Jamal Joumaa, a Palestinian activist who joined a demonstration in central Ramallah on Friday, told CBS News.
Hundreds protest against Israel’s airstrikes in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Ramallah, West Bank, Oct. 20, 2023.
CBS News/Haley Ott
The protest swelled as Palestinians poured out of mosques following Friday prayers, with many chanting support for Hamas. Palestinian and Hamas flags could be seen in the crowd of a few hundred people.
“Give me a two state solution tomorrow, I will accept it. But this became impossible because of the American policies, because of the American backing of the colonial state,” Joumaa told CBS News, referring to Israel.
“I want the Americans first to know that they are supporting a crime of genocide in Gaza,” he said, adding that the leaders of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, had failed the people.
Another protester, 18-year-old Abeer Iyad Hassan al-Bezzary, told CBS News she was angry, “but what can we do here? We just pray for them [Gazans] to be safe.”
“We feel President Biden is taking one side… the ones who have force, the power. They [Israelis] have the weapons, they have everything,” Ahmad abu Dukhan told CBS News at the protest.
In Egypt, the only country to share a border with Gaza apart from Israel, the authoritarian government has made protests of any kind illegal, but there was a significant one Friday in the very heart of Cairo, in Tahrir Square. Elsewhere in the city, the government has not only allowed pro-Palestinian protests, it’s encouraging them, journalist and opposition activist Khaled Dawoud told CBS News on Friday.
“The anger is like, so widespread,” he said. “You can’t control it… We see the pictures, we see the Palestinian children, we identify with them… So, we get angry, and we go in the street and demonstrate and protest.”
People march from Tahrir Square to the downtown district of Cairo, Oct. 20, 2023, during a protest supporting the Palestinian people following Friday Noon prayers.
KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty
Asked if he believed the Egyptian government, by allowing the protests, was trying to send a warning that the Hamas-Israel could spread, Dawoud acknowledged that the demonstrations could help leaders in Cairo, who worry an escalation could send thousands of Palestinian refugees pouring over the Gaza border.
But, he stressed that he and the other protesters were “not acting by remote control. These feelings are genuine.”
Gaza airstrikes and the Rafah border crossing
The Israeli military said Friday that it had struck more than 100 Hamas targets in Gaza overnight, including command centers, warehouses full of weapons and an underground tunnel.
Palestinians in Gaza reported airstrikes in the south, where many civilians have relocated after being told by Israel’s military that the northern part of the small, densely populated enclave would not be safe. The United Nations has said more than one million people have been displaced within Gaza since Israel started striking the region in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Nobody has been able to flee Gaza, however, and there are as many as 600 U.S. nationals among the roughly 2.3 million people trapped there under a complete Israeli blockade of the strip.
That blockade has cut off supplies of food, energy and medicine to the decimated Palestinian territory, fueling an already monumental humanitarian crisis amid the shelling and drawing warnings from experts that Israel could be answering Hamas’ war crimes with war crimes of its own.
Israeli leaders have consistently dismissed such warnings, insisting the country is only targeting Hamas militants and blaming the group itself — which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and most European nations — for all deaths in the Palestinian territory that it controls and that it used as a launch pad for its brutal attack.
President Biden, during his visit earlier in the week, got Israel to commit to halting its strikes near the only border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, at Rafah, to enable aid to get in, but it remained unclear Friday when the gates might actually open. Crews were working to repair the Rafah crossing, with about 20 trucks full of humanitarian aid waiting on the Egyptian side.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing Friday and, surrounded by food and medical supplies waiting to be shipped out, he urged all sides to open humanitarian routes into Gaza.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (center) inspects aid materials waiting to be moved across the Rafah crossing from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, Oct. 20, 2023.
Handout/UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
“On this side, we have seen so many trucks loaded with water, with fuel, with medicines, with food. They are a lifeline. They are the difference between life and death for so many people in Gaza,” Guterres said. “What we need is to make them move, to make them move to the other side of this wall, to make them move as quickly as possible and as many as possible.”
The Egyptian Sinai for Human Rights group posted video of what it said were aid workers lined up Friday with vehicles on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, saying in a tweet that they were, “awaiting the opening of the crossing in the coming hours to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip for the first time since the beginning of the war.”
What is Israel’s plan in Gaza?
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of his country’s legislature, the Knesset, on Friday that the war Hamas started with its Oct. 7 terror attack would end with group’s destruction.
“We are at war, we have been left no choice. October 7th will be remembered as the day that started the destruction of Hamas,” Gallant told the lawmakers, laying out for the first time a vague outline of Israel’s planned military operation — which leaders have said could take months or even years.
He said the objectives of Israel’s three-phase operation included the elimination of Hamas as a power in Gaza, with both its military and governing capabilities destroyed, followed eventually by the establishment of a new “security reality” in the Palestinian territory.
Gallant said Israel was still in the first of the three stages: “A military campaign that currently includes strikes, and will later include maneuvering, with the objective of neutralizing terrorists and destroying Hamas infrastructure,” which he said would be followed by a second phase focused on “eliminating pockets of resistance” in Gaza.
“The third phase,” Gallant said, “will require the removal of Israel’s responsibility for life in the Gaza Strip, and the establishment of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel.”
In an interview with 60 Minutes last week, President Biden said “Israel has to respond. They have to go after Hamas,” but the U.S. leader warned that an Israeli occupation of Gaza would be “a big mistake.”
NOTE: The original version of this article incorrectly described Hezbollah is a Palestinian group. It has been updated to reflect that it is a Shiite Muslim group based in Lebanon.
CBS News’ Pamela Falk at the United Nations and Emmet Lyons in London contributed to this report.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday vowed to “hold Iran accountable” for its alliance with Russia and its support of anti-Israeli militants such as Hamas, appearing to draw a line under efforts to engage Tehran.
The president has frequently drawn fire for his Iran policy, which continues some of the attempts at rapprochement started by the administration of former President Barack Obama, in which Biden served as vice president.
Biden tried to lure Iran back into an Obama-era nuclear nonproliferation deal scuppered by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, and even released funds from a sanctions-bound bank account in a deal to free Americans prisoners.
Biden’s Iran policy, always controversial, became untenable after militants from Hamas—which has reportedly been funded and armed by Iran—slaughtered 1,400 people in Israel on October 7 in the worst Palestinian attack ever on the Jewish state.
Biden used perhaps his toughest language yet on Iran during a Thursday night address to the nation, tying Tehran to the Hamas attack as well as the 20-month-old war in Ukraine waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
U.S. President Joe Biden, left, on Thursday addresses the nation from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. On the right, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is pictured on April 22, 2023, in Tehran. During Biden’s address, he said the United States would hold Iran “accountable” for supporting Russia and anti-Israel militants. Photos by Jonathan Ernst Sadegh Nikgostar/ATPImages/Getty Images
“Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region. And we’ll continue to hold them accountable, I might add,” he said.
Hours before Biden spoke, the U.S. Navy shot down missiles and drones from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. A Pentagon spokesperson said Israel was potentially the target of the thwarted attack.
During the final weeks of his presidential campaign in 2020, Biden wrote an opinion article for CNN.com. In it, he criticized Trump’s Iran policy as a “dangerous failure” while touting the work done under Obama.
The op-ed also offered Tehran “a credible path back to diplomacy” if the nation’s leaders agreed to comply with a strict nuclear deal.
“If Iran chooses confrontation, I am prepared to defend our vital interests and our troops,” Biden wrote. “But, I am ready to walk the path of diplomacy if Iran takes steps to show it is ready too.”
Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment late Thursday night.
Iran had already been scrutinized for its ties to anti-Israel militants before the Red Sea incident on Thursday. U.S. and Israeli officials have not identified any clear connection between Tehran and the October 7 attack, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has dismissed reports of Tehran’s involvement. However, Iran has long been accused of providing Hamas with military and financial support.
Exactly a week after the Hamas attack on Israel, Iran made a symbolic show of solidarity when Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian met with Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Doha, Qatar.
The Iranian official was captured on video by the Iranian-state media outlet Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) hugging and kissing Haniyeh during the meeting.
Iran has also been one Putin’s closest allies throughout his war on Ukraine, supplying Russia’s armed forces with combat drones. This summer, the White House said U.S. intelligence had found Iran had provided Russia with materials needed to build a drone manufacturing plant near Moscow.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday reiterated her strongly pro-Israeli stance despite growing criticism from within her own staff, while also harshly criticizing Iran for seeking to sow “violence and chaos” in the Middle East.
Some 800 EU staff took the unusual step of writing to von der Leyen at the end of last week to protest against what they see as unjustifiable bias toward Israel in the Israel-Hamas war. The protest came after the president neglected to mention the EU’s support for Palestinian statehood in a speech on Thursday in Washington — despite a two-state solution being a core part of the position of European countries.
Yet on Sunday von der Leyen doubled down on her previous stance during a speech to the youth organization of her German center-right CDU/CSU political group.
While she stressed that any Israeli defense against the Hamas terrorist group must be “in accordance with international law,” she again did not mention Palestinian statehood and instead just referred to necessary humanitarian aid, saying: “There is no contradiction in standing in solidarity with Israel and providing humanitarian aid in Gaza.”
“All these conflicts have one thing in common: they are about the struggle between those who seek peace, balance, freedom and cooperation — and those who do not want any of this because they profit from the chaos and disorder,” von der Leyen said in her speech at the CDU/CSU youth wing congress in Braunschweig, Germany.
Her remarks can be seen as controversial because, even though Israel is undeniably defending itself following a brutal aggression by Hamas terrorists, the country’s at times very complicated and highly criticized settlement policy may not exactly qualify as balanced or in the interest of peace and cooperation.
Human Rights Watch has criticized Israel for “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.”
Von der Leyen also took a very critical position toward Iran, saying that Tehran stood “behind Hamas.” She added: “Iran has no interest whatsoever in this region coming to peace. On the contrary, Iran wants to foment violence and chaos because that secures its influence.”
BERLIN — Facing war on two fronts — in Ukraine and in the Middle East — Kyiv is calling on Western democracies to ramp up investment in weapons, saying that arms factory output worldwide is falling miles short of what is needed.
In an interview, Ukraine’s Minister for Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin told POLITICO Western countries needed to accelerate production of missiles, shells and military drones as close to frontlines as possible.
“The free world should be producing enough to protect itself,” Kamyshin said, on a mission to the German capital to persuade arms producers to invest in war-ravaged Ukraine. “That’s why we have to produce more and better weapons to stay safe.”
Current factory capacity was woeful, he argued. “If you get together all the worldwide capacities for weapons production, for ammunition production, that will be not enough for this war,” said Kamyshin of the state of play along Ukraine’s more than 1,000 kilometers of active frontline.
As the Israel Defense Forces continue to pummel Gaza and fighting gathers pace along the contact line in Ukraine, armies are burning through ammunition at a rate not seen in decades. Policymakers are asking whether Western allies can support both countries with air defense systems and artillery at once.
The answer, says Kamyshin, is to start building out production facilities now. “What happens in Israel now shows and proves that the defense industry globally is a destination for investments for decades,” he said.
Since Russia’s war on Ukraine started in February 2022, western governments have been funneling arms to Kyiv. That includes hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, armored vehicles and other equipment.
But as the grind of war continues, Kyiv has changed tack — appointing Kamyshin, the former boss of Ukraine’s state railway — to the post of minister for strategic industries. Ukraine, formerly a major military hub in the Soviet Union, is now trying to increase output of armored vehicles, ammunition and air defense systems, he said, and wants Western partners to invest.
A key step is expected on Tuesday, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal will announce a new joint venture between Rheinmetall and Ukroboronprom, a Ukrainian defense company, Kamyshin said.
In late September, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office gave the green light to the cooperation agreement after a review that found the proposed venture “does not result in any overlaps in terms of competition in Germany.”
Building local
Last March, EU countries pledged to send a millionartillery rounds to Ukraine over the following year as part of a program to lift production. Ukraine may need as much as 1.5 million shells annually to sustain its war effort, a daunting task that Kamyshin hopes he can help, at least partially, with domestic output.
In total, Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia. Combined with Soviet-era pieces in Ukrainian stocks prior to the Russian invasion, Kyiv has approximately 1,600 pieces of artillery in service — but must cover a massive front.
Ukraine has received over 350 self-propelled and towed artillery systems from NATO countries and Australia | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
And although the deepening of the German-Ukrainian defense relationship is a boon for Kyiv’s war effort, the enemy on the battlefield — Russia — can also leverage its own international relationships for war materiel, and has been quick to agree military hardware deals with the likes of Iran and North Korea.
Earlier this month, reports pointed out Pyongyang likely transferred a sizable shipment of artillery ammunition to Russia. The details of the deal are secret, but the shipment came on the heels of a visit to Pyongyang by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in turn made a trip to Russia by rail and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia previously struck a deal with Tehran for Iranian loitering munitions that hammered cities across Ukraine last winter in an intentional targeting of civilian infrastructure.
The increasingly international scope of sourcing for the war in Ukraine is not limited to non-NATO countries. Poland recently started taking delivery of tanks, howitzers, rocket launchers and light attack aircraft from South Korea, a nod to how quickly Seoul can ramp up production affordably.
For Kamyshin, the key was to make plans for the long term.
“This war can be for decades,” he said. “[The] Russians can come back always.”
Israel says Hamas is holding almost 200 hostages, including Israeli troops and civilians. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams has more on a new propaganda video released by Hamas showing a woman held captive.
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LONDON — It is a multi-billion-dollar plan to build a metropolis in the Indo-Pacific which critics fear may one day act as a Chinese military outpost.
Now the vast Colombo Port City project has a new champion — former British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Cameron has been enlisted to drum up foreign investment in the controversial Sri Lankan project, which is a major part of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative — China’s global infrastructure strategy — and is billed as a Chinese-funded rival to Singapore and Dubai.
Cameron flew to the Middle East in late September to speak at two glitzy investment events for Colombo Port City, having visited the waterside site in Sri Lanka in person earlier this year.
His spokesperson said the former PM had had no direct contact with either the Chinese government or the Chinese firm involved. But Cameron’s lobbying for the scheme has drawn severe backlash from critics, who say his activities will aid China in its geopolitical ambitions.
Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who was sanctioned by Beijing for criticizing its human rights record, said: “Cameron of all people must realize that China’s Belt and Road is not about help and support and development, it’s ultimately about gaining control — as they’ve already demonstrated in Sri Lanka.
“I hope that he will reconsider the position he’s taken on this.”
Tim Loughton, another Tory MP sanctioned by China, said: “The Sri Lankan project is a classic example of how China buys votes and influence in developing countries and then sends the bailiffs in when those countries can’t keep up the payments.”
“Cameron should be working to help wean vulnerable countries off Chinese influence and debt rather than tying them in more tightly.”
At the roadshow
Dilum Amunugama, Sri Lanka’s investment minister who attended the investment events in the UAE last month, told POLITICO he believed Cameron was enlisted to convince Western investors to put their money into the project.
Amunugama was at two events where Cameron spoke — one in Abu Dhabi with an audience of 100, and one in Dubai with an audience of 300.
“The main point he [Cameron] was trying to stress is that it is not a purely Chinese project, it is a Sri Lankan-owned project — and that is the main point I think the Chinese also wanted him to iron out,” Amunugama said.
Cameron is in charge of drumming up investment into the Chinese-funded Colombo Port City project | Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images
The Sri Lankan minister said the decision to enlist Cameron “was taken by the Chinese company, not the government.”
Cameron’s office said his involvement was organized by the Washington Speakers Bureau, a D.C.-based agency that books guest speakers for corporate events.
His spokesperson said: “David Cameron spoke at two events in the UAE organized via Washington Speakers Bureau (WSB), in support of Port City Colombo, Sri Lanka.
“The contracting party for the events was KPMG Sri Lanka and Mr Cameron’s engagement followed a meeting he had with Sri Lanka’s president, Ranil Wickremesinghe, earlier in the year.
“Mr Cameron has not engaged in any way with China or any Chinese company about these speaking events. The Port City project is fully supported by the Sri Lankan government,” his spokesperson added.
The spokesperson declined to say how much Cameron was paid for his time. Cameron traveled to Sri Lanka in January and visited the development, but his office said that he did so as a guest of the president and that there was no commercial aspect to that trip.
Mired in controversy
The Colombo Port City project has been controversial since its inception.
It was unveiled in 2014 by China’s Xi and Sri Lanka’s then-president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Three years later, Sri Lanka handed it over to Chinese control after struggling to pay off its debt to Chinese firms.
Multiple concerns have been raised about the project, including its environmental impact; U.S. warnings it could be used for money laundering; and fears that it will ultimately be used as a Chinese military outpost.
Analysts have warned repeatedly that China is using the project to extend its strategic influence in the region. Beijing has already used the nearby Hambantota port — also funded by Chinese loans — to dock military vessels.
The main developer behind the Colombo Port City Project, CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd, has pumped in an initial $1.3 billion. Its ultimate owner is the China Communications Construction Company, a majority state-owned enterprise headquartered in Beijing.
Golden era no more
As prime minister, Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne famously heralded a “golden era” of U.K. relations with China. Since leaving office in 2016, the ex-PM has come under heavy scrutiny over his lobbying activities, including for the now-collapsed finance company Greensill Capital.
The ex-PM has come under scrutiny for his lobbying activities, including for the now-bankrupt company Greensill Capital | David Hecker/Getty Images
For a period Cameron was also vice-chair of a £1 billion China-U.K. investment fund. The U.K. parliament’s intelligence and security committee said this year that Cameron’s appointment to that role could have been “in some part engineered by the Chinese state to lend credibility to Chinese investment.”
Sam Hogg, a U.K.-China analyst who writes the “Beijing to Britain” briefing, said: “As the ISC pointed out, China has a habit of utilizing former senior-ranking politicians to give credibility to their companies and projects.
“At a time when the Belt and Road Initiative is under intense scrutiny ahead of its 10th anniversary next week, Cameron’s involvement will raise a few eyebrows.”
Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, added: “We can’t have a situation where the EU and U.S. are so concerned about the Belt and Road Initiative that they’re pumping billions into alternative projects, while our own former PM appears to be batting for Beijing.”
On the face of it, the crossfire on Lebanon’s border with Israel appears marginal, dwarfed by the scale and intensity of the Hamas-Israel war further south.
The fighting has stayed within a roughly 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) radius of either side of the demarcation line and less than 13 people have died here since last Saturday.
Yet this barely populated swathe of mountainous terrain could be the launching pad of a regional war, drawing in a myriad of actors, including Iran and the United States.
Hezbollah – an Iran-backed armed group that is also a regional force in its own right – dominates south Lebanon. It also operates alongside Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, where the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights separates Israel from Tehran-aligned fighters.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian on Monday raised the specter of expanded fighting after talking to counterparts in Tunisia, Malaysia and Pakistan.
“Underlined the need to immediately stop Zionist crimes & murders in Gaza & to dispatch humanitarian aid,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I stressed that time is running out for political solutions; probable spread of war in other fronts is approaching unavoidable stage,” he added.
It is a scenario that has gained more currency across a restive Arab and Muslim world as images of dead Palestinian civilians, including more than 500 children, flash on television screens and social media posts, reflecting a civilian death toll rapidly rising at a rate not seen in decades.
Meanwhile, the US has deployed two of its largest aircraft carriers — including the nuclear-powered USS Gerald Ford — to the eastern Mediterranean. It is an ominous sign of what may come if the situation on the Lebanon-Israel border combusts into a full-scale war.
For most of last week, the skirmishes were a low-rumbling exchange of fire between Lebanon-based militants and Israeli forces.
Palestinian militants fired the first shots from Lebanon, hours after Hamas’ surprise attack of October 7, launching rockets that were intercepted over Israel. Israel responded by shooting into Lebanese territory, including at Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah then launched missiles into Israel’s northern-most territory. That cycle repeated for several days.
By Friday morning, three Israeli soldiers and three Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the exchanges across the border.
But then the tit-for-tat escalated. At around 5 p.m. on Friday, Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, who was also a south Lebanon native, was killed in an Israeli strike that wounded at least six other international journalists.
A CNN video analysis found that the journalists were wearing vest jackets clearly marked as press.
An Israeli Apache helicopter was flying over their location, according to a Lebanese security source as well as video seen by CNN, when they were fired upon by what Lebanese army and Israeli statements indicate was artillery.
Israel said it was investigating the incident. In an Israeli military statement that was released around the time of the attack, it said it was shelling Lebanese territory with artillery fire in response to an explosion at a border fence in Israel’s Hanita, near to where Abdallah was killed.
The situation at the border spiraled further the next day.
On Saturday, Hezbollah launched a series of strikes at Israeli targets in the disputed Shebaa farms, which was followed by a barrage of artillery fire from Israel. On Sunday, the Lebanese militants fired at several Israeli locations at the border, killing one civilian and one soldier. Earlier that day, Israel turned the 4-kilometer area near its border into a closed military zone.
In Hezbollah’s statements on Sunday, the group said its cross-border attacks were in response to Abdallah’s killing and the killing of two elderly civilians in Sunday’s Israeli attacks in the border region.
Unlike low-tech rockets that are fired by Palestinian fighters in Lebanon — and are mostly intercepted by Israel — Hezbollah uses Russian anti-tank guided missiles known as Kornets.
Every Hezbollah attack over the last week was followed by a video released by the group that demonstrated precision. They were direct hits that seemed to blindside Israeli troops seen in the videos.
These videos are key to the psychological warfare that underpins this flare-up. It shows clearly how much more sophisticated the group’s arsenal had become since its last conflict with Israel in 2006, when it relied largely on inaccurate Soviet-era Katyusha rockets.
Back then, the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war ended with no clear victor or vanquished. At the time, many parts of Lebanon were devastated, but Hezbollah foiled Israel’s ultimate plan to dismantle the group, dealing a blow to Israel’s aura of invincibility.
In the intervening years, Hezbollah has dramatically built up its arsenal, and its fighters are far more experienced in urban warfare. They’re battle-hardened from fighting in Syria against ISIS, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, and armed opposition groups that tried to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly evoked a hypothetical scenario where his fighters would conduct an incursion into northern Israel in case war erupted between Lebanon and Israel again. Israel and US officials have repeatedly expressed alarm about Hezbollah’s precision-guided missiles, which were used against Israel for the first time this month.
Nasrallah has also said that his group boasts more than 100,000 fighters and reservists. Historically, Israeli and US officials have been reluctant to dismiss claims by the paramilitary leader, who oversaw a surge in the size and power of the group in the 32 years of his leadership.
Yet Nasrallah, known for his fiery televised speeches, has been noticeably silent since October 7. Observers don’t know what to make of this. In addresses he delivered in recent months, Nasrallah lauded the growing alliance between his group and Hamas, though they were on opposite sides of Syria’s bloody civil war.
He has also indicated that the loose rules of engagement between Hezbollah and Israel may soon change, with the Lebanon-based group possibly intervening on behalf of the Palestinians.
This has led many observers to speculate that Hezbollah may expand its fight against Israel in case of the much-anticipated Israeli ground invasion into Gaza.
Yet what happens from now is anyone’s guess. World leaders will continue to watch this border with bated breath.
US leaders are mounting an urgent effort to prevent Israel’s war against Hamas and a resulting civilian catastrophe in Gaza from escalating into a widening regional conflict that could snowball into an even greater geopolitical crisis after this month’s horrific attacks.
As a second US aircraft carrier strike group steams to the region, President Joe Biden told “60 Minutes” that he has Israel’s back as it avenges its darkest day in 50 years – and as he focuses on the plight of Americans among the more than 150 people taken hostage during the Hamas incursion. But he also said, again, that it would be “a big mistake” for Israel to occupy Gaza and called for a return to a negotiation toward a Palestinian state.
His comments came after a weekend of frustration for American citizens stuck at the exit between Gaza and Egypt, as the Biden administration also sought to ease the already dire humanitarian conditions for Palestinian civilians without foreign passports who are trapped with no clear relief from relentless Israeli airstrikes.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s Middle East shuttle mission shows that the United States, despite its efforts to extricate itself from the region, is still uniquely positioned to influence Israel as well as key Arab power brokers at a moment of deep peril – and still willing to take on the task of projecting leadership in the Middle East, in spite of the domestic turmoil in Washington.
Administration officials speaking Sunday made clear they are also looking ahead, desperately trying to preserve the hope of a reshaped Middle East that would draw Israel and Saudi Arabia toward a diplomatic normalization that the Hamas attacks may now threaten.
The US task in balancing a quickly widening crisis is hugely complex and some of its aims could be irreconcilable with others: For example, Israel’s desire to stamp out Hamas once and for all could result in such enormous destruction and loss of life that it will alienate America’s Arab allies.
“We are talking to the Israelis about the full set of questions, looking out into the future to ensure that Israel is safe and secure and also that innocent Palestinians living in Gaza can have a life of dignity, security and peace in the future as well,” Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Sullivan also warned that the war between Israel and Hamas could be just the start. “There is a risk of an escalation of this conflict, the opening of a second front in the north and, of course, Iran’s involvement,” he told CBS.
The comments came as the full scale of an unfolding human tragedy in impoverished, densely populated Gaza is beginning to emerge, as UN officials warn of hellish conditions after over eight days of Israeli bombardments that have killed more than 2,600 Palestinians in response to Hamas’ brutal hostage-taking and killing of 1,400 in Israel.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, warned of severe shortages of water, electricity, food and medicine as thousands of Gazans flee from northern districts after an Israeli statement to evacuate but as the territory’s southern border with Egypt remains closed. “Gaza is being strangled and it seems that the world right now has lost its humanity. If we look at the issue of water – we all know water is life – Gaza is running out of water, and Gaza is running out of life,” Lazzarini said.
Israel has said it tries to mitigate civilian suffering, and blames Hamas, an Iran-backed militant group that has embedded its rocket launchers in packed urban areas and refugee camps, for hiding behind civilians. Hamas has urged civilians to ignore Israeli warnings to evacuate the northern part of Gaza.
Blinken is on a frantic swing that has included stops in Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and Bahrain. He said in Cairo on Sunday that there was a determination throughout the region to prevent the Hamas attacks from spiraling into a larger regional war. The State Department said he’d return to Israel for further consultations on Monday.
Israel has also invited Biden to the country for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and both sides were considering the visit, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. The US president unexpectedly scrapped a planned trip to Colorado on Monday where he was to speak about wind energy, though the White House didn’t immediately tie the change in plans to a possible Israel trip.
But the possibility of the president visiting a war zone and putting his personal prestige on the line at this stage would be fraught with complications.
Washington is walking a knife-edge as it stresses its unshakable support for Israel’s right to try to eradicate Hamas but also attempts to mitigate the worst civilian blowback of the coming offensive while pursuing its own interests in heading off a situation that could force it to plunge back into the Middle East.
Blinken spelled out the multipronged US strategy.
“I don’t think we could be more clear than we’ve been, that when it comes to Israel’s security, we have Israel’s back,” he said in Cairo. But he also warned: “The way that Israel does this matters. It needs to do it in a way that affirms the shared values that we have for human life and human dignity, taking every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians.”
The top US diplomat also delivered a wider message of deterrence, adding: “No one should do anything that could add fuel to the fire in any other place. I think that’s very clear.”
There were signs of modest success for US entreaties on Israel on behalf of Palestinian civilians on Sunday when Blinken promised that the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open. The frontier has been closed, with Cairo citing a lack of immigration controls on the Gaza side and fear for the safety of aid convoys entering the bombarded territory.
Humanitarian supplies have been piling up at checkpoints on the wrong side of the border from where they’re urgently needed. And Sullivan told CNN’s Jake Tapper that while Israeli and Egyptian officials were willing to allow the evacuation of US citizens in Gaza through the Rafah crossing, Hamas was preventing it. Sullivan also told CNN that Israel had agreed to turn water supplies back on for Gaza, a concession confirmed by Israeli officials, but one that Gazan officials said could not be verified because electricity necessary to pump water for use had not been restored.
Blinken also announced the appointment of David Satterfield, former US ambassador to Turkey, to help coordinate aid efforts. The new US envoy will be in Israel on Monday.
The fear of escalation is linked to an expected Israeli ground offensive inside Gaza, which could result in heavy fighting with Hamas and appalling civilian casualties. Experts worry that scenes of civilians caught in the crossfire could spark violence among Palestinians on the West Bank. They could also prompt Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based Islamist party and militant group that – like Hamas – is designated as a terrorist organization by the US, to send thousands of missiles into Israeli cities, opening a second front in the war.
Hezbollah is far more powerful than Hamas, and Israel has warned it would launch a destructive counterattack into Lebanon if the group steps up border skirmishes that have already broken out between the two sides. A double assault on Israel by Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas could also lead to Israeli retaliation against the Islamic Republic, raising the risks of US involvement to protect its ally Israel. Iran’s mission to the United Nations warned on social media Saturday that if Israel’s strikes on Gaza don’t stop, “the situation could spiral out of control & ricochet far-reaching consequences.”
For the United States, there is the risk that a wider conflict could lead to reprisals by terror groups of Iran-backed militias against its remaining troops in Iraq and Syria, where they are engaged in missions to counter ISIS. A fearsome Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would also narrow the diplomatic room that key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt have to de-escalate the situation. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for instance called for the “immediate lifting of the siege on Gaza” when he met Blinken on Sunday and rejected the “targeting of civilians, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and the disruption of essential services.”
With his vehement support for Israel and repeated personal contacts with Netanyahu after the Hamas attacks, Biden laid the ground for Israel to defend itself. But he also created political room for the US to seek to constrain the worst impacts of what is expected to be a ruthless Israeli operation in Gaza and to try to keep longer-term regional peace efforts alive. Given the complexity of the situation and the trauma the Hamas assault created in Israel, it’s not certain that the president’s balancing act is sustainable. But he has to try, since a major war in the Middle East would stretch US resources even further as Washington maintains a multibillion-dollar lifeline for Ukraine, and could foster an impression of global chaos that could harm Biden’s reelection bid next year.
The president said in his interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” Sunday that the US could support both Israel and Ukraine and that it had no choice but to intervene because “we are the essential nation.”
“We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history – not in the world, in the history of the world,” Biden said. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.” He added: “And if we don’t, who does?”
Biden’s effort to rush more aid to both nations is being complicated by chaos in the House of Representatives, which is paralyzed by the divided Republican Party’s failure to elect a new speaker. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted Sunday that the US had to send Israel the support it needed to defend itself. The New York Democrat said a delegation he was leading to Tel Aviv – which also includes Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah – was rushed to a shelter after an air-raid alert.
His post underscored the feeling of foreboding in Israel that is unfolding as Palestinians across the border in Gaza brace for even more relentless attacks, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists poised for an order to move into the territory. Back in Washington, the administration is expected to offer a full classified briefing on the situation to senators Wednesday.
As the week begins, there is a daunting sense that as bad as the situation is, it’s about to get much worse. Veteran US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller said that the Israeli offensive was coming within days and would be agonizing, but he expressed the hope that diplomatic progress could eventually emerge.
“Whether it is 24 hours, 48 hours, whether it is by next week, the fact is, it’s coming,” he said. He added he hoped “like many crises in this region involving an extraordinary amount of pain, in large measure to civilians … there will be some prospect for turning that extra amount of pain into gain.”
Jerusalem — Israel’s government denied reports Monday that it had agreed to a ceasefire in at least the southern half of the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid in and people with international passports to escape into Egypt, as the Israeli military continued hammering the Hamas-controlled enclave with missiles.
“There is currently no ceasefire,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, dismissing reports that a deal had been brokered to enable foreign nationals massing near Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt — along with thousands of Palestinian civilians — to flee.
More than a week after Hamas launched its bloody terror rampage in southern Israel, killing some 1,400 people and capturing almost 200 hostages, Israel was still preparing Monday for a widely expected ground offensive in Gaza. Already, Gaza health officials say at least 2,750 people have been killed by Israel’s bombardment and almost 10,000 more injured, with hundreds of children among the dead and wounded.
Netanyahu’s government has vowed to destroy the Palestinian group, and President Biden told CBS News’ 60 Minutes that Israel can and must “go after Hamas,” but he warned that a full occupation of Gaza would be “a big mistake,” and the U.S. has called repeatedly on Israel to do everything possible to minimize civilian casualties.
Israel has rained missiles down on the densely-populated Gaza Strip constantly since Hamas’ Oct. 7 siege and completely sealed its borders, creating what aid agencies warn is a dire and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis.
Thirty U.S. citizens are among those killed in the latest flare up of violence in the heart of the Middle East, and as many as 600 U.S. nationals are thought to be trapped in Gaza. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said Sunday that 13 Americans who were in Israel remain unaccounted for.
Hamas has refused to negotiate over the release of any hostages with Israeli bombs still falling.
Conditions in Gaza have deteriorated into a “complete catastrophe,” according to one official, with serious shortages of clean water and food as tens of thousands of Palestinians attempt to flee crippling airstrikes and an imminent Israeli ground offensive.
Israel’s military said Saturday its forces are readying for the next stages of the war, including “combined and coordinated strikes from the air, sea and land” in response to the unprecedented October 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist militant group Hamas, which controls the enclave.
At least 1,300 people were killed during Hamas’ rampage in what US President Joe Biden described as “the worst massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
The clock is ticking for residents fleeing south through the battered streets of Gaza after the Israeli military told civilians to leave northern areas of the densely populated strip.
More than half of Gaza’s 2 million residents live in the northern section that Israel said should evacuate. Many families, some of whom were already internally displaced, are now crammed into an even smaller portion of the 140-square-mile territory.
Civilians packed into cars, taxis, pickup trucks and donkey-pulled carts. Roads were filled with snaking lines of vehicles strapped with suitcases and mattresses. Those without other options walked, carrying what they could.
“We will commence significant military operations only once we see that civilians have left the area,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CNN early Sunday. “I cannot stress more than enough to say now is the time for Gazans to leave.”
Even as civilians fled southward, Israeli warplanes continued to blast Gaza over the weekend. Videos showed explosions and bodies along a Gaza evacuation route Friday, as tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes on the advice of the IDF.
Extensive destruction could be seen on Salah Al-Deen street – a main route for evacuation – in videos authenticated by CNN. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 2,329 civilians have been killed and more than 9,000 injured since the conflict broke out a week ago, with 300 killed in the past 24 hours.
Casualties in Gaza over the past eight days have now surpassed the number of those killed during the 51-day Gaza-Israel conflict in 2014, according to the spokesperson for the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Richard Brennan, a World Health Organization official in Cairo, told CNN that 60 percent of those killed in Gaza the last week were women and children.
Several United Nations agencies have warned that mass evacuation under siege conditions will lead to disaster, and that the most vulnerable Gazans, including the sick, elderly, pregnant and disabled, will not be able to relocate at all. For days, Israel has cut off the Gaza population’s access to electricity, food and water.
“Despite Israeli announcements suggesting that there are safe areas for people trapped in the Gaza Strip, they are in fact exposed to bombardment throughout the entire territory, including in the south,” said Avril Benoit, executive director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
A growing number of nations, global rights groups and organizations are calling on Israel to respect international rules of war, urging the protection of civilians’ lives, and not to target hospitals, schools and clinics. Jordan’s foreign minister warned that Israel’s actions in Gaza are causing a humanitarian disaster and amount to mass punishment for more than 2 million Palestinians.
As food, clean drinking water and medical supplies in Gaza run out, there are urgent pleas for humanitarian aid to be allowed in. Footage showed aid convoys continuing to arrive into Egypt’s El-Arish stadium in preparation to enter Gaza through the Rafah land crossing. On the Gazan side, thousands of people are stuck at the crossing, with families telling CNN they have been unable to cross into Egypt.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN Saturday that Egypt has tried to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza but has not received the proper authorization to do so.
Palestinians who fled south, and those who are still in the north, are rapidly running out of food and water. There is no more electricity, and those with fuel-powered generators will soon live in complete blackout. Internet access, through which residents communicate their plight to the world, is also shrinking.
MSF’s Benoit told CNN Saturday there is a serious water shortage in Gaza with many people beginning to suffer from severe dehydration.
“Everyone there feels like they are likely to be collateral damage,” Benoit said. “The health care system there has always been extra fragile and was considered (a) humanitarian chronic emergency for many, many years, and now it’s a complete catastrophe.”
Palestine Red Crescent Society spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told CNN the situation in Gaza is “devastating” and though they had been notified by Israel to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, they did not have the means to do so.
“We are not willing to evacuate because we do not have the means to evacuate our patients,” Farsakh said. “We have around 300 patients at the hospital. Some of them are in the intensive care unit. We have children in incubators. We can’t evacuate them.”
The World Health Organization said Saturday it “strongly condemns Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals” in Gaza, calling it a “death sentence for the sick and injured.”
If patients are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated, they all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death, the WHO said in a statement.
Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond capacity, with some patients “being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds,” it added.
Israel, which has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, said its ramped up offensive will feature hundreds of thousands of reservists and encompass “a wide range of operational offensive plans.”
In addition to widespread airstrikes, Israel’s army is preparing troops for an “expanded arena of combat,” the IDF said in a statement on Saturday. The preparations have placed “an emphasis on significant ground operations.”
Texas woman has family stuck trying to evacuate Gaza
Complicating an Israeli offensive in Gaza are up to 150 hostages captured by Hamas – including soldiers, civilians, women, children and the elderly – and who are being held in the crowded enclave.
IDF spokesperson Conricus said it is a top priority to get hostages out of Gaza, despite the difficulty that a dense urban area adds to the fight.
Pointing to the “elaborate network of tunnels” that Hamas has, he said hostages “are most likely held underground in various locations.”
“Fighting will be slow. Advances will be slow, and we will be cautious,” he said.
As Israel battles Hamas, it also faces the threat of a wider conflict on new fronts.
Israel has said it is ready in case there are attacks from neighboring Lebanon or Syria.
Syria’s military reported late Saturday that an “air aggression” by Israel, originating from the Mediterranean Sea, damaged Aleppo International Airport and rendered it nonoperational.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Mission to the UN warned on Saturday that if Israel does not stop its attacks on Gaza, “the situation could spiral out of control and ricochet far-reaching consequences.”
The comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha, Qatar on Saturday, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA. The agency said it was the first official meeting between Iranian officials and Haniyeh since surprise Hamas attack on Israel that Hamas called Al-Aqsa storm.
Hostilities with neighboring Lebanon are being closely monitored internationally, as an escalation could draw the powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah paramilitary group into the conflict.
For days, Lebanon-based Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israel, leading to Israeli attacks on Lebanese territory, including Hezbollah positions. Hezbollah has fired back at Israeli border positions with precision-guided missiles.
On Saturday, Israel returned fire after Hezbollah launched an attack on the disputed territory of the Shebaa farms near the Israel-Lebanon border, with CNN teams on the ground reporting prolonged shelling.
Mourners also gathered Saturday for the funeral of Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon after he was killed when Israel fired artillery into the area where he and other journalists were on Friday. The IDF said it was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the incident on the Lebanese border.
In response to the regional security situation, the Pentagon has ordered a second carrier strike group – the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower – to the eastern Mediterranean Sea, joining the strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford.
The US warships are not intended to join the fighting in Gaza or take part in Israel’s operations, but the presence of two of the Navy’s most powerful ships is designed to send a message of deterrence to Iran and Iranian proxies in the region.
Sen. Cory Booker told “CBS Mornings” on Friday that $6 billion in Iranian oil assets that were freed up as part of last month’s U.S.-Iran prisoner swap are “frozen.”
“A dollar of it has not gone out,” said Booker, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee and was in Jerusalem when Hamas launched its large-scale attack. He said senators have received “assurances” the money has been frozen.
Booker’s remarks came after a source told CBS News on Thursday that the U.S. had reached a “quiet understanding” with Qatar not to release any of the $6 billion. According to the source, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo informed House Democrats of that understanding in a closed-door meeting Thursday morning and said the money “isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
The timing of the “understanding” was not disclosed by the source, who had knowledge of the arrangement, so it is not known whether it transpired after Hamas attacked Israel over the weekend.
Many Republicans criticized the Biden administration for releasing the funds as part of the Iran deal, claiming they freed up resources for Iran to support Hamas’ attack. They made the claims without evidence, and Treasury’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson said Saturday that the funds were still in restricted accounts in Qatar.
The money was transferred to Qatar from a restricted account in South Korea as part of the high-stakes deal between Iran and the Biden administration last month that led to the release of five Americans who were wrongfully detained in Iran. South Korea owed Iran the money for oil it purchased before the Trump administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019.
The Biden administration had insisted the money would not be given directly to Iran and that it could only be used to fund Iran’s purchases of humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine.
In a press conference in Israel on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken didn’t confirm the funds were frozen but said none of the money had “been spent or accessed in any way” by Iran. He said the United States has “strict oversight of the funds” and retains “the right to freeze them.”
Iran has denied any role in Hamas’ weekend assault, although the militant group could not exist in its current form without Iran’s financial and political backing.
Israel’s military said Friday Hamas’ attack and ongoing rocket fire have killed more than 1,300 people, and at least 27 Americans are known to be among the dead. In Gaza, the Health Ministry said at least 1,537 people, including 447 children, were killed by Israel’s retaliatory strikes as of Friday, with more than 6,600 others wounded.
Israel has warned residents of northern Gaza to evacuate south, as a ground invasion of Gaza by Israel is expected.
Booker said he supports — and “is working at” — protecting civilian lives in the conflict, and called Hamas “a Nazi-like organization” that uses Palestinians as human shields.
“Hamas knew when they did this what the response was going to be,” he said, referring to Saturday’s attack by the militant group.
“They knew what the response was going to be, and they did not care,” he said.
Nancy Cordes and Caitlin Yilek contributed to this report.
The Biden administration is organizing charter flights to get U.S. citizens out of Israel as major U.S. airlines have suspended operations there for the next several weeks. Ed O’Keefe has details.
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Elon Musk has made himself Europe’s digital public enemy No. 1.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday, the billionaire’s social network X has been flooded with gruesome images, politically-motivated lies and terrorist propaganda that authorities say appear to violate both its own policies and the European Union’s new social media law.
Now Musk is facing the threat of sanctions — including potentially hefty fines — as officials in Brussels start gathering evidence in preparation for a formal investigation into whether X has broken the European Union’s rules. Authorities in the U.K. and Germany have joined the criticism.
The tussle represents a critical test for all sides. Musk will be keen to fight any claim that he’s failing to be a responsible owner of the social network formerly known as Twitter — all while upholding his commitment to free speech. The EU will want to show its new regulation, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), has teeth.
Thierry Breton, Europe’s commissioner in charge of social media content rules, demanded that Musk explain why graphic images and disinformation about the Middle East crisis were widespread on X.
“I urge you to ensure a prompt, accurate and complete response to this request within the next 24 hours,” Breton wrote on X late Tuesday.
“We will include your answer in our assessment file on your compliance with the DSA,” said Breton, who also wrote to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to remind him of his obligations under Europe’s rules. TikTok’s head Shou Zi Chew was also asked on October 12 to explain how his platform was dealing with misinformation and graphic content.
“I remind you that following the opening of a potential investigation and a finding of non-compliance, penalties can be imposed,” Breton said. Those fines can total up to 6 percent of a company’s global revenue.
In response, Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, wrote to Breton Thursday to outline how the social media giant had responded to the ongoing Middle East conflict. That included removing or labelling potentially harmful content, working with law enforcement agencies and adding so-called “community notes,” or crowd-sourced fact-checks, to posts.
The heat on Twitter did not begin with the Hamas attacks. Ever since Musk bought the platform, he’s been hit by criticism that he’s failing to stop hate speech from spreading online.
X has cut back on its content moderation teams, in the spirit of promoting free speech; pulled out of a Brussels-backed pledge to tackle digital foreign interference; and tweaked its social media algorithms to promote often shady content over verified material from news organizations and politicians.
Musk has responded — via his social media account with 159 million followers — with jeers and attacks on his naysayers. But the latest uproar over content apparently inciting and praising terrorism has made it a surefire bet that X will be one of the first companies to be investigated under the EU’s social media rules.
In response to Breton’s demand, Musk asked the French commissioner to outline how X had potentially violated Europe’s content regulations. “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent,” he added. In the U.K., Michelle Donelan, the country’s digital minister, also met with social media executives Wednesday to discuss how their firms were combatting online hate speech.
The probe is coming
In truth, an investigation into X’s compliance with Europe’s new content rulebook has been on the cards for months. Over the summer, Breton and senior EU officials visited the company’s headquarters in San Francisco for a so-called “stress test” to see how it was complying.
Under the EU’s legislation, tech giants like X, TikTok and Facebook must carry out lengthy risk assessments to figure out how hate speech and other illegal content can spread on their platforms. These firms must also allow greater access to external auditors, regulators and civil society groups that will track how social media companies are complying with the new oversight.
Investigations into potential wrongdoing under Europe’s content rules will likely involve months-long inquiries into a company’s behavior, the Commission taking a legal decision on whether to levy fines or other sanctions, and a likely appeal from the firm in response. Such cases are expected to take years to complete.
Within Brussels, the Commission has been compiling evidence of potential wrongdoing across multiple social media companies, even before the EU’s new content legislation came into full force in August, according to five officials and other individuals with direct knowledge of the matter.
The goal is to start at least three investigations linked to the Digital Services Act by early next year, according to three of those people. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions are not public and remain ongoing.
In recent days, Commission officials have been compiling evidence associated with Hamas’ attacks on Israel — much of which has been shared on X with little, if any, pushback from the company.
That content included verified X accounts with ties to Russia and Iran reposting graphic footage of alleged atrocities targeting Israeli soldiers. Some of these posts have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Other accounts linked to Hezbollah and ISIS have similarly posted widely with few, if any, removals.
It is unclear whether such footage will lead to a specific investigation into X’s handling of the most recent violent content. But it has reaffirmed the likelihood Musk will soon face legal consequences for not removing such material from his social network.
Combating violent and terrorist content requires “people sitting at a computer screen and looking at this and making judgments,” said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which has tracked the online footprint of Hamas’ ongoing attacks. “It used to be that there were dozens of people that do that at Twitter, and now there’s only a handful.”
Steven Overly contributed reporting from Washington. This article has been updated.
BEIRUT — Once again, the Lebanese are glued to their TV sets and are compulsively checking their cell phones, following every twist and turn of skirmishes on the border, trying to weigh up whether another war is imminent.
In desperation, they are asking themselves how a nation so often shattered by conflict — and pummeled by an economic crisis — is again at risk of tipping back into the abyss.
The chief fear for many Lebanese is that they could soon be the second front of Israel’s war against its Islamist militant enemies, after Hamas’ brutal onslaught against Israel a week ago that killed more than 1,300 people. While most eyes are focused on an expected retaliatory ground assault against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli forces have also declared a 4-kilometer-wide closed military zone on Lebanon’s southern border, where they have exchanged fire with Hezbollah, a Shiite political party and militant group based in Lebanon.
One person close to Hezbollah said the Golan Heights — Syrian land occupied by Israel to the southeast of Lebanon — was shaping up into an especially dangerous flashpoint, saying Hezbollah has moved elite units there in the past few days.
Finger on the trigger
For now, this border fighting appears contained, but Iran’s flurry of regional diplomacy is heightening the anxiety that Tehran could be about to commit its proxies in Hezbollah headlong into the war. Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian warned on Saturday that if Israel doesn’t halt its military campaign in Gaza, then Hezbollah, a key player in the Tehran-orchestrated “axis of resistance,” is “prepared” and has its “finger is on the trigger.”
“There’s still an opportunity to work on an initiative [to end the war] but it might be too late tomorrow,” Amir-Abdollahian told reporters after meeting Hamas’ political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar where they “agreed to continue co-operation” to achieve the group’s goals, according to a Hamas statement.
Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Britain’s Spectator TV his country was ready for Hezbollah, which he labeled a twin of Hamas. “Hezbollah could try to escalate the situation, so my message is clear: if we were caught by surprise by Hamas on Saturday morning, we are not going to be caught by surprise from the north. We are ready, we are prepared. We don’t want a war in the north but if they force one upon us, as I was saying, we are ready and we will win decisively in the north too.”
“That was music to my ears,” said Ruth Boulos, a mother of two, as she sipped coffee at a restaurant in Raouché, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Beirut, dotted with modern skyscrapers. “Let’s hope Hezbollah listens,” she added.
At nearby tables, mostly well-heeled Lebanese Christian families could be heard debating whether the country will once again be mired in war and whether they should get out now, joining other affluent Lebanese who have been leaving because of the economic crisis that’s left an estimated 85 percent of the population below the poverty line.
Lebanon’s caretaker government has no power to influence the course of events, Prime Minister Najib Mikati has admitted. He told a domestic TV channel Friday that Hezbollah had given him no assurances about whether they will enter the Gaza war or not. “It’s on Israel to stop provoking Hezbollah,” Mikati said in the interview. “I did not receive any guarantees from anyone about [how things could develop] because circumstances are changing,” he said.
Thanks to Lebanon’s hopelessly fractured politics, the country has had no fully functioning government since October 2022. The cabinet only met Thursday amid rising concerns that the border skirmishes might lead to the war’s spillover. It strongly condemned what it called “the criminal acts committed by the Zionist enemy in Gaza.” Ministers later told media the country would be broken by war. Lebanon “could fall apart completely,” Amin Salam, the economy minister, told The National.
Scarred by war
The rocket and artillery skirmishes along the Lebanese border since Hamas launched its terror attack on Israel have been of limited scope but have killed several people, including Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah. They are not, however, entirely out of the ordinary. An officer with the United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, who asked not to be identified as he’s not authorized to speak with the media, said he thought the skirmishes were mounted to keep Israel guessing.
The Lebanese are no strangers to toppling over the precipice. There are still grim pockmarked reminders dotted around Beirut of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war, a brutal sectarian conflict that pitched Shiite, Sunni, Druze and Christians against each other in a prolonged and tortuous quarrel that drew in outside powers, killed an estimated 120,000 people, and triggered an exodus of a million.
In 2006 the country was plunged into war once again when Hezbollah seized the opportunity to strike Israel a fortnight into another war in Gaza. Hezbollah, the Party of God, declared “divine victory” after a month of brutal combat, which concluded when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire. Hezbollah’s capabilities took everyone by surprise, with Israel’s tanks being overwhelmed by “swarm” attacks.
Some see that brief war as the first serious round of an Iran-Israel proxy war, something more than just a continuation of the conflict between Arabs and Israelis.
No one doubts, though, that another full-scale confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah would be of much greater magnitude.
Armed with an estimated 150,000 precision-guided missiles thanks to Iran, which has been maintaining a steady flow of game-changing sophisticated weaponry for years via Syria, Hezbollah has the capability of striking anywhere in Israel and has a force that could easily be compared to a disciplined, well-trained mid-sized European army — but with a difference; Hezbollah has thousands of war-hardened fighters, thanks to its intervention in the Syrian Civil War.
Speculation is rife that air strikes on Damascus and Aleppo airports in Syria on Thursday were a step by Israel to impede Hezbollah’s arms supply line from Iran. Others see it as a warning to Syria not to get involved — Syrian support for Hezbollah could be especially important in the Golan Heights.
Fighting in the vanguard alongside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hezbollah fighters honed their skills in urban warfare. When Hezbollah first intervened in Syria, Israeli defense analysts viewed the foray as a blessing — better to have their Lebanese arch-enemy ensnared there.
But concern rapidly mounted in Israel that Hezbollah was gaining valuable battlefield experience in Syria, especially in managing large-scale, offensive operations, something the Shiite militia had little skill at previously. Other enhanced Hezbollah capabilities from Syria include using artillery cover more effectively, using drones skillfully in reconnaissance and surveillance operations, and improving logistical operations to support big integrated offensives.
A question of timing
But will Hezbollah decide to strike now?
“I don’t think Hezbollah will open a second front,” Paul Salem, president of the Middle East Institute, and a seasoned Lebanon hand, told POLITICO. But he had caveats to add. “That assessment depends on what the Israelis do in Gaza.”
“If Israel moves in a big way in Gaza and begins to get close to either defeating or evicting Hamas, let’s say like the eviction of the PLO from Lebanon in 1982, then at that point Hezbollah and Iran would not want to lose Hamas as an asset in Gaza,” he said.
“That’s a strategic imperative that might spur them to open a second front to make sure that Hamas isn’t defeated. Another factor will be the human toll in Gaza — if it is huge that might force Hezbollah’s hand because of an angry Arab public reaction,” Salem adds.
Tobias Borck, a security research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said Hezbollah faces a dilemma.
When it fought Israel in 2006 it became very popular across the Arab world, but that flipped when it intervened in Syria with “people asking — even Shiites in its strongholds in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley — what fighting in Syria had to do with resisting Israel, its supposed raison d’être, although it exists really to protect Iran from Israel,” he said.
“Hezbollah has to regain legitimacy and that puts an awful lot of pressure. That’s the worrying factor for me. How can Hezbollah still maintain it is the key player in the ‘axis of resistance’ against Israel and not get involved?” he added.
On Friday, Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem told a rally in the southern Beirut suburbs that the group would not be swayed by calls for it to stay on the sidelines of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, saying the party was “fully ready” to contribute to the fighting.
“The behind-the-scenes calls with us by great powers, Arab countries, envoys of the United Nations, directly and indirectly telling us not to interfere will have no effect,” he told supporters waving Hezbollah and Hamas flags.
The question remains what that contribution might be.
The brutal rampage by Islamistmilitant group Hamas on Israel last weekend involved thousands of rockets and missiles, drones dropping explosives, and untold numbers of small arms and ammunition.
But the attack was launched from the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, a 140-square-mile (360-square-kilometer) strip of Mediterranean coastal land bordered on two sides by Israel and one by Egypt.
It’s a poor, densely populated area, with few resources.
And it has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years, when Hamas seized control, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a strict siege on the territory, which is ongoing.
Israel also maintains an air and naval blockade on Gaza as well as a vast array of surveillance.
Which begs the question: How did Hamas amass the sheer amount of weaponry thatenabled the group to pull off coordinated attacks that have left more than 1,200 people dead in Israel and thousands more injured – while continuing to rain rocket fire down on Israel?
The answer, according to experts, is through a combination of guile, improvisation, tenacity and an important overseasbenefactor.
“Hamas acquires its weapons through smuggling or local construction and receives some military support from Iran,” the CIA’s World Factbook says.
While the Israeli and US governments have yet to find any direct role by Iran in last weekend’s raids, experts say the Islamic Republic has long beenHamas’ main military supporter, smuggling weapons into the enclave through clandestine cross-border tunnels or boats that have escaped the Mediterranean blockade.
“Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure is still massive despite Israel and Egypt regularly degrading it,” said Bilal Saab, senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington.
“Hamas has received arms from Iran smuggled into the (Gaza) Strip via tunnels. This often included longer-range systems,” said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“Iran has also been shipping Hamas its more advanced … ballistic missiles via sea, in components for construction in Gaza,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow at the MEI.
Retired general explains why he thinks Iran helped support Hamas attacks
But Iran has been a mentor, too, analysts say.
“Iran also helped Hamas with its indigenous manufacturing, enabling Hamas to create its own arsenals,” said Byman at the CSIS.
A senior Hamas official based in Lebanon gave details of the Hamas’ weapons manufacturing in an edited interview with Russia Today’s Arabic-news channel RTArabic published on their website on Sunday.
“We have local factories for everything, for rockets with ranges of 250 km, for 160 km, 80km, and 10 km. We have factories for mortars and their shells. … We have factories for Kalashnikovs (rifles) and their bullets. We’re manufacturing the bullets with permission from the Russians. We’re building it in Gaza,” Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad, is quoted as saying.
For bigger items, the MEI’s Lister said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, has been giving Hamas engineers weapons training for almost two decades.
“Years of having access to more advanced systems has given Hamas engineers the knowledge necessary to significantly enhance its domestic production capacity,” Lister said.
And Tehran keeps the training of Hamas’ weapons makers current, he added.
“Hamas’ rocket and missile engineers are part of Iran’s regional network, so frequent training and exchange in Iran itself is part and parcel of Iran’s efforts to professionalize its proxy forces across the region,” Lister said.
But how Hamas sources the raw materials for those indigenous weapons also shows the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the group.
Gaza has none of the heavy industry that would support weapons production in most of the world. According to the CIA Factbook, its main industries are textiles, food processing and furniture.
But among its main exports are scrap iron, which can provide material to make weapons in the tunnel network below the enclave.
And that metal in many instances comes from previous destructive fighting in Gaza, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who wrote about it for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum in 2021.
When Gaza infrastructure has been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes, what’s left – sheet metal and metal pipes, rebar, electrical wiring – has found its way into Hamas’ weapon workshops, emerging as rocket tubes or other explosive devices, he wrote.
Recycling unexploded Israel munitions for their explosive material and other parts adds to Hamas’ supply chain, Alkhatib wrote.
“The IDF’s operation indirectly provided Hamas with materials that are otherwise strictly monitored or forbidden altogether in Gaza,” he wrote.
Drone video shows Israel pounding Gaza
Of course, all of that didn’t happen overnight.
To fire as many munitions as it did on Saturday in such a short period means Hamas must have been building up its arsenal, both by smuggling and manufacturing, over the long haul, said Aaron Pilkington, a US Air Force analyst on Middle East affairs and PhD candidate at the University of Denver.
Baraka, the Hamas official in Lebanon, said the militant group had been preparing last weekend’s attack for two years.
He made no mention of any outside involvement in the planning of the attack, saying in the Russian media report only that the allies of Hamas “support us with weapons and money. First and foremost, it is Iran that gives us money and weapons.”
The analysts also say the size and scope of Hamas’ raids on Israel caught them – as well as Israeli and other countries intelligence services – off guard.
“It is important to remember that firing off a bunch of rockets is actually very uncomplicated,” Pilkington said.
“What is surprising, … is how you could set stockpile, move, set up, and fire thousands of rockets all while eluding Israeli, Egyptian, Saudi intelligence, etc. It is difficult to see how Palestinian militants could have done this without … Iranian guidance.”
Tel Aviv — Air raid sirens blared in Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv, again Monday morning as Palestinian militants fired more missiles at the Jewish state and the death toll on both sides soared to over 1,500, with at least 11 Americans among the dead. Explosions rang out as Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system brought down some of the rockets, but there was no immediate word on how many might have slipped through.
The latest salvo of rockets, claimed by Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades military unit, came after Israel said it had struck hundreds of Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip overnight and as four Israeli combat divisions were deployed to the country’s south. Some 100,000 Israeli reservists were called up to fight as battles with Hamas militants continued.
People inspect the damage to a building in the southern city of Ashkelon, Israel, on Oct. 9, 2023, after it was hit during the night by a rocket from the Gaza Strip.
MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said “fighter jets and helicopters, aircraft and artillery struck over 500 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip” Sunday night and Monday morning, claiming to have destroyed tunnels and at least seven “Hamas command centers” in the blockaded Palestinian territory. The IDF said it also struck a command center used by Islamic Jihad, another Iran-backed terror group based in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
“It’s taking more time than we expected to get things back into a defensive security posture,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists Monday morning, acknowledging the ongoing battles in southern Israel three days after Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on the Jewish state.
Death toll mounts as Israel bolsters Gaza blockade
An Israeli embassy spokesperson said Monday the death toll has risen to at least 900 Israelis. Most were civilians. Another 2,500 were reported wounded, and IDF spokesperson told CBS News on Monday.
More than 250 of the dead were people who had been attending a music festival near the border with Gaza when gunmen attacked.
At least 11 U.S. nationals were among the dead, President Biden said in a statement Monday afternoon. “It’s heart wrenching. These families have been torn apart by inexcusable hatred and violence,” Mr. Biden said.
An undetermined number of Americans remained missing.
Israel made it clear that it wants vengeance, and in the Gaza Strip, retribution was falling from the sky. The airstrikes had killed more than 687 people as of Monday, including at least 140 children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. It said another 3,700 more were wounded in the strikes.
Palestinians inspect destruction in a neighborhood heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp, early on Oct. 9, 2023.
Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty
In the coming days, Israel is expected to launch a ground incursion into Gaza, a small, densely packed region sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea to the west and Israel to the north and east.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday that he’d ordered a tightening of the Gaza blockade: “Nothing is allowed in or out. There will be no fuel, electricity or food supplies,” he said in a statement. “We fight animals in human form and proceed accordingly.”
CBS News’ Marwan al-Ghoul reported from Gaza City that the Israeli airstrikes had been relentless since Saturday. While Israel insists it is targeting Hamas and other terror groups, it has long accused those militants of positioning both fighters and weapons in or near civilian infrastructure.
Houses, apartment buildings and mosques were all among the targets hit overnight, most of them without prior warning, al-Ghoul said.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of the Yassin Mosque, destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in the al-Shati refugee camp just outside Gaza City, Oct. 9, 2023.
Adel Hana/AP
“I could not sleep last night as the planes bombed the mosque nearby, causing casualties and breaking the windows of my house,” Samar Alyan, who lives in the sprawling al-Shati refugee camp just west of Gaza City, told CBS News.
“We do not know what fate has in store for us,” she said. “Israel retaliates on civilians.”
The camp is home to some 150,000 refugees.
In the center of Gaza City, schools run by the U.N.’s humanitarian agency in the Palestinian territories, UNRWA, were full of displaced people looking for any safety they could find.
Israeli infrastructure minister Israel Katz said in a tweet that he had “ordered to immediately cut off the water supply from Israel to Gaza,” adding that “electricity and fuel were cut off yesterday” to the Palestinian territory, which is home to some 2 million people.
AP
Israel has been locked in a cycle of violence with Palestinian militant groups for decades, but what happened on Saturday was unprecedented. Hundreds of Hamas militants broke through the steel and concrete barrier that Israel has used for decades to contain Palestinians inside Gaza.
They stormed into Israel by land, sea and even on paragliders as waves of rockets — more than 3,000 of them — were unleashed on Israeli towns and cities.
The gunmen from the group, which has long been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, went on a rampage, slaughtering civilians in the streets, engaging Israeli security forces with deadly effect, and kidnapping hostages including women, children and the elderly.
Some of them were paraded through the streets of Gaza — human trophies that Hamas knows it can use as leverage against its enemy.
One of the captives is Noa Argamani, a university student who was hauled away on the back of a motorcycle as she screamed for help.
“She is an amazing person, a sweet child,” her father Yaacov told CBS News. “I cannot believe it.”
The shocked father said he wanted the Israeli government to rescue his daughter, but “only by peaceful measures.”
“We need to act with sensitivity,” he said. “They [Palestinians] also have mothers who are crying, the same as it is for us.”
“Seems like Israel had no clue”
For many in Israel, the question burning Monday morning was how the country’s intelligence agencies could have failed to detect and disrupt planning for such a significant Hamas assault.
“It seems like Israel had no clue,” former Israeli intelligence officer Gonen Ben Itzhak, who used to recruit spies to infiltrate Hamas, told CBS News. He said Israel — distracted by simmering violence in the other Palestinian territory, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where it’s been protecting Israeli settlers — let down its guard in Gaza.
“I won’t be surprised if they will start to even kill some of the hostages on camera,” he said, predicting that Hamas would try to force the Israeli government to negotiate.
But Israeli leaders and military officials weren’t discussing any negotiations Monday morning.
With some people calling the attack Israel’s 9/11, military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the objective was “to make sure that at the end of this war, Hamas will no longer have any military capabilities to threaten Israeli civilians with, and in addition to that, we also need to make sure Hamas will not govern the Gaza Strip.”
CBS News’ Erin Lyall and Duarte Dias contributed to this report.
After Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel early Saturday, Republicans were quick to connect, without evidence, the assault to the $6 billion in funds that were unfrozen as part of the prisoner swap between the U.S. and Iran in September.
“Let’s be clear: the deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Saturday.
Where did the $6 billion come from?
Five Americans who had been wrongfully detained in Iran were freed as part of a high-stakes deal between Iran and the Biden administration that included the transfer of $6 billion in Iranian oil assets that were held in a restricted account in South Korea.
South Korea owed Iran the money for oil it purchased before the Trump administration imposed sanctions on such transactions in 2019.
Where is the $6 billion now?
Treasury’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson said Saturday that the funds are still in restricted accounts in Qatar.
The Biden administration has insisted that the money would not be given directly to Iran and that it could only be used to fund Iran’s purchases of humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. Though Iran’s president has said he would decide how to spend the previously frozen funds.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Sept. 13 that the funds that were moved to Qatar would have “more legal restrictions” than in South Korea and that the U.S. would have oversight about where the money is being spent.
“If Iran tries to divert the funds we’ll take action, and we’ll lock them up again,” Kirby said.
A senior State Department official told CBS News on Saturday that “it will take many months for Iran to spend down this money” because of the “due diligence involved and the complexity of what have to be specific humanitarian transactions through this channel.”
What have Republican critics said?
A number of Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for releasing the funds, claiming it freed up resources for Iran to support the attack.
“You can say certain funds can’t be used, but you can use other funds that may be freed up as a result,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president, told reporters on Saturday.
Vivek Ramaswamy, who is also vying for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, made similar comments on the campaign trail.
Former President Donald Trump said he would not be surprised if Iran put the “tremendous wealth that they just accumulated” toward the violence in Israel.
“To think that they’re not moving money around is irresponsible,” Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “They hate Israel. They hate America. They are going to continue to use this. It was wrong to release the $6 billion.”
On Monday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “handing over $6 billion to Iran only helps the cause” and called on the Biden administration to refreeze the funds.
How is Hamas linked to Iran?
Iran funds and provides weapons to Hamas, an Islamist militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. The U.S. has designated it a terrorist organization.
“Iran and Hamas have a long relationship,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support it’s had for many years from Iran. In this moment, we don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out, but that’s something we’re looking at very carefully, and we’ve got to see where the facts lead.”
Iran provides up to $100 million annually to Hamas and other terrorist groups, according to a 2021 State Department report.
“There’s a degree of complicity here writ large,” Kirby told reporters Monday of Iran’s potential involvement in the attack.
But he said the U.S. doesn’t yet have evidence that Iran was directly involved.
“We haven’t seen hard tangible evidence that Iran was directly involved in participating in or resourcing or planning these sets of complex attacks that Hamas pulled off over the weekend,” he said.
Willie James Inman and Margaret Brennan contributed reporting.
WASHINGTON ― As Republicans try to link President Joe Biden’s release of $6 billion of frozen Iranian money as part of a prisoner swap to the weekend terrorist attack on Israel, they continue to ignore the documented damage done to that country’s security by the de facto leader of their party, Donald Trump.
Less than four months into his term, the coup-attempting former president was bragging to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergei Kislyak during their Oval Office visit about the quality of the briefings he was receiving, and as proof offered details about a secret Israeli intelligence operation into Syria.
Israeli intelligence officials were incensed upon learning of the leak because, given Russia’s close ties to Iran and Syria, they had to assume that their local source for the information had been compromised and possibly killed, according to Israeli press accounts at the time.
“If indeed Trump, out of innocence or ignorance, leaked information to the Russians, then there is a real danger to sources that it took years to acquire, and to our working methods,” an Israeli intelligence source told journalist Ronen Bergman.
Shabtai Shavit, who led the Mossad intelligence agency in the 1990s, told the Times of Israel: “If tomorrow I were asked to pass information to the CIA, I would do everything I could to not pass it to them. Or I would first protect myself and only then give it, and what I’d give would be totally neutered.”
Despite this, not one of the candidates running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has criticized Trump for his lack of discretion, even as they uniformly attack Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian money that had been held in a South Korean bank. Their attacks link that decision with the assault on Israel by the militant group Hamas.
The Biden administration has defended the release of the money as a way to help get five American citizens who had been unjustly detained in Iran back home. Officials point out that the money can only be spent for food, medicine and other humanitarian purposes. Republicans critics argue that money is fungible, and that saving $6 billion on food and medicine allows Iran to spend it on terrorism instead.
On Saturday, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, within hours of Hamas’ attacks, blamed Biden: “This terrorism is funded by Biden’s idiotic release of $6 billion to the Iranians.”
“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran have helped fill their coffers,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a video he released Sunday morning. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”
A little later, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott posted: “Biden’s weakness invited the attack. Biden’s negotiation funded the attack. Biden admin wanted Israel to stand down after the attack. At this point, Biden is complicit.”
It’s unclear how the agreement to release money to Iran for humanitarian purposes ― not a dollar of which has yet been spent ― less than a month ago could have “funded” Hamas’ attack, which involved thousands of rockets that must have been stockpiled over a period of many months.
Notably, none of the candidates’ statements criticized Trump for action weakening Israel ― even though they are all running against him for the nomination, and he is the current frontrunner by a wide margin.
Of the half dozen campaigns contacted by HuffPost, Christie’s, DeSantis’ and Scott’s among them, on the matter, only Christie’s responded: “He’s been pretty clear across the board that Trump shouldn’t be president again,” said campaign spokesman Karl Rickett.
Trump’s campaign also did not respond to HuffPost queries.
The May 10, 2017, White House meeting was covered by Russian media, but not American media, and began with Trump telling Lavrov and Kislayak that he had just fired FBI Director James Comey over the agency’s investigation into his contacts with their country ahead of his 2016 election. The Washington Post, which first reported on the incident, quoted an administration official who said that Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
The intelligence concerned ISIS’ newfound ability to make bombs in laptop computers that could get through airport screening, which had led to a ban on people carrying laptops with them on flights coming from a number of Muslim countries.
The information had come via Israeli intelligence agencies through a source who had infiltrated an ISIS cell in Syria and which had been confirmed thanks to electronic eavesdropping equipment planted in a daring nighttime mission by Israeli commandos.
Trump revealed this to the Russians, including the Syrian city in which the operation took place, as part of his boasts.
“Donald Trump further proves he is too dangerous to lead the United States on the world stage,” Biden campaign co-chair Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois senator and military veteran, said in a statement. “The generals and other military leaders who served under Trump—those in a position to know—have repeatedly said he made our country less safe, not more.”
U.S. intelligence agencies have worked closely with their Israeli counterparts for nearly 70 years, since an Israeli agent got hold of a secret speech Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had delivered denouncing Joseph Stalin’s brutality.
In recent years, that cooperation has included work against Iran and the various terror groups in the Middle East.
The clandestine destruction of Iranian uranium-enrichment centrifuges undertaken during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, for example, was a joint venture between American and Israeli intelligence services.
But U.S. intelligence officials just before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 warned their Israeli colleagues that they may want to be careful about what intelligence they chose to share in the coming administration, given Trump’s fondness for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Russia’s ties to Iran and Syria.
Israeli officials reportedly were skeptical about that warning ― until the Oval Office meeting four months later proved it correct.
