Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group announced Tuesday that Naim Qassem, a deputy to its slain long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, will helm the Iran-backed organization. Qassem has been serving as the group’s acting leader since Nasrallah’s death.
“Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect … Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary general of Hezbollah,” the militant group said in a statement on Tuesday.
There was initial speculation that the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, Hashem Safieddine, would succeed Nasrallah, but he was killed in another Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs in October.
Qassem, 71, was among the founding members of Hezbollah in 1982 and has served as the party’s second in command since the group entered the political realm in the early 1990’s, according to The Counter Extremism Project, an international organization. He was born in 1953, and his family is from the village of Kfar Fila, on the border with Israel.
Nasrallah, who only gave speeches via video because of his fear of assassination, led the terrorist group for 30 years with fiery rhetoric. Qassem was the most senior Hezbollah official to continue making public appearances after Nasrallah largely went into hiding following the group’s 2006 war with Israel, and was seen as the group’s leading media personality, the Counter Extremism Project said.
Since Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on September 27, Qassem has made three televised addresses, speaking in more formal Arabic than the Lebanese dialect favored by Nasrallah.
A defense official told CBS News that the U.S. was given a heads-up in advance of Israel’s retaliatory attack against Iran. The U.S. is not involved in the strikes, but President Biden has been briefed on the situation. Ed O’Keefe, CBS News senior White House and political correspondent, and Sam Vinograd, CBS News national security contributor, have more.
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In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said its retaliatory attack on Iran was limited to “precise strikes on military targets.” CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd CBS News and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan join to break down what it means.
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An Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in southeast Lebanon has killed three media staffers, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday.Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene — a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets — showing collapsed buildings and cars marked PRESS covered in dust and rubble. The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike.Video above: U.S. to send anti-missile defense system to Israel amid Middle East tensionsThe Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was also killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region.Ali Shoeib, Al-Manar’s well-known correspondent in south Lebanon, was seen in a video filming himself with a cellphone, saying that the camera operator who had been working with him for months was killed. Shoeib said the Israeli military knew that the area that was struck and had several chalets was home to journalists of different media organizations.“We were reporting the news and showing the suffering of the victims and now we are the news and the victims of Israel’s crimes,” Shoeib added in the video aired on Al-Manar TV.The Hasbaya region has been spared much of the violence along the border and many of the journalists now staying there have moved from the nearby town of Marjayoun that has been subjected to sporadic strikes in recent weeks. Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.Several journalists have been killed since exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border in early October last year.In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.The Israeli campaign has since expanded to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion Oct. 1, after trading fire with the Hezbollah militant group for much of the past year.Lebanese health officials reported another day of intense airstrikes and shelling Thursday, which they said killed 19 people over 24 hours and raised the overall Lebanese death toll to 2,593 since October 2023.
BEIRUT, Beirut Governorate —
An Israeli airstrike on a compound housing journalists in southeast Lebanon has killed three media staffers, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Friday.
Local news station Al Jadeed aired footage from the scene — a collection of chalets that had been rented by various media outlets — showing collapsed buildings and cars marked PRESS covered in dust and rubble. The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike.
Video above: U.S. to send anti-missile defense system to Israel amid Middle East tensions
The Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said two of its staffers — camera operator Ghassan Najar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida — were among the journalists killed early Friday. Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group said its camera operator Wissam Qassim was also killed in the airstrike on the Hasbaya region.
Ali Shoeib, Al-Manar’s well-known correspondent in south Lebanon, was seen in a video filming himself with a cellphone, saying that the camera operator who had been working with him for months was killed. Shoeib said the Israeli military knew that the area that was struck and had several chalets was home to journalists of different media organizations.
“We were reporting the news and showing the suffering of the victims and now we are the news and the victims of Israel’s crimes,” Shoeib added in the video aired on Al-Manar TV.
The Hasbaya region has been spared much of the violence along the border and many of the journalists now staying there have moved from the nearby town of Marjayoun that has been subjected to sporadic strikes in recent weeks. Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
Several journalists have been killed since exchange of fire began along the Lebanon-Israel border in early October last year.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded other journalists from France’s international news agency, Agence France-Presse, and Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV.
Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants but says women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The Israeli campaign has since expanded to Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion Oct. 1, after trading fire with the Hezbollah militant group for much of the past year.
Lebanese health officials reported another day of intense airstrikes and shelling Thursday, which they said killed 19 people over 24 hours and raised the overall Lebanese death toll to 2,593 since October 2023.
Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon — Israel’s military said Tuesday that it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council who’d been seen as a possible next leader of the group, in an airstrike in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiya three weeks ago. That was just days after the Israel Defense Forces killed the Iran-backed, U.S. and Israeli-designated terrorist group’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah in a different airstrike in Lebanon.
Many of the group’s leaders have been killed over the last month and a half, including three more commanders just this week, but the fighting still rages in Lebanon. The Lebanese health ministry says almost 2,000 people have been killed since Israel dramatically ramped up its assault on Hezbollah in mid-September.
There were more airstrikes on Beirut overnight, and with each one, teams of first responders jump into ambulances and head straight for the buildings reduced to rubble. CBS News met some of the medical workers who risk their own lives to save people in the war zone.
While rushing into danger is second nature to them, Hussein Fakih, who leads the rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, less than 10 miles from the Israeli border, claims he and his fellow medics are being deliberately targeted by Israeli forces. He was seriously wounded by an Israeli missile that struck next to their base.
Hussein Fakih, who leads the Lebanese Civil Defense rescue team in the southern town of Nabatiyeh, is seen in a file photo at the scene of an Israeli airstrike.
Courtesy of Nussein Fakih/Lebanese Civil Defense
He said that for months after Oct. 8, 2023, when Israel started bombing Hezbollah targets in response to the group’s incessant rocket and drone launches against Israel — more than 13,000 over the last year, according to the IDF — his team did not feel directly threatened. But Fakih said that changed more recently, and the IDF “started targeting directly the places the teams are working. More than once.”
“Our vehicles are clearly marked with the internationally recognized symbols for rescue workers,” he said it seems to provide no protection.
Fakih’s nephew Hussein Jaber is also a first responder. Seeing so much death up close has been tough for him, and harder still when it was one of his own.
The “worst day,” he said, was just last week, when an Israeli strike hit next to their base, wounding his colleague Naji Fahs.
“He was married and had two children. Was about 50 years old,” said Jaber. “He was a few meters away from me. Unfortunately, he was wounded in an airstrike that was right next to our station and he died. May he rest in peace.”
Fakih told CBS News that eight members of his team had been killed and 35 wounded over the last month alone, “plus 90% of our equipment was hit and was broken.”
“Our job is to help people,” Jaber said. “To keep them safe… Our colleagues died and our friends are wounded, and we were wounded, too, but we will continue to help the people and protect their livelihoods. In fact, this gives us greater incentive to continue our humanitarian mission.”
Lebanese Civil Defense first responder Hussein Jaber and CBS News correspondent Debora Patta react to the sound of an Israeli airstrike nearby as they speak in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, in late October 2024.
CBS News
As CBS News finished interviewing Jaber, there was a strike nearby. Duty called, and just like that, Jaber was off.
Two hours later, he raced to yet another emergency scene.
“Anyone there?” he called out into the pile of rubble. He and his colleagues pulled 12 bodies from the rubble.
Shortly after carrying out that grim work, Jaber was wounded in another Israeli strike.
Lebanese Civil Defense team member Hussein Jaber is treated for injuries sustained in an Israeli airstrike near Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon, in late October 2024.
CBS News
His injuries were minor, and the team is so short-staffed that he went straight back to work.
According to United Nations humanitarian agencies, at least 87 health care workers had been killed in the country as of Oct. 10, and ambulances and relief centers had been “targeted or hit in Lebanon, causing further casualties.” According to CBS News’ own count, that death toll has risen to at least 120.
87 #healthcare workers were killed so far & 98 health facilities closed across #Lebanon.
CBS News asked the IDF about the civil defense teams’ claims that they’re being directly targeted. In a statement, the military said it “operates in strict accordance with international law. It must be emphasized, however, that Hezbollah unlawfully embeds its military assets into densely populated civilian areas, and cynically exploits civilian infrastructure for terror purposes.”
The IDF said, as it has many times about its operations in both Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, that it makes “all feasible efforts to mitigate harm to civilians during operational activity,” including by giving “advanced warnings to civilians in Lebanon where Hezbollah embedded its military assets and weapons.”
While the IDF does often issue evacuation orders ahead of strikes, Lebanese rescuers and civilians have told CBS News that such warnings are not always issued before missiles slam into residential areas.
Debora Patta is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since joining CBS News in 2013, she has reported on major stories across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many accolades Patta has received for her work.
Classified documents apparently detailing Israel’s planned response to Iran’s Oct. 1, 2024, attack were leaked, House Speaker Mike Johnson said. This comes as Israel continues operations in Lebanon against Hezbollah, and as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepares for another trip to the Middle East. CBS News’ Ramy Inocencio reports.
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Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel warned people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.In Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura was hit again, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. It occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for a second straight day. Israel, which has warned peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.Hunger warnings emerged again in northern Gaza as residents said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Amid Israel’s war with Hezbollah, a top U.N. official, Carl Skau, told The Associated Press he’s concerned that Lebanon’s ports and airport might be taken out of service. More than 1 million people have been displaced.Israel’s military said Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles over Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. The military also said it killed 50 militants in Lebanon. Claims on either side couldn’t be verified.Israeli airstrikes on Saturday hit multiple areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Nine were killed in Maisra village in the northeast. Four were killed in an apartment building on the edge of Barja south of Beirut. Rayak and Tal Chiha hospitals in the Bekaa Valley were damaged. In Nabatieh, eight people were wounded.The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It isn’t clear how many were fighters.“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.Some Gaza residents are trappedIn northern Gaza, residents told the AP many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.At least 20 bodies were recovered while others likely were under rubble, emergency service officials said.Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said. An afternoon strike on a home killed at least four people, including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.Israel’s military said it killed more than 20 militants in the Jabaliya area over the past day.Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said that there were dead in the streets.Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned-shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”He said the shelter hasn’t received aid since the beginning of the month and that families “will run out of supplies very soon.”Food is running outThe World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who don’t specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.___Samy Magdy reported from Cairo. Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem, and Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.
Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel warned people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
In Lebanon, the U.N. peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura was hit again, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. It occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for a second straight day. Israel, which has warned peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Hunger warnings emerged again in northern Gaza as residents said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Amid Israel’s war with Hezbollah, a top U.N. official, Carl Skau, told The Associated Press he’s concerned that Lebanon’s ports and airport might be taken out of service. More than 1 million people have been displaced.
Israel’s military said Hezbollah fired more than 300 projectiles over Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. The military also said it killed 50 militants in Lebanon. Claims on either side couldn’t be verified.
Israeli airstrikes on Saturday hit multiple areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Nine were killed in Maisra village in the northeast. Four were killed in an apartment building on the edge of Barja south of Beirut. Rayak and Tal Chiha hospitals in the Bekaa Valley were damaged. In Nabatieh, eight people were wounded.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed since mid-September. It isn’t clear how many were fighters.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
Some Gaza residents are trapped
In northern Gaza, residents told the AP many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies were recovered while others likely were under rubble, emergency service officials said.
Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said. An afternoon strike on a home killed at least four people, including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.
Israel’s military said it killed more than 20 militants in the Jabaliya area over the past day.
Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said that there were dead in the streets.
Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned-shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”
He said the shelter hasn’t received aid since the beginning of the month and that families “will run out of supplies very soon.”
Food is running out
The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.
The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who don’t specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.
___
Samy Magdy reported from Cairo. Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem, and Sam Metz in Rabat, Morocco, contributed to this report.
You have to walk carefully through the rubble. All that remains of three buildings entire demolished by Israeli bombs. Neighbors say the bombing killed at least five people including women and Children. The Arabic spokesman for the Israeli military will occasionally over Twitter or X put out evacuation orders for specific buildings in Beirut before they’re struck here in tire. There have been no warnings for 35 years. Baha has run *** small clothing shop next door. Now in shambles, history is repeating itself. She says *** three story building fell over our heads during the 1982 Israeli invasion. This ancient city is just 12 miles or 19 kilometers from the border with Israel. Most of the residents have fled north. Those who stayed behind live under constant threat. It was terrifying the missile hit and it collapsed. Says 70 year old Meqdad describing another Israeli strike that destroyed multiple homes in Tire’s old city for more than half *** century. Every generation has destruction and death. We’re used to. It says Med’s neighbor Yusuf, we’re used to wars. We’ve seen wars going back to the days of the Phoenicians tire has looked to the sea. Now *** forbidden zone. Israel has warned people to stay off the beaches and fishermen not to take their boats out. So in Ty’s Port Abu Ibrahim sits and smokes his water pipe. We go to sea so we can eat. He tells me now we can’t. How can we eat? An old man deprived of his Ben Wedeman CNN Tire. Southern Lebanon.
Two Lebanese soldiers were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli airstrike that hit a building near a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Kafra, Bint Jbeil province, the Lebanese Army said Friday.Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 3 miles back.On Oct. 3, a Lebanese soldier was killed and another injured in an Israeli strike in Taybeh during rescue operations. On Sept. 30, another Lebanese soldier was killed by an Israeli drone targeting a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Wazzani.Video below: President Biden discusses U.S. efforts to prevent wider war in Middle East as U.S. helps Americans leave Lebanon
BEIRUT —
Two Lebanese soldiers were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli airstrike that hit a building near a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Kafra, Bint Jbeil province, the Lebanese Army said Friday.
Since Israel launched its ground invasion of Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have clashed along the border while the Lebanese army has largely stood on the sidelines.
As Israeli troops made their first forays across the border and Hezbollah responded with rocket fire, Lebanese soldiers withdrew from observation posts along the frontier and repositioned about 3 miles back.
On Oct. 3, a Lebanese soldier was killed and another injured in an Israeli strike in Taybeh during rescue operations. On Sept. 30, another Lebanese soldier was killed by an Israeli drone targeting a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Wazzani.
Video below: President Biden discusses U.S. efforts to prevent wider war in Middle East as U.S. helps Americans leave Lebanon
The Iranian-backed group Hamas, long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The massacre of some 1,200 people ignited a devastating war in the Gaza Strip, a densely-packed Palestinian territory that had been ruled by Hamas for almost two decades. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health says Israeli military operations in Gaza since Oct. 7 have killed almost 42,000 people.
Below is a timeline showing some of the key events in the year that has passed since many Israelis’ sense of security was shattered on that Saturday morning.
October 7, 2023
The ruling Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip carries out an unprecedented, multi-front attack on Israel at daybreak, infiltrating the heavily fortified border in several locations by air, land and sea, catching the country off-guard on the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. The stunning attack sees Hamas terrorists and other militants kill more than 1,200 people, including 43 U.S. nationals. Israel says 251 others were taken hostage during the attack, with many of the abductions captured on cameras worn by the terrorists themselves and then circulated on social media. “We are at war,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announces in a televised address later that morning, declaring a mass mobilization of the country’s army reserves. Israel launches retaliatory airstrikes in Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and weapons, almost immediately.
On the third day of fighting after Hamas’ surprise rocket and ground incursion into Israel, and as Israel continues to bombard Hamas targets in Gaza from the air, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant orders a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, saying authorities will cut electricity and block the entry of all food and fuel.
Israel’s military orders the total evacuation of northern Gaza — a region home to roughly 1.1 million people, or almost half of the Palestinian enclave’s total population — within 24 hours, as it plans to ramp up operations in the area.
The first of what would become many disturbing hostage videos over the course of the war is shared by Hamas on its Telegram messaging app channel. The video shows 21-year-old French-Israeli national Mia Shem lying on a bed with her injured right arm appearing to be treated by somebody out of the camera’s view. Shem appears distressed as she speaks directly to the camera, saying she’s been taken to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and pleading to be returned to her family. Shem’s mother tells CBS News she can see her daughter’s pain, and hopes the video is an indication of Hamas’ willingness to negotiate a hostage release deal.
Health officials in Gaza say hundreds of people are killed in a huge blast at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City, and Israeli and Palestinian officials trade accusations over who is responsible for the devastating explosion. U.S. intelligence officials say between 100 and 300 people were likely killed in the blast, which Palestinian officials blame on an Israeli airstrike. Israeli officials say they did not target a hospital and that an intelligence review indicates the explosion was caused by a rocket launched by the Hamas-allied militant group Islamic Jihad that fell short. President Biden says soon after the explosion that, from what he’s seen, it appears as though it was not caused by an Israeli strike.
Prime Minister Netanyahu, during a televised news conference, announces a “new phase” in the war, sending ground forces into Gaza and expanding attacks from the ground, air and sea.
Israeli airstrikes hit the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, killing dozens of Palestinian civilians and a Hamas commander. An Israel Defense Forces statement says the strike killed Ibrahim Biari, a key Hamas militant leader of the “murderous terror attack” on Oct. 7. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says at least 50 Palestinians are killed in the refugee camp blast and over 100 more are wounded.
Israeli troops enter al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest hospital in Palestinian territory. The raid sparks international outrage, with The World Health Organization calling al-Shifa a “death zone.” The IDF later shows CBS News and other outlets a tunnel entrance and weapons, which it says is proof that Hamas fighters had used the hospital as a command center.
Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen hijack the Galaxy Leader, an Israeli-linked cargo ship, and take crew members hostage. It marks the first of many attacks on shipping in the Red Sea launched by the militant group as a protest against the war in Gaza.
For the first time, a group of hostages taken captive by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel is released from Gaza. They are freed hours after a four-day cease-fire in the war takes effect. Thirteen hostages are freed in total, and more than three dozen Palestinians are released from Israeli jails as part of the deal.
The IDF say troops have entered Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, marking another bloody new phase of the war. The IDF says its forces are “in the heart” of Khan Younis — the first target in its expanded ground offensive into southern Gaza, which Israel says is aimed at destroying Hamas.
Three hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are mistakenly killed by friendly fire, the Israeli military says. During combat operations in Shejaiya, a densely packed neighborhood near Gaza City, the Israeli military says troops “mistakenly identified three Israeli hostages as a threat.” Troops fired at the three and they were killed, the IDF says. The military told CBS News the events occurred during a period of “intense combat,” with Hamas militants operating in what an official described as civilian attire. There were “a lot of ambushes” and “a lot of deceptions,” the IDF official said.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says an Israeli airstrike kill at least 70 people at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, with at least 30 others killed in strikes elsewhere across the Palestinian territory. The ongoing strikes come as Christmas observances in Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, are largely scrapped amid the conflict.
South Africa formally accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, filing a case with the United Nation’s International Court of Justice in the Hague. It could take the world court years to issue a ruling on whether genocide has been committed. Israel quickly seeks the dismissal of the case, calling it a “false and baseless” defense of Hamas.
An Israeli intelligence document shared with CBS News and other Western news outlets lays out allegations against a dozen U.N. employees whom Israel accuses of participating in Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack. The document claims seven staff members of UNRWA, the U.N. humanitarian agency for Palestinian refugees, stormed into Israeli territory during the attack, including two who allegedly participated in kidnappings. The allegations against UNRWA staffers prompted the U.S. and some other Western countries to freeze funds vital to the work of the agency, which is a lifeline for desperate Palestinians in war-torn Gaza. The U.N. later fires nine of the 12 accused workers and condemns “the abhorrent alleged acts” of some of its staff.
President Biden refers to Israel’s actions in Gaza as “over the top.” Mr. Biden also says he’s been pushing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow aid to enter from Israel. “There are a lot of innocent people who are starving. A lot of innocent people are in trouble and dying, and it’s gotta stop,” Mr. Biden says, adding that he’s also, “pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage cease-fire.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu instructs Israeli forces to present a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah, a day after facing criticism from President Biden over the impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Israel says Rafah is the last remaining Hamas stronghold and it needs to send in troops to complete its war plan against the Islamic militant group. But an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians have crammed into the city and the surrounding area after fleeing fighting elsewhere in Gaza. The Biden administration has said repeatedly that it does not support a ground invasion of Rafah.
Witnesses and medics say Israeli forces opened fire on thousands of Palestinians who had gathered in an open area of Gaza City hoping to receive food and other desperately needed humanitarian aid. The IDF says forces “fired at those who posed a threat” to Israeli forces nearby, but U.N. experts condemn the violence, which left at least 112 people dead as they tried to collect flour in Gaza.
Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel’s armed forces unintentionally struck a convoy from the humanitarian group World Central Kitchen in Gaza, killing seven aid workers including an American man. The Israeli military later said it dismissed two officers and reprimanded three others for their roles in the drone strikes, saying they had mishandled critical information and violated the army’s rules of engagement.
Suspected Israeli warplanes bomb Iran’s embassy in Syria in a strike that Iran says killed seven of its military advisers, including three senior commanders, marking a major escalation in Israel’s war with its regional adversaries.
Iran vows to respond to the suspected Israeli strike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says on his official website that “Israel will be punished” for the attack.
Air raid sirens and loud booms reverberate across Israel as Iran launches a barrage of missiles and drones at the country in a retaliatory attack. Israeli officials say the assault is almost entirely thwarted by air defense systems and with the help of the U.S. and Israel’s other allies. More than 300 missiles and drones were fired from Iran toward Israel, the IDF says. A 10-year-old girl is “severely injured by shrapnel,” but the IDF reports no additional casualties.
Israel’s military orders Palestinians in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip city of Rafah to evacuate ahead of a ground offensive. People quickly start fleeing from the area on foot or by any other means available to them. An Israeli tank brigade takes control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt the following day, as Israel moves forward with its offensive.
Video circulated widely on social media shows right-wing Israeli protesters blocking trucks carrying food aid for Gaza. The trucks are attacked by an Israeli group called “Tsav 9” at a checkpoint near a border crossing from the Israeli-occupied West Bank into Israel.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan announces that he’s applied for arrest warrants for senior Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-MasriI and Ismail Haniyeh for possible war crimes. In a statement that sparks outrage from Israel’s leadership, Khan also says he will seek arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, also for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.
An Israeli strike kills at least 45 people, including women and children, in the al-Mawasi camp for displaced Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu later admits the strikes were a “tragic mistake.” Analysis of images of shrapnel gathered at the scene shows at least one of the bombs used was a U.S.-made GBU-39.
Israeli forces rescue four hostages held by Hamas in a raid on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. The hostages – 26-year-old Noa Argamani, 22-year-old Almog Meir Jan, 27-year-old Andrey Kozlov and 41-year-old Shlomi Ziv – were all kidnapped at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel during the Oct. 7 attacks. More than 270 Palestinians are killed in the firefight and by airstrikes during the rescue operation, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
A member of Israel’s three-man War Cabinet announces his resignation from the government over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza. Benny Gantz says Netanyahu is making “total victory impossible” and that the government must put the return of the hostages seized by Hamas “above political survival.”
Netanyahu visits the U.S. and addresses a joint meeting of Congress, telling the American lawmakers: “In the Middle East, Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.”
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh is assassinated in Iran’s capital after attending the inauguration of the country’s new president — the second assassination of a senior Iran-allied militant commander in just 12 hours. Israel refuses to confirm that it had killed the Hamas chief, but a U.S. official tells CBS News that the U.S. assesses that both Haniyeh and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr were killed in Israeli strikes. Israel does confirm it killed Shukr.
Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Refee are killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza, becoming at least the 112th and 113th journalist or media worker — the vast majority of whom are Palestinians — killed since the war between Israel and Hamas began, according to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The period since the start of the war has been the deadliest for journalists since the CPJ began gathering data in 1992.
The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began climbs over 40,000, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says in a statement that most of those killed were women and children, and he calls for an immediate cease-fire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will “not give in to pressure” to agree to a cease-fire with Hamas. Netanyahu insists “the achievement of the war’s objectives” requires Israel to maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of land along the border between southern Gaza and Egypt. Egypt’s government has voiced its objection to an Israeli military presence on that border, and Hamas has demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from the area as part of any cease-fire agreement.
The Israeli military says it has rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a 52-year-old man taken hostage by Hamas. Israeli Army Radio said Alkadi was the first hostage whom soldiers were able to find and rescue alive from the vast network of tunnels Hamas has built underneath Gaza.
Israeli forces recover the bodies of six Hamas-held hostages: Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Master Sgt. Ori Danino. Their bodies are found in a tunnel underneath Rafah. The IDF says all six were killed by Hamas militants shortly before the arrival of Israeli forces. Prime Minister Netanyahu says Israel will hold Hamas accountable for killing the hostages and blames the militant group for stalled cease-fire negotiations, saying “whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
Thousands of angry and grieving Israelis take to the streets in huge protests after the six hostages are found dead in Gaza. Over the course of the week, widespread disruptions occur across Israel as members of the country’s largest labor union go on strike in an attempt to pressure Netanyahu to agree to a deal to bring home the remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
An American woman is shot and killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Witnesses, activists and Palestinian media say 26-year-old dual U.S.-Turkish national Aysenur Eygi was shot by Israeli troops after attending a pro-Palestinian demonstration against settlement expansion. The IDF later says “it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her.”
Israeli strikes kill dozens of Palestinians sheltering in the densely packed al-Mawasi camp, inside the Israeli-designated “humanitarian zone.” Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal tells CBS News and other news organizations that people in the camp had no warning before the bombs fell. He said they destroyed “20 to 40 tents” and left three deep craters.”There are entire families who have disappeared under the sand,” Basal says.
Thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members explode simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria, killing at least a dozen people including two children, according to Lebanese officials. Israel does not acknowledge conducting the attack, but CBS News learns American officials were given a heads-up by Israel about 20 minutes before the operations began in Lebanon, though no specific details were shared about the methods to be used.
A source close to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group says walkie-talkies used by members explode in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts of pagers and other “devices” in east and south Lebanon. Lebanon’s Health Ministry says 20 people are killed and 450 more wounded in the explosions.
The Israeli military carries out a “targeted strike” in Beirut, killing Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and other operatives. Hezbollah confirms Aqil’s death in the strike.
Missiles slam into southern Lebanon, reportedly killing hundreds of people as Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah weapons hidden in residential buildings. Lebanon’s health ministry says the strikes killed over 500 people, making it the deadliest day of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since they fought a roughly one-month war in 2006.
Israel’s military kills Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime political leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut. The afternoon strike, carried out by fighter jets, targets the group’s “central headquarters,” which was “embedded under a residential building” in Beirut’s southern suburbs, according to the Israeli military.
Sirens blare across Israel as Iran launches about 180 ballistic missiles at the country. The Israeli military says most of the missiles are intercepted by its missile defense systems, and a U.S. defense official says the United States helped intercept the weapons. The IDF reports no human casualties. Prime Minister Netanyahu vows to retaliate for Iran’s missile attack, which Iran calls a “legal, rational, and legitimate response” to Israeli assassinations of Iranian and allied military commanders.
Israelis mark a full year since Hamas’ brutal terrorist attacks, gathering for solemn memorial services in major cities and at the sites of some of the atrocities to honor those killed and demand the release of those still held captive in Gaza. “We are in a just and difficult war, but unlike 80 years ago, the Jews have the ability to defend themselves by themselves, and while fighting against seven different enemies, we will prevail,” Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told CBS News’ Elizabeth Palmer at the Nova site on Monday.
Layla Ferris is a verification producer with CBS News Confirmed. She previously worked at ABC News and Storyful. She specializes in breaking news coverage, visual verification and open-source research.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied across California on Monday protesting Israel’s war in Gaza and Lebanon.
The demonstrations come on the anniversary of Oct. 7, when Hamas militants in Gaza attacked Israel, killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages.
At USC, hundreds of protesters shut down the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Avenue in the afternoon. The crowd held pro-Palestinian signs and chanted, “Free, free Palestine,” according to video posted on social media. Protests were also anticipated at UCLA later in the day.
In the past year, Israeli military operations in Gaza and, more recently, against the Hamas-allied militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, have been the focus of protests. More than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including many women and children, have died in Israeli attacks, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. In Lebanon, hundreds have been killed and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.
Demonstrations occurred across the country throughout the weekend and into Monday.
On Sunday, demonstrators filled San Francisco’s Mission District to protest what they said was the oppression of Palestinians. In Orange County, demonstrators gathered along Jeffrey Road in Irvine — one of the city’s main thoroughfares — on Sunday waving Lebanese and Palestinian flags and holding signs that focused on the human cost of the war.
Elsewhere, masked demonstrators set up an encampment outside Ohio Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman’s house in Cincinnati early Sunday. Landsman is Jewish. Protests were also underway in New York City.
JERUSALEM — A year after Hamas’ fateful attack on southern Israel, the Middle East is embroiled in a war that shows no signs of ending and seems to be getting worse.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive was initially centered on the Gaza Strip. But the focus has shifted in recent weeks to Lebanon, where airstrikes have given way to a fast-expanding ground incursion against Hezbollah militants who have fired rockets into Israel since the Gaza war began.
Next in Israel’s crosshairs is archenemy Iran, which supports Hamas, Hezbollah and other anti-Israel militants in the region. After withstanding a massive barrage of missiles from Iran last week, Israel has promised to respond. The escalating conflict risks drawing deeper involvement by the U.S., as well as Iran-backed militants in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
When Hamas launched its attack on Oct. 7, 2023, it called on the Arab world to join it in a concerted campaign against Israel. While the fighting has indeed spread, Hamas and its allies have paid a heavy price.
The group’s army has been decimated, its Gaza stronghold has been reduced to a cauldron of death, destruction and misery and the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have been killed in audacious attacks.
Although Israel appears to be gaining the edge militarily, the war has been problematic for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too.
Dozens of Israeli hostages are languishing in Hamas captivity, and a year after Netanyahu pledged to crush the group in “total victory,” remnants of the militant group are still battling in pockets of Gaza. The offensive in Lebanon, initially described as “limited,” grows by the day. A full-on collision with Iran is a possibility.
At home, Netanyahu faces mass protests over his inability to bring home the hostages, and to many, he will be remembered as the man who led Israel into its darkest moment. Relations with the U.S. and other allies are strained. The economy is deteriorating.
Here are five takeaways from a yearlong war that has upended longstanding assumptions and turned conventional wisdom on its head.
A region is torn apart by unthinkable death and destruction
A long list of previously unthinkable events have occurred in mind-boggling fashion.
The Oct. 7 attack was the bloodiest in Israel’s history. Young partygoers were gunned down. Cowering families were killed in their homes. In all, about 1,200 people died and 250 were taken hostage. Some Israelis were raped or sexually assaulted.
The ensuing war in Gaza has been the longest, deadliest and most destructive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gaza health authorities say nearly 42,000 people have been killed — roughly 2% of the territory’s entire population. Although they do not give a breakdown between civilians and combatants, more than half of the dead have been women and children. Numerous top Hamas officials have been killed.
The damage and displacement in Gaza have reached unseen levels. Hospitals, schools and mosques – once thought to be insulated from violence – have repeatedly been targeted by Israel or caught in the crossfire. Scores of journalists and health workers have been killed, many of them while working in the line of duty.
Months of simmering tensions along Israel’s northern border recently boiled over into war.
A growing list of Hezbollah officials – including the group’s longtime leader — have been killed by Israel. Hundreds of Hezbollah members were killed or maimed in explosions of pagers and walkie-talkies. Israel’s ground offensive is its first in Lebanon since a monthlong war in 2006.
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis and over 1 million Lebanese. Israel promises to keep pounding Hezbollah until its residents can return to homes near the Lebanese border; Hezbollah says it will keep firing rockets into Israel until there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
The leaders of Hamas and Israel appear in no rush for a cease-fire
When the war erupted, the days appeared to be numbered for both Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
Netanyahu’s public standing plummeted as he faced calls to step aside. Sinwar fled into Gaza’s labyrinth of tunnels as Israel declared him a “dead man walking.”
Yet both men — facing war crimes charges in international courts — remain firmly in charge, and neither appears to be in a rush for a cease-fire.
The end of the war could mean the end of Netanyahu’s government, which is dominated by hard-line partners opposed to a cease-fire. That would mean early elections, potentially pushing him into the opposition while he stands trial on corruption charges. Also looming is the prospect of an unflattering official inquiry into his government’s failures before and during the Oct. 7 attack.
Fearing that, his coalition has hung together even through mass protests and repeated disagreements with top security officials pushing for a deal to bring home the hostages. After a brief period of post-Oct. 7 national unity, Israel has returned to its divided self — torn between Netanyahu’s religious, conservative, nationalist right-wing base and his more secular, middle-class opposition.
Sinwar, believed to be hiding in Gaza’s tunnels, continues to drive a hard bargain in hopes of declaring some sort of victory. His demands for a full Israeli withdrawal, a lasting cease-fire and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for scores of hostages have been rejected by Israel — even as much of the international community has embraced them.
With cease-fire efforts deadlocked and Netanyahu’s far-right coalition firmly intact, the war could go on for some time. An estimated 1.9 million Palestinians remain displaced in Gaza while an estimated 68 hostages remain captive in Gaza, in addition to the bodies of 33 others held by Hamas.
Bitter enemies experience the limits of force
Early in the war, Netanyahu promised to destroy Hamas’ military and governing abilities.
Those goals have been achieved in many ways. Israel says it has dismantled Hamas’ military structure, and its rocket barrages have been diminished to a trickle. With Israeli troops stationed indefinitely in Gaza, it is difficult to see how the group could return to governing the territory or pose a serious threat.
But in other ways, total victory is impossible. Despite Israel’s overwhelming force, Hamas units have repeatedly regrouped to stage guerrilla-style ambushes from areas where Israel has withdrawn.
Across the Middle East, bitter enemies are witnessing the limits of force and deterrence.
Israel’s deepening invasion of Lebanon and repeated strikes on Hezbollah have failed to halt the rockets and missiles. Missile and drone attacks by Iran and its allies have only deepened Israel’s resolve. Israel is vowing to strike Iran hard after its latest missile barrage, raising the likelihood of a broader, regionwide war.
Without diplomatic solutions, the fighting is likely to persist.
Israel and Gaza will never be the same
Israel is still deeply traumatized as people try to come to terms with the worst day in its history.
The Oct. 7 killings and kidnappings had an outsized impact on a tiny country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Israelis’ sense of security was shattered, and their faith in the military was tested like never before.
Photos of Israeli hostages are everywhere, and mass demonstrations are held each week calling on the government to reach a deal to bring them home. The prospect of ongoing war looms over families and workplaces as reserve soldiers brace for repeated tours of duty.
The trauma is far more acute in Gaza – where an estimated 90% of the population remains displaced, many of them living in squalid tent camps.
The scenes have drawn comparisons to what the Palestinian call the Nakba, or catastrophe – the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948. The Palestinians now find themselves looking at a tragedy of even greater scale.
It remains unclear when displaced Palestinians in Gaza will be able to return home and whether there will be anything to return to. The territory has suffered immense destruction and is littered with unexploded bombs. Children are missing a second consecutive school year, virtually every family has lost a relative in the fighting and basic needs like food and health care are lacking.
After a hellish year, the Palestinians of Gaza have no clear path forward, and it could take generations to recover.
Old formulas for pursuing Mideast peace no longer work
The international community’s response to this bloodiest of wars has been tepid and ineffective.
Repeated cease-fire calls have been ignored, and a U.S.-led plan to reinstate the Palestinian Authority in postwar Gaza has been rejected by Israel. It remains unclear who will run the territory in the future or who will pay for a cleanup and reconstruction effort that could take decades.
One thing that seems clear is that old formulas will no longer work. The international community’s preferred peace formula – the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel – seems hopelessly unrealistic.
Israel’s hard-line government opposes Palestinian statehood, says its troops will remain in Gaza for years to come and has further cemented its undeclared annexation of the West Bank. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has been pushed to the brink of irrelevance.
For decades, the United States has acted as the key mediator and power broker in the region – calling for a two-state solution but showing little political will to promote that vision. Instead, it has often turned to conflict management, preventing any side from doing anything too extreme to destabilize the region.
This approach went up in smoke on Oct. 7. Since then, the U.S. has responded with a muddled message of criticizing Israel’s wartime tactics as too harsh while arming the Israeli military and protecting Israel against diplomatic criticism. The result: The Biden administration has managed to antagonize both Israel and the Arab world while cease-fire efforts repeatedly sputter.
This approach has also alienated the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, complicating Kamala Harris’ presidential aspirations. The warring sides appear to have given up on the Biden administration and are waiting for the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election before deciding their next moves.
Whoever wins the race will almost certainly have to find a new formula and recalibrate decades of American policy if they want to end the war.
Hashem Safieddine was reportedly inside Hezbollah’s underground intelligence headquarters during an Israeli air strike.
Hezbollah has lost contact with one of its senior leaders, Hashem Safieddine, who was seen as a possible successor to slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, since Friday after an Israeli air strike on Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighbourhood, a Lebanese security source told Al Jazeera.
As the chairman of the armed group’s Executive Council, Safieddine is a very high-ranking member of the organisation. He is a cousin of the late Nasrallah, the former secretary-general, said Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Beirut.
Jabbari said there was a “sense of urgency” from Lebanese and Hezbollah officials to allow rescue teams in the area to retrieve bodies from the attack on Friday morning.
She added that most Hezbollah commanders are “shadowy”, with Safieddine’s name only coming to light after many believed that he would possibly succeed Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike last month, as Hezbollah’s secretary-general.
“Now, with the possibility of him also being assassinated, it leaves in question the issue of succession within the organisation,” Jabbari explained.
‘Intelligence breach’
But the lack of contact with Safieddine also proves that there is an intelligence breach within the group, “allowing Israel to locate and attack one leader after another,” Al Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara said.
Nader Hashemi, associate professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at Georgetown University, says losing contact with Nasrallah’s successor is “another serious and significant setback for Hezbollah”.
“The wording that they’ve lost contact with him is an attempt to prepare Hezbollah supporters with the coming announcement that he has been confirmed dead,” he told Al Jazeera from Ottawa, Canada.
On Friday, the Reuters news agency reported that Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said the military was still assessing the aftermath of the air strike, which he confirmed targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.
Hezbollah has not officially commented on the status of Safieddine since the attack.
Israel launched an intense bombing campaign across Lebanon two weeks ago, as it turned focus to its northern border after a year of cross-border exchanges that forced thousands of civilians to flee from both sides of the border. Israel aims to secure the safe return of its nationals to their homes in northern Israel as it pounds Hezbollah positions.
Last week, Israel launched a “limited ground operation” into southern Lebanon while intensifying air strikes in the area and Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The Associated Press reported, citing the Israeli military, that nine soldiers have so far been killed in ground clashes with Hezbollah fighters.
According to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health, more than 2,000 people have been killed during Israel’s intense bombardment on the country and forced 1.2 million people to flee their homes.
Hezbollah fighters, dressed in military uniform in Lebanon, carry a coffin wrapped in a yellow flag, mourning a fallen comrade from battles with Israel.
Arab American groups are pressing the federal government to take stronger actions to rescue American citizens, including many from southeast Michigan, who are stuck in Lebanon as Israel’s military offensive escalates.
The situation is especially urgent in Wayne County, which has the largest population of Arab Americans and Lebanese Americans in the U.S.
On Thursday, the Dearborn-based Arab-American Civil Rights League filed a federal lawsuit against top officials from the defense and state departments, alleging the government has failed to adequately evacuate U.S. citizens and green card holders stuck in Lebanon.
The class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of four U.S. citizens and one green card-holding permanent resident currently stranded in Lebanon’s capital of Beirut. They are “under imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” the lawsuit states.
One of the plaintiffs withdrew from the suit after the family successfully secured airline tickets, Mariam E. Charara, executive director of the Arab American Civil Rights League, said Friday.
Israeli bombs have already claimed the lives of three American citizens from Dearborn, with many others still in danger as the violence intensifies, according to Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
“American citizens in Lebanon are facing dire circumstances, and the need for an immediate evacuation plan cannot be overstated,” said Abed Ayoub. “The lives of American citizens are in danger, and our government must act swiftly and decisively, as it has done in the past.”
State Representative Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, joined Ayoub and Chris Habiby, government affairs director of ADC, for a meeting Thursday with senior government officials at the White House to urge officials to show more urgency.
“Every moment that passes by without evacuation flights further endangers the lives of Americans,” Farhat said. “The United States has an obligation to protect its citizens and must do everything possible to bring them home. Families in my district are already grieving the loss of loved ones killed by Israeli bombs. This administration must act now.”
Nine days after Israel began its offensive in Lebanon, President Joe Biden’s administration announced on Wednesday that it had contracted its first flight to evacuate U.S. citizens from Beirut to Istanbul.
But activists say the Biden administration isn’t acting with enough urgency.
“The Biden administration must take immediate steps to protect American citizens and assist the innocent civilians fleeing violence in Lebanon,” Ayoub said. “Failure to act now risks both lives and the integrity of the U.S. response to this crisis.”
On Tuesday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called on federal officials to “do more” to rescue U.S. citizens trapped in Lebanon.
“We are already hearing reports of confirmed deaths and fear there will be more,” Whitmer wrote in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We cannot stand by while our constituents and their families are suffering.”
In an emotional video posted recently on Instagram, Tlaib spoke about the families, including a U.S. military veteran, who are stuck in Lebanon.
“For my team and I to break down and yell and scream for our own government to save them is a disgrace,” Tlaib said. “We need to do better. We knew this was coming, and we had no plan to get Americans out.”
It’s a story that has happened before in the Middle East: an army with American weapons shot at another army with American weapons. Sometimes it’s an intentional ploy; during the war between Iran and Iraq, the Reagan administration armed both sides, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal. And sometimes it’s an unintended consequence, like the Syrian rebel infighting that led to the infamous headline, “In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA.”
The fighting between the U.S.-funded army of Israel and the U.S.-funded army of Lebanon seems to be another such consequence of U.S. policy. When the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Israel began fighting last year, the Lebanese government tried its best to stay out of the fray. It reportedly even pulled troops away from the border when Israel announced a ground invasion and ordered Lebanese citizens to evacuate north of the Awali River. But on Thursday, the Lebanese army announced that it had, in fact, been sucked into the conflict.
“One of the soldiers was martyred as a result of the Israeli enemy targeting an army center in the area of Bint Jbeil South, and the center’s personnel have responded to the source of fire,” the army stated on social media. An official in Lebanon told Agence France-Presse that it was the first time the Lebanese army fired on Israeli forces throughout the war.
Two hours before, the Lebanese army had announced that one of its soldiers was killed by Israeli fire while “carrying out an evacuation and rescue mission alongside the Lebanese Red Cross in the town of Taybeh-Marjayoun,” down the road from Odaisseh, a town that several Israeli troops were killed trying to enter on Wednesday morning. The Red Cross said that four of its paramedics were injured, and the Israeli army said that it would be investigating the incident.
American taxpayers have helped arm and train both the armies that are now apparently shooting at each other—and the U.S. funding was designed to prevent exactly this outcome. Israel received $124 billion in U.S. aid from 1949 to 2023, and at least $6.5 billion over the past year. The United States has also provided around $3 billion in military aid to Lebanon since 2006, including around $2 billion in weapons. Last year, the Biden administration began paying the salaries of Lebanese soldiers and police directly.
Congress sends Lebanon this aid on the condition that it will be used to “professionalize the [Lebanese Armed Forces] to mitigate internal and external threats from non-state actors, including Hizballah [sic]” and “implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701,” which was passed after the past Israeli-Lebanese war in 2006, and calls on Hezbollah to disarm.
However, Hezbollah has refused to lay down its weapons, claiming that Israel still occupies Lebanese land in the disputed Shebaa Farms. After Hamas’ October 7 attacks on Israel last year, Hezbollah began firing on the Shebaa Farms, which escalated to Israel and Hezbollah bombarding each other’s border cities, forcing tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border to flee. Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the U.N. that he would fight for “total victory” in order to “return our citizens to their home safely.”
Biden administration officials have encouraged Israel’s strategy of “de-escalation through escalation,” and are privately pitching the war as an opportunity to “reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come,” according to Politico.
But President Joe Biden is publicly calling for the war to end. “We should have a ceasefire now,” he told reporters on Monday. Asked whether he is comfortable with Israel launching a ground invasion of Lebanon, the president said that he is “comfortable with them stopping.” If only he had some leverage over the two sides.
BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Beirut killed seven Hezbollah-affiliated civilian first responders. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit an apartment in central Beirut not far from the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed.
The strike came after at least eight Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where Israel announced the start of what it says is a limited ground incursion earlier this week. The region was meanwhile bracing for Israeli retaliation following an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following strike in Beirut, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs, without providing evidence. Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah has an armed wing with tens of thousands of fighters but it also has a political movement and a network of charities staffed by civilians.
In a separate development, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they had launched two drones at Tel Aviv overnight. The military said it identified two drones off the coast of the bustling metropolitan area, shooting one of them down while the other fell in the Mediterranean Sea.
The escalating violence in Lebanon has opened a second front in the war between Israel and Iran-backed militants that began nearly a year ago with Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago. It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack. Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israelis strikes in Lebanon have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his top commanders. Hundreds more airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon since mid-September have killed at least 1,276 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters. There was no independent confirmation.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, as Israel has warned people to evacuate from around 50 villages and towns in the south, telling them to relocate to areas that are around 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and considerably farther north than a U.N.-declared buffer zone.
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah after nearly a year of rocket attacks that began on Oct. 8 and have displaced some 60,000 Israelis from communities in the north. Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes over the past year that have displaced tens of thousands on the Lebanese side.
The vast majority of recent strikes have been in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence, including the southern suburbs of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh. But Israel has also carried out strikes in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and a strike in central Beirut earlier this week killed three Palestinian militants.
Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are part of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which also includes armed groups in Syria and Iraq. They have launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing retaliation in a cycle that has repeatedly threatened to set off a wider war.
The region once again appears on the brink of such a conflict after Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday, which it said was a response to the killing of Nasrallah, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who was with him, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran in July that was widely blamed on Israel.
Both Israel and the United States have said there will be severe consequences for the missile attack, which lightly wounded two people and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. The United States has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
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Jeffery reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press staff writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Zeina Karam in London contributed to this report.
BEIRUT — An Israeli airstrike on an apartment in central Beirut killed seven Hezbollah-affiliated civilian first responders. Israel has been pounding areas of the country where the militant group has a strong presence since late September, but has rarely struck in the heart of the capital.
There was no warning before the strike late Wednesday, which hit an apartment in central Beirut not far from the United Nations headquarters, the prime minister’s office and parliament. Hezbollah’s civil defense unit said seven of its members were killed.
The strike came after at least eight Israeli soldiers were killed in clashes with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, where Israel announced the start of what it says is a limited ground incursion earlier this week. The region was meanwhile bracing for Israeli retaliation following an Iranian ballistic missile attack.
Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following strike in Beirut, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs, without providing evidence. Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hezbollah has an armed wing with tens of thousands of fighters but it also has a political movement and a network of charities staffed by civilians.
In a separate development, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they had launched two drones at Tel Aviv overnight. The military said it identified two drones off the coast of the bustling metropolitan area, shooting one of them down while the other fell in the Mediterranean Sea.
The escalating violence in Lebanon has opened a second front in the war between Israel and Iran-backed militants that began nearly a year ago with Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel.
The Israeli military said Thursday that it killed a senior Hamas leader in an airstrike in the Gaza Strip around three months ago. It said that a strike on an underground compound in northern Gaza killed Rawhi Mushtaha and two other Hamas commanders.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas. Mushtaha was a close associate of Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attack. Sinwar is believed to be alive and in hiding inside Gaza.
In recent weeks, Israelis strikes in Lebanon have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several of his top commanders. Hundreds more airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon since mid-September have killed at least 1,276 people, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said Thursday that it had struck around 200 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts. It said the strikes killed at least 15 Hezbollah fighters. There was no independent confirmation.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, as Israel has warned people to evacuate from around 50 villages and towns in the south, telling them to relocate to areas that are around 60 kilometers (36 miles) from the border and considerably farther north than a U.N.-declared buffer zone.
Israel says it is targeting Hezbollah after nearly a year of rocket attacks that began on Oct. 8 and have displaced some 60,000 Israelis from communities in the north. Israel has carried out retaliatory strikes over the past year that have displaced tens of thousands on the Lebanese side.
The vast majority of recent strikes have been in areas where Hezbollah has a strong presence, including the southern suburbs of Beirut known as the Dahiyeh. But Israel has also carried out strikes in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and a strike in central Beirut earlier this week killed three Palestinian militants.
Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis are part of the Iran-led Axis of Resistance, which also includes armed groups in Syria and Iraq. They have launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians, drawing retaliation in a cycle that has repeatedly threatened to set off a wider war.
The region once again appears on the brink of such a conflict after Iran’s missile attack on Tuesday, which it said was a response to the killing of Nasrallah, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general who was with him, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in an explosion in Tehran in July that was widely blamed on Israel.
Both Israel and the United States have said there will be severe consequences for the missile attack, which lightly wounded two people and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank. The United States has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
___
Jeffery reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press staff writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Zeina Karam in London contributed to this report.
At least six people were killed and seven injured in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Beirut overnight, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said Thursday, as governments around the world scrambled to evacuate their citizens from the country. The airstrike hit near the capital’s residential Bashoura district.
Residents reported a sulfur-like smell following the attack, and Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency accused Israel of using phosphorous bombs, which are prohibited by international law for use near civilian populations. Human rights groups have in the past accused Israel of using white phosphorus incendiary shells on towns and villages in conflict-hit southern Lebanon.
NOTE: This article includes images of wounded children that may disturb some readers.
CBS News’ Haley Ott reported that, shortly before the strike, Lebanese health officials said 46 people had been killed and 85 injured by Israeli strikes in the country over the last 24 hours.
Smoke and flames rise after the Israeli army carried out airstrikes in the south of the capital Beirut, Lebanon on Oct. 3, 2024.
Israel’s air and ground operations in Gaza killed more than 50 people near the city of Khan Younis on Wednesday, including children, according to Palestinian health officials in the Hamas-run enclave.
The war in the densely packed Palestinian territory has killed more than 41,500 people since it was sparked almost a year ago by Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
Injured children are carried on a stretcher at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, Oct. 2, 2024.
Ramadan Abed/REUTERS
The fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in Lebanon — a much larger, better armed group than Hamas — was described by the Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday as intense, as it confirmed eight soldiers had died in the operations.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting Wednesday to address the spiraling conflict in Middle East.
Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. said his country had launched nearly 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday as a deterrent to further Israeli violence. His Israeli counterpart called the barrage an “unprecedented act of aggression.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to retaliate against Iran, while an Iranian commander threatened wider strikes on infrastructure if Israel did so.
President Biden said Wednesday that the U.S. and its other partners were in discussions with Netanyahu’s government about Israel’s pending response to the Iranian attack, which Mr. Biden has stressed should be “in proportion” to Iran’s missile salvo, which was largely thwarted by the U.S. ally’s advanced missile defense systems.
Mr. Biden said he would not support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in response to the missile attack, but that the U.S. and its global allies supported Israel’s right to respond.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this week that Iran’s attack was “totally unacceptable, and the entire world should condemn it,” but that “Israel, with the active support of the United States and other partners, effectively defeated this attack.”
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the southern Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, which saw terrorists kill 1,200 Israelis and take 251 more as hostages into Gaza, according to the Israeli government. The fighting has increased dramatically over the last two weeks, since Israel was accused of blowing up thousands of Hezbollah members’ communications devices and assassinating the group’s senior leader in a targeted strike in Beirut.
Japan on Thursday dispatched two Self Defense Force planes to prepare for a possible airlift of Japanese citizens from Lebanon. And the Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Thursday her government had booked 500 seats on commercial aircraft for Australian citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on Saturday.
Zahraa Badreddine fled Nabatieh in southern Lebanon as Israeli airstrikes intensified, hoping to find safety in a predominantly Christian area closer to the coast. But last Sunday, an airstrike near Sidon killed her two children.
